GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder: What it means for you
GOG
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We believe the games that shaped us deserve to stay alive: easy to find, buy, download, and play forever. But time is annoyingly good at erasing them. Rights get tangled, compatibility breaks, builds disappear, and a nostalgic evening often turns into a troubleshooting session. That’s the difference between “I’m playing today” (the game lives on) and “I’ll play someday” (the game dies).
As Michał put it: “GOG stands for freedom, independence, and genuine control.”
the vision was simple: bring classic games back to players, and make sure that once you buy a game, it truly belongs to you, forever. In a market increasingly defined by mandatory clients and closed ecosystems, that philosophy feels more relevant than ever.
This new chapter is about doubling down on that vision. We want to do more to preserve the classics of the past, celebrate standout games of today, and help shape the classics of tomorrow, including new games with real retro spirit.
fuck yeah \o/
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We believe the games that shaped us deserve to stay alive: easy to find, buy, download, and play forever. But time is annoyingly good at erasing them. Rights get tangled, compatibility breaks, builds disappear, and a nostalgic evening often turns into a troubleshooting session. That’s the difference between “I’m playing today” (the game lives on) and “I’ll play someday” (the game dies).
As Michał put it: “GOG stands for freedom, independence, and genuine control.”
the vision was simple: bring classic games back to players, and make sure that once you buy a game, it truly belongs to you, forever. In a market increasingly defined by mandatory clients and closed ecosystems, that philosophy feels more relevant than ever.
This new chapter is about doubling down on that vision. We want to do more to preserve the classics of the past, celebrate standout games of today, and help shape the classics of tomorrow, including new games with real retro spirit.
fuck yeah \o/
Not sure what this will mean in the long run, but my immediate reaction is positive. GOG has had taken steps towards enshittification, and if Michał can put it back on track, well, that's great. We'll have to watch and wait.
DRM free, forever.
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Not sure what this will mean in the long run, but my immediate reaction is positive. GOG has had taken steps towards enshittification, and if Michał can put it back on track, well, that's great. We'll have to watch and wait.
DRM free, forever.
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We believe the games that shaped us deserve to stay alive: easy to find, buy, download, and play forever. But time is annoyingly good at erasing them. Rights get tangled, compatibility breaks, builds disappear, and a nostalgic evening often turns into a troubleshooting session. That’s the difference between “I’m playing today” (the game lives on) and “I’ll play someday” (the game dies).
As Michał put it: “GOG stands for freedom, independence, and genuine control.”
the vision was simple: bring classic games back to players, and make sure that once you buy a game, it truly belongs to you, forever. In a market increasingly defined by mandatory clients and closed ecosystems, that philosophy feels more relevant than ever.
This new chapter is about doubling down on that vision. We want to do more to preserve the classics of the past, celebrate standout games of today, and help shape the classics of tomorrow, including new games with real retro spirit.
fuck yeah \o/
This speaks ill of CD Projekt, honestly.
Unloading a profitable game marketplace? A one-time payout instead of consistent returns?
This sounds like a move to please shareholders. Shareholders only care about short-term.
It's hard to trust CS Projekt as a game company. But it's good for GOG.
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This speaks ill of CD Projekt, honestly.
Unloading a profitable game marketplace? A one-time payout instead of consistent returns?
This sounds like a move to please shareholders. Shareholders only care about short-term.
It's hard to trust CS Projekt as a game company. But it's good for GOG.
Are they profitable? I thought it was super weird that a game marketplace has been asking me for donations.
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There has been a slow loosening of the "DRM Free" ideal. Off the top of my head, a few years ago there was the Hitman controversy, where a game was released that the community saw as having DRM. There are other games that may have DRM also, depending on your tolerance. Oh, and I think a Witcher game required a separate CDPR account for some extra skins.
GOG has also been pushing their Galaxy client hard for a few years. It's still optional, but offline installers are relegated to second class status, and they want you to download them with Galaxy also.
