Now that you mention it, I think that is absolutely true. They used to do much much more here. But then these were the days when they still had worldwide equal prices, no Galaxy bundled installers everywhere and no public profiles by default and there were waves of classic titles coming every now and then. The relation was just different somehow. To me it feels like a distant past. The change started with the "Good news" and they could never recover but made it mostly worse each time.

The positive side is that they managed to get a decent enough catalogue of games and the download experience using the old GOG downloader is still sufficiently good (technology of 5-10 years ago but still working like a charm).

It's easier said than done increasing the media coverage, but they surely could do more. I also remember they had let's play streams or public live streamed conferences where Marcin would convey the news for GOG alone. Not much of that now.

On the other hand, they indeed do seem to be far behind Steam and not growing even remotely as fast as necessary to ever catch up. There is no fantasy about the future development of GOG and if anything they have found a niche to survive but not to compete. Do they really deserve more media coverage?

If only they had a vision about the future of GOG and if only they would share it with the public.

That the contribution of China as market didn't increase, especially with Gwent focusing on that market, was confusing.

But the Financial Times mentioned in a report about Tencent's business this week that the Chinese government has a backlog of thousands of video game which require approval for release and even plans to permanently limit releases and play time (at least online, but in China this likely means users will have to be always online to play). For Tencent, revenues from computer games was down 7 per cent compared to the same time in 2017, smartphone ones up by a meagre 7%.

It's not that surprising given that Chinese users have been complaining about Captcha for years because it is blocked by the Chinese government. GoG isn't a friendly service for Chinese customers when they have to go around government restrictions (at a risk to themselves) by using VPNs. At least as has been reported by some in the forums.

Transcript of the conference call for the Q3 results has been added:
- Cyberpunk game world is getting fleshed out at the moment.
- GOG made a loss due to Gwent development
- Research and development: Most money spent on Cyberpunk, the least for Thronebreaker; quarterly costs for Cyberpunk expected to grow further
- Thronebreaker: units sold under expectations but no decision yet on further Witcher tales
- Gwent is "an experiment which precedes other multiplayer products of this type"
- Gwent is offered by external partner GAEA in China. That means GOG hasn't complete insight into the user base. There are minimum financial guarantees in place what the partner will pay GOG, if the share GOG shall get from it becomes bigger than that, we will likely see it not before 2019
- Legal dispute with Andrzej Sapkowski (Witcher author) who demands additional money for CDPR's use of his works.
- Q: Will you release Cyberpunk with less bugs than Witchter 3 or fix them quicker? A: That's a fairly provocative question, isn't it?
- "Last week we brought the game [Thronebreaker] to Steam, which is a major platform."
- "Let’s remain in the world of bar charts for a little longer" <3

This one I find interesting. While Witcher 3 is a deep RPG, there are still plenty of bugs regarding quests and NPC spawning, unlootable corpses and herbs. Characters still walk through the ground sometimes. While the game is awesome in regards to quest dialog and the depth of the side quests, the actual game mechanics have issues. I've gotten back to it recently, and many first day bugs have not been fixed yet.

Thronebreaker would have gotten my money if not for the "bonus" Gwent stuff that has to be included. I like bonuses! A la manuals, backgrounds, soundtracks (even if sold separately). What I do not like are pushes towards a mandatory DRM-client and a focus on online multiplayer over offline. That is literally what Scheme did and PC gaming has never recovered, nor do I think it can ever recover at this rate. I want GOG to be the opposite of that; without GOG I would not be gaming on PC and if GOG turns into Scheme, well no more of my money there either. The problem is that, similar to games with microtransactions, companies need only find some "whales" and then they do not cater to loyal old-school customers who (rightfully) demand more.

Actually, this could be an opportunity for CD Projekt to do something about this trend. Say, at the end of Gwent's lifecycle, GOG/CDPR release a version of the game's hosting tools to the community so that the fans can host their own servers and keep playing, so that the game doesn't become lost like other MMOS and online-only games. Essentially, make the game as close to DRM-free at the end of its lifecycle as they can. All the folks who spent money on Gwent could at that point receive some kind of compensation that would be applied towards CD Projekt's inevitable next online-only title, and the cycle starts again.
Like it or not (and I loathe it), MTX and loot crates are where the real monetary growth on PC is coming from, it's not premium titles anymore. It's because of the deep discounts depreciating the value of premium PC games to the point that they disappeared from store shelves and put some of Steam's early competitors in the digital grave. Keep in mind that only a few years ago, a F2P game called League of Legends had more people playing it at any given moment than were logged onto Steam, and that game alone was making more money than Steam's entire catalog each year. So, if CDPR ever finds its Fortnite, that would be all they need to keep GOG floating for years.
Like Jeff Bezos said, one day Amazon will go out of business as well, there's no such thing as a company that's too big to fail. Which is a big part of why I exclusively spend money on DRM-free media, or media that can be easily cracked like Blu-Rays. Amazon and Steam already have near-total market penetration. Pretty much all PC gamers that exist are already using Steam, so they can't really grow in that direction anymore. GOG's small size and visibility is, in that respect, a blessing, because GOG still has room to grow, which is why I'm not pessimistic. The upper management just needs to stay on top of emerging market trends, and they need to take more chances and experiment with technological ideas more.

