GOG's new owner says Steam is winning due to ease of use, not quality, while criticizing the platform for releasing hundreds of games daily that are "not super high quality"

Steam continues to grow at a massive scale. A few days ago, the platform broke its own record by crossing 42 million concurrent users online at the same time, showing just how dominant it has become. On top of that, Steam also closed out 2025 with a strong financial result, generating over $1.6 billion in revenue in December alone, its highest-grossing month ever.

Despite these numbers, the new owner of GOG, Michał Kiciński, believes Steam’s success is not driven by game quality. Instead, it is winning mainly because it is easy to use. 

"Steam is winning with its ease of use. In that regard, I think much can be done in GOG without losing its core values and the way it operates in general."

Kiciński, who co-founded CD Projekt Red and left the studio in 2010, acquired GOG in December 2025. Speaking recently to Games Industry, Kiciński explained that most people see Steam’s 80% market share as an overwhelming advantage. However, he sees it differently. In his view, holding such a large share makes it harder for Steam to defend the market in the long run. 

Kiciński also claims he knows the difficulties other platforms have faced while trying to exist alongside Steam, including Epic Games, which has invested heavily but still failed to seriously disrupt Steam’s position. However, he only sees Steam as one big competitor and claims it should be easier to take the market from them due to their massive share. 

"I see opportunities more than negatives, that's my nature, and I see huge opportunities for GOG to grow. And somebody might say that having a competitor like Steam with 80% of the market share is a huge obstacle, but to me it's the opposite. I see: 'Oh, there is one big competitor, it'll be difficult for them to defend the market, because they already have 80%, so it should be easier to take the market from them."

He also took a subtle dig at Steam’s approach to content releases, pointing out that the platform adds hundreds of games every day, many of which he believes are not super high quality. In contrast, he described GOG as a very curated platform, emphasizing its focus on carefully selected titles rather than sheer volume.

"GOG is a very curated platform. This is, I think, one of our strengths: we don't release hundreds of games daily, 95% of which are really not super high quality." 

He also stressed that GOG is not trying to fight Steam head-on. Instead of “wrestling with Goliath,” his goal is to build a platform that clearly stands for something different. While he admitted that Steam does many things well, he questioned what the platform’s core mission really is today.