Honestly though, you'll have better luck finding info if you browse the GOG Forum. The users are a miserable and whiny bunch, but that's also because they see GOG trying to become Steam and are afraid to lose the one good store left. (Well, Zoom Platform may be ok also.) And let's be clear, I think GOG is still the go to shop for DRM Free games, and they haven't completely abandoned that - yet. This change in ownership may actually be a boon that protects it from caving to shareholder delusions of competing with Steam while abandoning their main selling point.
GOG is still good, but we must remain vigilant.
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Are they profitable? I thought it was super weird that a game marketplace has been asking me for donations.
Per Michal Kicinski on the GOG forums:
Please also be assured that financially GOG is very stable, and I personally have a quite extensive financial safety net in case of any needs. So while GOG is no longer part of a very big corporation (which actually has some pros too ;-)), it is very safe financially. There is really no need to back up your collections. If such a disaster would ever even theoretically happen, you would be clearly informed well in advance — but honestly, I cannot see any realistic scenario where this kind of danger would appear.
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Per Michal Kicinski on the GOG forums:
Please also be assured that financially GOG is very stable, and I personally have a quite extensive financial safety net in case of any needs. So while GOG is no longer part of a very big corporation (which actually has some pros too ;-)), it is very safe financially. There is really no need to back up your collections. If such a disaster would ever even theoretically happen, you would be clearly informed well in advance — but honestly, I cannot see any realistic scenario where this kind of danger would appear.
I might be stupid, but what’s the point of downloading offline installers. Isn’t a game installed through Heroic or Gog Galaxy playable offline, which would mean it would still be useable if GOG went bankrupt?
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I might be stupid, but what’s the point of downloading offline installers. Isn’t a game installed through Heroic or Gog Galaxy playable offline, which would mean it would still be useable if GOG went bankrupt?
Yeah, but good luck reinstalling it on your next computer. Having the installer ensures easy installation in various future scenarios.
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I might be stupid, but what’s the point of downloading offline installers. Isn’t a game installed through Heroic or Gog Galaxy playable offline, which would mean it would still be useable if GOG went bankrupt?
Backup. If you lose your Internet connection or GOG goes tits up, you don't lose access to your installers. Or maybe you buy a new computer or have a hardware failure etc. The principle is that you bought the game and there should be no artificial restrictions as to how many times you choose to install it on your computers, which is greatly aided by having the actual installers.
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Yeah, but good luck reinstalling it on your next computer. Having the installer ensures easy installation in various future scenarios.
Through Heroic I think you can just import an already installed game you have on an external hard drive. Wouldn’t this allow you to use your game on every new computer you get?
The downloads are really slow through Heroic, so I’d prefer not having to download offline installers on top of it😅
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Through Heroic I think you can just import an already installed game you have on an external hard drive. Wouldn’t this allow you to use your game on every new computer you get?
The downloads are really slow through Heroic, so I’d prefer not having to download offline installers on top of it😅
Some games require more than just the files on disk, at least with older games, they set some properties in the registry or some such. How gog or heroic get around it I don't know, but ah actual installer is guaranteed to give the same result every time.
For most people with stable internet and using the launcher this isn't really an issue, but I imagine someone rural, on the ISS, part of the Atlantis expedition, or what have you, would enjoy to have a surefire way of getting their heroes 3 up and running
Not a use case for everyone, but for some it's invaluable.
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I might be stupid, but what’s the point of downloading offline installers. Isn’t a game installed through Heroic or Gog Galaxy playable offline, which would mean it would still be useable if GOG went bankrupt?
Well, I don't really see a point in having to download and install another program just to download and install the program I actually want to install... also, I hate launchers.
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Through Heroic I think you can just import an already installed game you have on an external hard drive. Wouldn’t this allow you to use your game on every new computer you get?
The downloads are really slow through Heroic, so I’d prefer not having to download offline installers on top of it😅
What do you consider slow? I just installed Cyberpunk today and maxed out my internet connection at 50 MB/s
Assuming you kept all your games installed, yes you could probably transfer them over to another system. But do you really keep all your games installed at all times? I know many people have more games in their library than their storage can handle.
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A case like this takes money and years of efforts. I don't think any indie dev would be willing to spend that much, especially knowing Valve can afford incredible lawyers. The evidence would have to be really convincing for this to even be worth risking. Those messages not being accurate could also make the plaintiffs liable for lying under oath.
