When Good Old Games launched in 2008, the number one issue on PC games players’ minds was DRM. Digital Rights Management was throttling video games, making official, paid-for games work far worse than pirated versions, and it was a whole, grisly mess. Good Old Games launched from the studios of CD Projekt in Poland as a store that revived classic games, got them to work on modern machines, and freed them of all DRM. And the people celebrated.
As time went on, the store shifted to selling more modern games alongside classics, and dropped the name in favor of its acronym, GOG. While it maintained the no-DRM rule (beyond a couple of controversies), it also somewhat lost its purpose. This year, GOG announced a sort of philosophical rebranding, to focus on one of the bigger issues of 2024: games preservation.
There’s an initial commitment to a list of 100 games, which GOG promises to maintain in perpetuity, and the company intends to add more as time goes on. And, even when a company like Blizzard announces it’s pulling classic games from GOG, the Polish company made clear it would continue to support the games anyway. If they stick to it, if the commitment is for real, this could set a new standard that other companies may feel compelled to follow. – John Walker
