GOG looks like it's in a much healthier spot after a hairy 2021
The retro PC-focused digital marketplace revealed its sales and user statistics for 2022.
The CD Projekt-owned PC gaming storefront GOG just released a "facts and figures" breakdown of 2022 in an official blog post. The upshot? GOG experienced steady growth in its user base and library while also turning a tidy $1.2 million profit. It's a heartening turnaround to see as the service actually lost money—$1.15 million to be exact—the previous year.
GOG saw a near-20% expansion of its user base last year, though interestingly the number of active GOG Galaxy (the service's desktop client) users merely remained steady. It's tough getting around launcher fatigue these days, and GOG Galaxy is not a requirement to use the storefront—you can buy and download these games off the GOG website.
GOG shared a revenue chart that shows just how much of a lopsided banner year 2020 was for the service, an unprecedented and so far unmatched performance that GOG chalks up to the release of Cyberpunk 2077 and the general boom in the industry thanks to home-bound pandemic gaming. That being said, its revenue now is still significantly higher than before the pandemic.
Overall revenue for GOG looks to have stayed flat between 2021 and '22, which indicates to me that the structural changes GOG undertook paid off. At the end of 2021 the service publicly re-committed to DRM-free, curated distribution after it faced criticism for selling the always-online Hitman 3. However, separating GOG from the Gwent Consortium and CD Projekt's other online services (and their associated costs) at around that time seems to have had a bigger impact, reversing the loss and bringing the service into the green with little change to overall revenue.
As for how this affects us gamers, I'm just happy that GOG is doing well, with the sort of healthy financials that will let it keep doing its thing: making classic PC gaming widely accessible and available. This is one non-Steam launcher I'm perfectly happy to have on my desktop. After all, where else am I supposed to find The Mystery of the Druids, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Doom 64 all in one place?