Good Old Games, now better known as GOG to PC gamers, has been leading the DRM-free movement for digital distribution platforms for 15 years. In addition, GOG was an early pioneer in videogame preservation, which has become increasingly a hot-button topic for gamers all around the world recently, as more and more classic games become unplayable and, at times, completely unavailable to buy. As such, PC Gamer decided it was high time to catch up with three members of the GOG team to see where this mainstay of PC gaming is right now, as well as how it intends to evolve in the future.
PC Gamer: We know CD Projekt owns GOG, but what was the original vision, and how did it come to be?
Maciej Gołębiewski: CD Projekt is a company that started, actually, not developing games, but distributing them. It had some successes with physical distribution, with localising games in Poland, and creating collector’s editions of classics. I think Baldur’s Gate was the best known one, and the first that it did.
At some point, I think it was around March 2007, GOG’s leaders had a chat about what they saw that’s great about physical retail distribution, and what they were able to do digitally. The idea was to replicate whatever was great about those retail releases, and bring it to a global audience.
On the user side, the vision was super-clear. A simple price point, a full collector’s edition feeling, books, booklets, goodies, soundtrack, hardback, everything that you would normally get with a retail collector’s edition.
You buy a game, the payment is straightforward, the download is super-simple, you buy it, it works, and you don’t need to get into