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I will admit that I foolishly believed someone else's summation on the situation; that sourced report, assuming the emails are real, is pretty damning. Notably the email correspondence between publishers/developers and Valve does not mention any official policy, but without additional context comes off as threatening... multiple examples of punishment and out right removal from the store, wow.
And incidents as recent as 2022. I would have figured the older examples would be there because Valve was a lot more blatantly corrupt when they were first forcing the Steam client on consumers. People tend not to bring up when Valve was buying exclusivity of already released retail CD games and taking them off shelves to force Steam exclusivity. Wonder why its taken this long to come out in a court case? Its not like there isn't a long, recent history of indie devs yelling publicly on the internet about the dumb shit Valve puts them through.
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Oh, I got the Alone in the Dark trilogy the other day yeah and I don't think I ever got a free game on GOG before. But I'm pretty sure I unsubscribed from their newsletter when they sent the email this Thursday. I did it again, I hope it works this time, else gonna have to contact support.
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when you accept a free game on GoG you agree to join their newsletter. What I did after resubscribing every time I got a free game is just make a rule in my email client to delete them before I see them
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So I have a GOG acc been a few years and unsubscribing was the first thing I did and they never bothered me, and out of nowhere the other day I received some newsletter about promotions and shit (not even stuff on my Wishlist) and I figured it's some reset with new ownership or whatever, I received an email about new policies a few days prior talking about how they are not connected to CDPR anymore and so... anyway, I unsubscribed, and made sure every notification was turned off, and just now I received another newsletter email...
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One developer? The Wolfire case contains dozens of those messages to various developers, irrespective of Steam key use. See page 160 here. The way Valve goes about it is also not contradicted by you pointing out there are lower prices. For one, they say they expect price parity soon, not immediately. Secondly, they don't and can't enforce that rule automatically, so there are always instances they don't see. As seen in those messages from court, sometimes their response is to restrict the games' visibility on the store, which is not something a platform like ITAD can track.
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**Telling developers that they can't have bigger discounts on other store fronts is an unsubstantiated claim by one developer. The official policy has to do with discounting Steam keys, ie selling a Steam game for less than on the Steam store, while keeping all profits and taking advantage of Steams features.
If general sales were actually being restricted by Steam, it would have been made immediately obvious with sites like isthereanydeal. Such a site would have no reason to exist if the Steam store would always have the best discounts due to forced store policy.
*EDIT: Was gonna strike through this text, can't get formatting to work. See below comment by Rose@lemmy.zip
"Overwhelmingly positive" please spend at least 5 minutes reading the GOG general discussion forums and get back to me. GOG is constantly being criticized by their main user base for how poorly they run their store and their nonsensical business decisions. I don't think this is a bad thing tbh; its a better situation than the Steam fanboys being creepy boot lickers. But I would not describe GOGs most adamant supports being universally "positive" about the state of the store and company.
The general customer base of GOG does not care about the Galaxy 2.0 client, or GOGs collaboration with Amazon Luna for streaming owned titles. I don't know what other "good features" you could be referring to. GOG is barebones, but competent, in the world of digital store fronts/game launchers. But obviously being competent is not enough when dealing with an entrenched monopoly.
Most gamers do not care about DRM. This is the same market that is suffering from enshittification at an abnormal rate. This market has already long normalized things like gambling mechanics advertised towards children, or installing spyware for the sole purpose of stopping cheaters. Outside of the bubble of online discussions, the target audience does not think about these things and will buy whatever slop is put in front of them. Clearly the people who buy Denuvo releases at launch on Steam do not feel any reason to buy games on GOG specifically. And judging by public sales/player data, that's a lot of people.
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I'd say GOG's position only proves the point of Epic and the ongoing class action lawsuits against Valve. Steam is deeply entrenched in the market and uses shady tactics like telling developers not to sell games for less outside Steam. You'd think offering good features and better practices would help, but it has not. Gamers are overwhelmingly positive about GOG, but most feel tied to Steam, and only a handful buy from GOG. It's no wonder Epic prioritized exclusives.
