Alright, this is great, but also people need to start confirming GOG drops before the Steam launch. I check for GOG launches whenever I buy a game, but just this month there’s been a couple of big games that got stealth GOG launches just after their Steam release and it’s been extremely frustrating. I don’t know if it’s a publisher thing to work around pirates waiting for DRM free versions or Steam being dicks about it, but it’s infuriating.
Yeah, I’ve had this experience, too. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II communicated ahead of launch that the GOG release would come only a few months later (I did get the sense this was a publisher decision). Great! I can wait a few months. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 made no such mention, and despite waiting several months to see how it would shake out, I bought it in the summer, and the GOG version came out right after I finished it. The developer behind Knights in Tight Spaces, when asked directly, said they were only focusing on the Steam release. Likewise, the GOG version came out shortly after I finished the game. From here on out, of the games on my radar, I’m playing the ones on GOG first, and maybe the other ones will get GOG releases in the meantime.
Yeah, it sucks for Silent Hill especially because a) it’s super expensive, at 80 bucks on PC, and b) I was on the fence about getting it at launch and only jumped in a few days ago. I’m just out of the refund window and… hey, I like it so far, but I don’t like it 160 bucks’ worth.
Whoever is screwing with GOG screwed them out of my purchase and I’m starting to think that not buying anything on Steam at all if I can help it may be the way to go.
If anything, purely anecdotally with no data-based analysis, it looks as though GOG is getting more new releases than it used to. So I think as long as we show that DRM-free matters to us by buying there first, the situation will continue to improve.
It’s come and gone a couple times. There was a period where a bunch of big games did simultaneous launches, then a big period of drought where a few large publishers withdrew entirely from new releases and recently a few isolated AA and AAA releases started popping back up. I wonder if it’s driven by how much effort they can put into outreach or something like that.
My general guess: The delay is tied to Denuvo. Smart devs will launch with Denuvo so that pudding-headed pirates (my label for a certain small demographic among pirates) drooling over marketing will see the trailers, try to pirate, fail, be told by crackers to wait like 2-3 weeks for them to unlock it; but instead become impatient and buy the game full price.
But the time period to capture pudding heads is not constant, and is not perfectly predictable before release. So, the developer may not want to commit to a certain release schedule where they will release on GOG, dropping Denuvo at that same time. They might even want to reserve the possibility the game will go years without dropping DRM, if it’s somehow staying constantly popular, and constantly desired by pirates, and/or they can see that the hacking communities have failed to unlock it.
Yeah, it’s a pretty easy conclusion to come to from the outside looking in, but BG3 can launch on GOG day and date, and KC:D2 can communicate the GOG release ahead of time and still sell multiple millions of copies, so…it’s a practice I’d like to see change regardless.
That is a conclusion made in hindsight, the easiest place to make predictions. Not every studio has the same forms of public popularity and good will they can bank on.
Also, selling millions of copies is not an indicator of a studio’s upper bounds. Publishers - even indie-oriented ones - need the lightning in bottle releases to pay for games that didn’t do well. We can’t do an experiment where KC:D2 releases on two planet Earths, one with a DRM-free release and one with DRM, and say for certain that the second wouldn’t let them additionally fund another studio’s pet project.
Basically, given how many failed releases happen that we never hear about, it can be misrepresentative to point to some good games and say “See? Studios are able to pay their mortgage.” Denuvo is able to sell to studios, costing those studios money, in part by showing raw data (that we might not ever see) explaining how it promotes early sales.
No, I get that. But likewise, Denuvo doesn’t have access to a second Earth either, and their pitch meeting will never include data of customers you’ve convinced not to buy the game due to the presence of their product. At some point, I don’t think those pirated copies are moving the needle, and that it’s just a cost of doing business like some units of physical goods breaking during shipping. The games that are most pirated are the ones that also sell the best. The anti-piracy case for the consumer is made pretty well these days by being downloaded faster, getting bug fix patches instantly, and keeping cloud saves.
It only had steam DRM on Steam, so I doubt they were to worried considering how easy it is to bypass.
Personally, I suspect they just want to catch a few double dippers.
I mean, convenience is a factor.
And while Steam doesn’t typically sign exclusive stuff they are known to use store positioning as a bargaining chip for preferential treatment. You’d think Konami would be above needing that, but who knows.
Anyway, good game, whatever the reason for the delay. Someone who is on the fence about getting it on Steam go get it on GOG instead to make up for them tricking me.
Never considered the possibility of preferential treatment in return for a slight delay.
Man, I freaking love GOG 💜
My wife is watching a streamer play it on easy mode, and even that seems ridiculously hard.
The biggest issue I’ve seen outside of the difficulty level is the Japanese characters in some puzzles aren’t translated, and knowing what they mean is important to solving them.
The translations for documents and such are also pretty bad, often omitting words that are necessary for it to make sense.
My wife is watching a streamer play it on easy mode, and even that seems ridiculously hard.
I love the game but they screwed the difficulty settings. story mode is normal difficulty despite the game constantly telling you it’s an easy mode for a story-focused experience, hard mode is hellishly difficult and tedious.
hard is basically playing dark souls but the weapons break every 10 hits. if anybody is planning on playing it, play on story even if you’re great at survival horror games
That wasn’t my experience. Story mode for the puzzles is laughably easy. I don’t recall any puzzle needing Japanese characters. I also don’t recall any translation errors in any documents.
I wasn’t paying super close attention to the puzzle ones, but it happened fairly early in the game.
The document one was only obvious because the streamer reads everything out loud, and he often struggles a bit, and this time the struggle was because of missing words. It’s possible that your brain just filled in the gaps for you.
the Japanese characters in some puzzles aren’t translated, and knowing what they mean is important to solving them.
Detective Conan moment. But it’s worse since you can’t make progress
Man, I appreciate this happened but seeing the price all I can do is chuckle and move on since this thing is almost 3x the reasonable price in my local currency. Never expected to get priced out of AAA gaming but here we are.
Still, nice catch for GOG. I hope this is a good sign for the future.
Saw this too, I’ll wait for a deep sale in a couple years.
Things like this make me feel less bad about my backlog - got plenty of things to play while waiting for a price drop!
Welcome to the club. I was priced out of it a long time ago.
It probably happened way earlier for me as well to be honest, I’m just mainly into older and indie games so I don’t really pay attention to new (mainstream) releases. Seeing this was a bit of reality check.
