When Good Old Games launched in 2008, the number one issue on PC gamers’ minds was DRM. Digital rights management restricted video games, making official, paid games perform much worse than pirated versions, and a gruesome mess ensued. Good Old Games was launched from CD Projekt studios in Poland as a store that revived classic games, enabled them to work on up-to-date machines and freed them from all DRM protection. And people celebrated.
Over time, the store began selling more up-to-date games alongside classic games and dropped the name in favor of the acronym GOG. While it maintained its no-DRM policy (apart from a few controversies), it also somewhat lost its purpose. This year GOG announced a kind of philosophical rebrandingto focus on one of the most crucial issues of 2024: game storage.
Initially, a list of 100 games was saved, which GOG promises to maintain forever, and over time the company intends to add more. AND, even when a company like Blizzard announces that they are discontinuing classic games from GOG, the Polish company has made it clear that it will continue to support the games anyway. If they stick to it, if the commitment is real, it could set a novel standard that other companies may feel compelled to follow. – John Walker
