Good Old Games (GOG)

[icycalm]

GOG has been making moves to give Steam a proper fight recently, to coincide with their ten-year anniversary celebrations.



-First, a few months back they FINALLY introduced public profiles after a fucking DECADE of not having them: https://www.gog.com/news/introducing_gog_profiles (Public profiles is why I and every other cool gamer will rather pay DOUBLE for a Steam release than any other release, and still no one understands this.)

-Then, they announced their stupid new Witcher side-game as exclusive to their store: https://www.gog.com/news/preorder_thron ... cher_tales Maybe it's not stupid, but withholding ONE of your games only from Steam—when your fucking company has become RICH by selling on Steam FOR A FUCKING DECADE—seems like a super-dickish move to me, so I will maintain that their new game is crappy until I see evidence to the contrary, because I am annoyed with them. (If I was Gaben I'd kick them out of my store for this—which would be a bad business move, I am sure, but I wouldn't care.)

And finally,

-They put out a sweet deal of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Battle Chasers: Nightwar [ > ] and Shadows Tactics: Blades of the Shogun for €21.59: https://www.gog.com/game/collection_iii Great deal, but I already have two of those games on Steam, and access to the third through the CULT Family (more on which soon), so I don't care. And like I said, I would gladly pay double or triple or quadruple that to have those games listed in my Steam profile along with everything else. But I understand why others might prefer saving a bunch of money to building a cool profile, so by all means if you fall into that camp jump in. Two of them are legit great games, and Battle Chasers, of which I've played a couple hours, is pretty good too, and quite beautiful, so you won't be disappointed.


Back to the subject of GOG, as far as I am concerned, GOG is good for two things:

1. The old games they restore to working condition on new systems and sell for reasonable prices,

and

2. The lack of the sea of rubbish that can be found on Steam, and which must be waded through to do anything on that store.

So I only use it for old games that I can't get on Steam. If there is even the slightest chance that an old game will appear on Steam, I hold off from buying it on GOG, and I will keep doing this until GOG's social/profile features and game library rival Steam's—something which, at the rate they're going, I calculate will happen some decades after I am dead, if ever. So I won't be switching primary stores any time soon, but the rest of you can suit yourselves. It's all good as long as we are all playing good games and giving the developers their due.

[earthboundtrev]

GOG recently announced the GOG Preservation Program: https://x.com/GOGcom/status/1856698605563793789

I've pasted the full announcement that they posted on X below:

With the celebrations of GOG’s 16th Anniversary, we are thrilled to announce our new initiative.

We’re launching the GOG Preservation Program – an official stamp on classic games that GOG has improved, with a commitment of our own resources to ensure their compatibility with modern systems and make them as enjoyable to play as possible.

This initiative was created to make games live forever and once again bring the utmost attention to what the center of our work has been for the last 16 years: video game preservation.

We begin with the re-release of 100 classic games from our catalog with updated, improved, or quality-tested builds, including masterpieces like Heroes of Might and Magic® 3, Resident Evil, and Diablo+Hellfire.

Visit our website dedicated to the Program to learn more: https://bit.ly/PreservationProgram

If you’d like to read more about the initiative right here, please join us in the comment thread below.

One of our core missions from the very beginning was to preserve video games. For over a decade and a half, this mission has been our driving force. However, 2024 has made it clearer than ever just how vital this initiative is—and how crucial our role is in its continuation, as shown by the restoration of Alpha Protocol and the original Resident Evil trilogy.

Moreover, The Video Game History Foundation has recently shared that 87% of games created before 2010 are inaccessible today. This is something that we cannot accept, and with the help of the gaming community, we are set on getting that number down to zero.

The GOG Preservation Program is how we’ll achieve that. The GOG store identifies games that are part of the Preservation Program with a dedicated stamp. This stamp ensures that those games will run on your PC hassle-free, and you can enjoy them just as much as you did the first time you played them.

These are not empty words – you can understand GOG's work on each game by looking at its Preservation Log.

Expect more and more games to join the GOG Preservation Program, both from our existing catalog and new classic additions.

We’ve made great efforts to make it happen, and we truly believe that with the Program, we can fight the dire situation of video games becoming inaccessible and keep them alive forever.

Your opinion and feedback are invaluable to us. So please share your thoughts.

And lastly – thank you; your support and love for games make everything possible.

There was announcement video posted on their announcement post on X, but they also posted it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IetvbdoeIhg



I'm glad that GOG is working towards preserving as many games as they can. With Sega recently deciding to remove a ton of classics from its catalogue on Steam with what appears like a whim having another platform that is operating with the opposite approach with at least some of its catalogue is a good thing.