GOG releases about a dozen employees

As reported by Kotaku, the GOG digital distribution platform has "quietly released" about a dozen employees recently. A representative of the Government confirmed the dismissals with a prepared statement:

Leaving people to go is never easy. We have reorganized some teams since October 2018 and closed a dozen positions last week. At the same time, since the beginning of the process, we have welcomed nearly twice as many new team members and currently have 20 vacant positions.

Kotaku also included a statement from an undisclosed source, one of the staff members being laid off, claiming that GOG was in a difficult financial situation. This person estimates that layoffs represent about 10% of the company's workforce.

"We were told it was a financial decision," said this person. [Jason Schreier] in an online message. "GOG's revenue could not keep up with growth, the fact that we are about to be dangerously in the red has appeared in recent months, and the market trend is rising [developer] the revenue share has or will affect the results. I mean, it's a strange situation, as if the situation was getting really desperate, very fast. I know that February was a very bad month, but January was excellent. We were in the middle of restructuring, moving teams, not without precedent. But such large layoffs have never happened before.

As a company, GOG is part of CD Projekt S.A., the parent company of developer CD Projekt RED, the studio behind the RPG trilogy. The witcher, GCC Gwentand more recently the adventure of the CCG Tronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, securities derived from The witcher franchise. Thronebreaker was originally published as a GOG exclusive, which resulted in poor sales.

"The game first appeared on GOG for fairly simple reasons," said CEO Adam Kiciński in the third quarter 2018 financial report. "GOG is our priority platform and we wanted first and foremost publish the game there for the players who support us there. However, the scope of GOG is incomparably smaller than that of Steam. We know there is a large community of Witcher fans on Steam and that's why we've also released the game here. […] Although I do not want to go into details, we are aware of our options and a release of Steam has always been considered. "

According to a presentation of the financial report for the third quarter of 2018, the GOG had a negative result demonstrated during this quarter:

Regarding the negative result announced by GOG, it is mainly related to its participation in the GWENT development consortium. During our work on the Homecoming update, GWENT generated lower revenues, which negatively impacted the industry and group results.

Without doubt the current The wars of digital distribution must also play a role in the situation of increased competition, but there are other factors, and it remains to be seen what impact this will have on the parent company, CD Projekt.

What do you think of the situation? Let us know in the comments below.

Richard Costa

Editor

Hack for rent, hack in hand, Maverick thought criminal. Mostly interested in Western RPGs, first-person immersion, turn-based tactics, clickers, and card-play.