GOG - 10 Year Journey @ PC Gamer

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PC Gamer interviewed CD Projekt about GOG - Good Old Games:

GOG's 10 year journey to bring old games back to life

An oral history of Good Old Games: How it began, and how they track down classic games and make them work again.

10 years ago, not long after a young CD Projekt had founded a development studio and released The Witcher, the company founded something else: GOG.com. Back then, though, GOG wasn't just GOG. It was Good Old Games, a new digital store aimed at selling only old games. So much has changed about the way we buy and play games in that decade, it's hard to remember that that was, in 2008, a strange idea.

Digital distribution is now normal. DRM-free games are pretty normal, too, and so is selling classic games. But GOG had to be pioneer these concepts as its inexperienced team of upstarts from Eastern Europe built a platform, convinced developers and publishers to join them, learned to become IP rights detectives, and figured out how to make old software run on new hardware.

This is the story of how Good Old Games began, and how GOG today tracks down classic games and makes them work again, in the words of some of GOG's key players.

Good old days

When GOG managing director Piotr Karwowski started working at CD Projekt as a web designer 20 years ago, they faced a serious problem: game piracy in Poland was rife.

Piotr Karwowski: In the early 2000s, before CD Projekt got into game development, we were distributing games in boxes. Piracy in Poland was a big issue, but what were immensely popular were rereleases of classics in a mid-price format, where in one box you could find Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment all for $15, packed with maps. It was all about focusing on value to fight piracy, and also making it hassle free, with no activations so it worked out of the box.

Years later, as digital distribution rose, CD Projekt founders Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński saw potential in using what they'd learned in fighting piracy for something new.
[...]
Thanks henriquejr!

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I love GOG, it's the only place I buy my games from these days. I refuse to have anything to do with Steam or any other forms of DRM.

So if a game is only available on Steam, then I simply refuse to buy it. I've never had a problem with any game I've bought from GOG. They just work!
 
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Yep DRM-Free releases that always work. Just don't like the patching system they use. It's a shame a lot of games will never be released on GOG because its DRM-Free.
 
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I love to replay games from 90s and before GOG it was sometimes hard to make them run. So all thumbs up for that. Unfortunately, in case of new games, the patching system is sometimes real pain in the ass as I found out hard way. Also patches are often later available at GOG then Steam (and Im not talking about difference in hours). That made me stop buying new games at GOG.
 
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GoG made Wizards and Warriors work also Fantasy General. Those were two games that were almost impossible to get running.
 
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Remember that time GOG faked their own shutdown? I tried to find that in the "10 year journey" interview, but I couldn't find it. Guess it was a selective memory journey.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103810-Good-Old-Games-Faked-Shutdown-to-Avoid-Being-Boring

To quote the article about the fake shutdown, "Good Old Games is kind of like an abusive drug dealer. Sure, it may have hurt our feelings, but it also has what we need to get our fix."

Still, after all these years, the good/great far outweighs the bad, and we're all happy to have our favorite drug dealers around.
 
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I really like great old games, and I tend to shop there first long before I consider checking out steam for games. Recently though, in the last year or two, GoG has done something to their website that makes it much harder to use, many of their products, sales and such, don't seem to render for internet explorer. That, or something else is really wrong with the site, but even with that issue, I love their ideology and I'll stick with them.
 
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I really like great old games, and I tend to shop there first long before I consider checking out steam for games. Recently though, in the last year or two, GoG has done something to their website that makes it much harder to use, many of their products, sales and such, don't seem to render for internet explorer. That, or something else is really wrong with the site, but even with that issue, I love their ideology and I'll stick with them.
Many websites are rapidly dropping support for Internet Explorer. IE was replaced with Edge a few years ago and you're supposed to have moved over to that. (Of course, if you're using Win7 or Win8.1, you can't)
 
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Aye, since I'm still using Windows Seven and plan on doing so until the last possible moment, I've stuck with Internet Explorer. I've looked at other browsers, and I almost switched over to Chrome a few weeks ago, but I'm concerned about losing bookmarks, passwords, etc. One day I'll summon the courage and just do it, at least then it will be over and done with!
 
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Aye, since I'm still using Windows Seven and plan on doing so until the last possible moment, I've stuck with Internet Explorer. I've looked at other browsers, and I almost switched over to Chrome a few weeks ago, but I'm concerned about losing bookmarks, passwords, etc. One day I'll summon the courage and just do it, at least then it will be over and done with!


Chrome, Firefox, and Opera all support importing bookmarks from IE. Not sure on passwords.
The more IE falls behind in support the more painful the viewing experience and the increased vulnerability risk.

Come on Carnifex. You can change 😁
 
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Aye, since I'm still using Windows Seven and plan on doing so until the last possible moment, I've stuck with Internet Explorer. I've looked at other browsers, and I almost switched over to Chrome a few weeks ago, but I'm concerned about losing bookmarks, passwords, etc. One day I'll summon the courage and just do it, at least then it will be over and done with!

Same here, although I have Vivaldi here now as well (Vivaldi was made by ex-employees of Opera, but it looks far too modern for my personal taste).

@Wisdom; : Firefox has become looking "too modern" for my taste as well.

It's almost as if all browsers suddenly adopted Bauhaus look like a hiccup.
 
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