We hate launchers – at least any other launcher compared to Steam. We love cohesion, having one place to store and access our games, no Uplay, no EA, no Blizzard launcher – one, to rule them all. And for years GOG has been that other launcher to fit right into that mayhem, and that my friends, is about to change. Now it’s officially stepping out of CD Projekt’s shadow, having a new owner and a very on-brand promise: A classic game rescue mission, starting next year.
On paper, it appears that nothing much will change for the 10% of gamers using the GOG app exclusively. Your library will stay as is, the Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 games aren’t going anywhere as far as we know, and you can still download these chunky offline installers like 2005 never left.
The cool thing is behind the scenes, with the classic game rescue mission in full effect. If you do care about game PC game preservation, or, you know, just love owning what you pay for (looking at you, Ubisoft), this shift is a lot bigger than it may seem at first glance. Let’s take it apart, shall we?
GOG’s New Owner Shares the Good Old Games DNA, With a Little More Freedom
As much as we loved the passion and love CD Projekt Red had for GOG and what it stood for, we’re glad the company is taking a step back and focuses on what they’re good at, and that is making very large RPGs. The headline that CD Projekt has sold GOG and its Galaxy platform to Michal Kicinski for roughly $25 million, didn’t come as much as a shock, considering he co-founded both CD Projekt and GOG. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?
Let’s face it, running a niche, preservation-obsessed storefront is a different animal compared to making RPGs, and CDPR has just decided, that it doesn’t fit their grand plan anymore – good. We want them to focus on The Witcher, Cyberpunk, and perhaps a new IP altogether. A little bit like that restaurant who offers Indian, Doner, and Pizza – too much on offer, and you spread yourself thin, become a jack of all trades, so to speak.
For GOG however, this is a good way forward, because under the new ownership they still stay independent, keep their DRM-free, offline installer model, yet still continue to get upcoming CDPR games like The Witcher 4 on day one. A win-win situation, if you ask us, especially since the user probably won’t feel anything of it.
So, before you ask: You don’t lose your games, nor your access, and GOG Galaxy stays optional indeed, as the big shift is simply eternal. GOG can now lean fully into their classic game rescue mission, without worrying about whether it fits a publicly traded publisher’s quarterly expectations. If this isn’t some Cyberpunk “stick it to the corpo swines” attitude, we don’t know what is. Pretty Nova.
GOG’s Preservation Program Calld Classic Game Rescue Mission
GOG’s recent Preservation Program already hinted at where the platform wants to steer towards, and it isn’t just selling dusted-up, digital copies of games you saw your older brother play in 1999. For us, classic game rescue mission sounds more like they’re doing the noble – albeit slightly unglamourous – work needed to keep old PC games actually runnable on modern machines. We said it before, we’ll say it again, not all heroes wear capes.
In essence that can mean a couple of things:
- Negotiating with rights/share holders who barely remember they still own the IP in question
- Hunting down lost source code (or using Nightdive Studios to rebuild around the lack of it)
- Wrapping ancient games in notoriously difficult to program compatibility layers and testing them on modern systems
- Fixing age-old crashes, input issues, and UI/resolution problems, to catapult these games into the 21st centruy, and not just make them historically accurate. Gods, we feel old.
Fun fact, there has been cases where GOG literally had to hire a PI (private investigator) to find an IP holder kind of living off the grid, only to get a forgotten gem of a game back on sale. So, you can expect the classic game rescue mission to go beyond just DOOM and the usual suspects. If the classic game rescue mission is anything like that, we can expect the same kind of dedication too. Fantastic!
And we know what you’re thinking, but to our ears this doesn’t sound like pure marketing fluff – we gather, the audience is way too small and increasingly dwindling for that, sorry to say. They’ve already proven, that they lived up to the task of reviving more classic Japanese games for PC players, so we tend to believe them here too.
The Question of Questions: Why Use GOG Galaxy As a PC Player – Even if you Mostly Use Steam?
If you’re already a GOG regular (like the writer of these lines admittedly is), the good news is kinda simple. Your stuff stays, and the store is leaning even harder into the things that made you use it in the first place. Going forward with the GOG classic game rescue mission won’t impact your experience in any negative way, is what we’re saying here.
Should you be in the majority of using Steam exclusively, this still matters, however. A healthy, independent GOG platform means more chances for obscure classics you still remember from way back when to come back in legal, working form, something that Steam hasn’t always been good at in recent years, we hate to say.
In comparison to other launchers, this also means that it’s a real competition on ownership and pesky DRM, and not just on who throws down the biggest sale, even if Steam is still the G.O.A.T in that respect. Having said that, the backup storefront for games that might get delisted or never showed up on Steam, Uplay & Co, IS GOG – there’s no two ways about it.
PC preservation was never going to be solved by one charity or a dusty museum, especially since everything is digital nowadays – physical sales just aren’t a big thing anymore. In this case, it’s going to be a messy mix of fan projects, archives, emulation, and companies willing to do things the slow, expensive, annoying way. GOG, for all its ups and downs, has been one of the very few stores consistently putting real money and time into that effort.
Now it gets to do that without answering to CD Projekt’s shareholders every quarter. With a founder back at the helm, a clear mission, and that ambitious classic game rescue mission on the horizon, GOG’s next few years could be pretty huge for anyone who thinks games deserve better than disappearing into abandonware limbo – and that, dear readers, is a step in the right direction.
