So… Is this a good thing? Bad thing? Gut reaction says that probably not the greatest for GOG, being detached from a huge publisher like CD Projekt probably isn’t great for a niche marketplace. In their faqs it states that GOG had a strong year financially but they would of course bill it that way. The question about why the new owner did so also just sounded disingenuous.
Interested to see where this goes from here. While I love gog and am a patron, their Linux support leaves a lot to be desired. The sole fact that cloud saves are such a pain to get working has led me to switch back to steam. I hope with these changes they can maybe get some support on Linux.
What it means for you
What does it mean for Red Candle Games?
GoG was the first game platform to release a fully functional, clean, and well rounded experience, enough to get me to send them an unprompted, positive feedback to their devs. I really digged their user-centric approach and feature set. I am hopefully optimistic that their services remain at or better than current. However, it is 2025 (almost 2026) so I’m expecting another shoe to fall, even if all parties have a history of being solid players.
This is an interesting development, for sure - and not one we will be able to accurately gauge the net impact of for a while.
It does feel like CD Project want to move it off their financial documents (P&L, cashflow, balance sheets etc.), while Michael wants to double-down and focus on building out the historical catalog.
Success will really depend on if GOG can remain profitable through lean years without having to ultimately rely on compromising their morals; and whether they will continue to receive support from modern publishers to help fund the more niche projects.
Witcher 4 will be an Epic Games and console exclusive, won‘t it?
So the co-founder of GOG and a co-founder of CDPR saw how GOG was being treated, and acquired it to make it better in theory. I’d love to see how this will go.
As for Linux, I wonder if he already knows about the Linux market. If he does, that’s great, as this is an opportunity for us Linux users.
I’ll be interested as well, but I don’t think that it is a bad thing so to speak. Both CD PROJEKT and Michal have high values when it comes to DRM-Free and open gaming. Gog is mostly supported by it’s backers and game revenue, I don’t think that will change. I don’t see the co-founder who created both the studio and the storefront performing a pump and dump on GoG. If anything we may end up seeing a more heavy push into DRM free areas now that it’s detached from the game studio. Additionally CD Projekt’s reason seems fully valid. It makes sense they would rather focus more on making games than distributing. Distributing games is no easy task, let alone maintaining an entire storefront that most of the corporate world dislikes due to the core principles of the storefront (I.E the push towards support and DRM-Free).
It could be bad but, I’m not going to be super concerned until actual evidence ends up on the ground for it.
The most benefit-of-the-doubt read on this that I’ve got is that, as a publicly traded company, the small margins GOG operates in might not be worth CDPR’s time when they can get higher margins for the same investment elsewhere. Adding some of my own hopium and conjecture, based on the “Why is Michał Kiciński doing this?” section of the FAQ, I hope this means a semi-near future of closing up the last few gaps in GOG’s DRM-free promise.
One of my biggest pet peeves with GOG is how it handles multiplayer. Some games add a warning when multiplayer is only available via LAN and direct IP connections. I need a warning when the opposite is true, because if it relies on GOG Galaxy or some other server, it’s just DRM by another name. To their credit, this warning is usually there, but I’ve come across a few games’ store pages that left it to the imagination, and I’d have to go to the forums link to find someone complaining about it to be sure. Other games, like Doom 2016, just omit multiplayer from the GOG version entirely, because they can’t even fathom how to make multiplayer work in a self-hosted way.
What I’d like to see (I’m a programmer, but I’m not deep in the world of gaming software engineering) is for GOG to provide a drop-in multiplayer server that can serve as a self-hosted version of GOG Galaxy’s multiplayer functionality, so that even if the developer doesn’t see it as financially viable to ensure their game’s multiplayer lives on, GOG can do that for them and make any online game LAN-able. If that’s possible. In my head, it sure seems possible.
The idea sounds like GameSpy back in the day for multiplayer games.