So from a money-maker in Q2, Gwent became a loss in Q3?

You make some excellent points, good sir!

I am not blind to the fact that businesses want to make money.

But often I think there is more solid longterm business with niche boutique stuff, over trying to be the next McDonald's or Walmart. The profits may not be as big, but the audience is more stable and the money more consistent as opposed to having to resort to constant trend-chasing. A gaming example I would use is EA with the Dead Space franchise. Had that series just remained single-player survival horror, it could have easily been the next Resident Evil or Silent Hill. Instead they essentially threw it all away because it wasn't selling big enough in comparison to online-multiplayer bestsellers.

The calendar for this year's results have been posted some time ago:
Separate and consolidated yearly reports for 2018
March 21, 2019

Consolidated quarterly report for Q1 2019
May 23, 2019

Consolidated semiannual report for 1H 2019
August 29, 2019

Consolidated quarterly report for Q3 2019
November 21, 2019

It'll be interesting to see the effect the on-going explosion of digital PC stores will have on CDP's results. I wonder if CDPR will try exclusivity again with Cyberpunk 2077, which I think is still at least a year and a half away from release. If they want to be seen as the consumer-friendly company, then they should probably repeat what they did with Witcher 3 and release on all stores, to 'set an example' for other companies on how releases for AAA games should be done. The only other major company that really tries to do this is THQ Nordic, Disney to a lesser extent, and Falcom demands that companies publishing their games make them available in multiple places which is why NIS America and Aksys published on GOG at all. CDPR can still have the physical copies with GOG codes and sell GOG keys at key-sellers. I guess the question will be how many companies will still be supporting Steam in a year and a half now that they lost EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Epic, and Activision.

And the final 2018 numbers are out...
GoG ends 2018 with a 30,000 PLN profit equivalent to $7,900 USD or 7,000 Euro
CDPR ends 2018 with a 109,307,000 PLN profit equivalent to $28,658,100 USD or 25,408,100 Euro

So it goes for the naysayers and Kotaku...

More stuff:
Sales and Exports (company as a whole):
(2017 in parentheses)

Domestic Sales:
Poland 4.43% (5.28%)

Exports:
Europe 29.08% (26.21%)
North America 54.99% (53.46%)
South America 0.75% (3.23%)
Asia 8.53% (9.04%)
Australia 1.98% (2.57%)
Africa 0.24% (0.21%)

Which is due to the income tax where they really benefited. Before tax GOG had a loss of 1266000 PLN which is around 294533€.

Yes, recovery of pre-paid income tax which wasn't due because they didn't make that much of a profit. Or in other words, with income taxes taken out in advance, GoG was at a loss, but when those income taxes were properly balanced at the end of the period, it left a very small profit.

GoG Sales by Territory:
(2017 in parentheses)

USA 29% (29%)
Germany 14% (14%)
Poland 7% (6%)
United Kingdom 6% (6%)
France 5% (5%)
Canada 4% (4%)
Russia 4% (4%)
Australia 4% (4%)
Sweden 2% (2%)
The Netherlands 2% (1% or less)
Brazil 1% or less (2%)
Other 23% (25%) - counting Brazil in 2018 and The Netherlands in 2017

Otherwise, there is little new added commentary throughout the reports. This one is kinda boring.

My guess is that's what people/the employee (not Kotaku, they are awful) were referring to though. I think the main issue is the pretty much non-existent profts in the face of a more broken and broken website as well as the forum (and the absolutely awful lack of communication on the part of GOG). Then you have to look at the closure of the PT-BR part of the forum as well as the scaling back of their Chinese efforts. Those things paint a pretty bleak picture for GOG, in my opinion. On the other side however, I feel that more publishers/studios are releasing their games here which could be beneficial. Then again, GOG doesn't help on that front with their even more puritanical approach to VNs than Steam even. Well, we will see how things develop this year.