I feel like a lot of understanding behind the financial decisions around online games could happen if we explained to the kids what GameSpy was. Online was never “free”. Before microtransactions and Steam footing the bill, there were ads. But we had self-hosting as a backup plan back then.
I really want them to bring back self-hosting. Multiplayer games don’t need to have a limited lifespan.
I’d love to see legislation that if a game requires servers to play any portion of it, and those servers get taken offline, the source code must be released. Like, they’re already demonstrating that the game doesn’t hold enough value for them by shutting down the servers, so let the community take over.
I would love this as well. I think we should start with must be able to self host servers or use p2p servers though. You can have server software without it being open sourced, and I think that licensing wise it will be easier to pass a p2p requirement than a full open source requirement.
It was free for the consumer, Nintendo just footed the bill.
And that likely stopped making financial sense once online multiplayer operated at larger scales. On PC, GameSpy servers came with ads. Even downloading patches for games meant going to an ad-supported third party web site.
Now that’s very interesting and I really hope it works out for both GOG and the consumer. I definitely prefer not having a storefront directly tied to a specific developer or publisher (Steam/Valve included).
I’m having mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it could be better for gog to break away from a stock listed company that has proved on occasion it still behaves like a stock listed company and likely still do in the future. Also it seems like they’re keeping their values.
On the other, gog has been fairly volatile and hasn’t always returned a profit. Without a big company behind, it may be just a few years of unprofitability away from from going under. More worryingly though, it doesn’t have the same staying power as steam or its infinite funds, so it might get harder to uphold those “no drm, independence” etc policies. Also, given their buyer profiles and how finicky gamers are in general, any single large controversy would also have immense impact.
Time will tell I guess
This seems like a possibly good move to help make GOG concentrate on being even more G. Hard to see any likely downsides. Seems like a natural step in the maturity of both GOG and CDPR. Hopefully other investors see this the same way.
This is… a thing? I really can’t tell whether this is a step towards stability or volatility for GOG. I love the mission, I love having an alternative to stream, but it needs to last. It’s GOG financially viable? Good question, no one really knows.
It’s GOG financially viable? Good question, no one really knows.
All CDPR earnings reports put GOG revenue/profits in its own separate section, so it’s actually very knowable: It hasn’t been losing money in the last few years but its profits are basically negligible compared to the rest of CDPR studio’s profits.
Good thing to get away from CD Projekt, to be honest. I hope GOG thrives more in the future!
The guy is also a cofounder of CD Projekt. Is getting closer, not father
The guy isnt a publicly traded business though.
I want it away from all megacorps. The moment the non “old” games get off the platform, I’ll be inclined to give them money again.
What an unnecessarily exclusionary take.
They can build a new platform to sell current games in a DRM-free situation. Good Old Games should stick specifically to old games.
Why, given “Good Old Games” is no longer the name of the store?
Meh
So your issue is drm free games that are… still currently popular? Oh, the horror. We must shield this child from the passage of time, for they believe ‘things were better when’ and ‘I already took my pills!’
The name of the site is Good Old Games. I have no problem with a separate marketplace for Non-DRM current games. I don’t see a reason to give a large company money - especially in a world where eXoDOS and eXoWin9x exist.
They removed the explicit Good Old Games abbreviation back in 2012. It’s just GOG.com now.
Did you know that the Ronald McDonald House isn’t just one single house?
How do you feel about that?
Good, they can help more people.
But it’s House. Not Houses.
Is this crime forgivable to von majesty of language?
So where are you getting your current (let’s say released in the last decade, just to be generous), legal, AA/AAA, drm-free games from?
The answer ‘nowhere’ means that you have no viable argument.
I have no interest in A/AA/AAA games in the last decade or so. I also truly don’t give a single crap about “legal”. Copywrong should be fought and all information should be made free at all times. I mean, technically I play games that are current, like Luanti, OpenTTD, Battle for Wesnoth, Mindustry, and Endless Sky. So I’m not in the same sphere.
Hell, as I said above, in a world where eXo exists, GOG needs to do a lot more to justify financial investment.
