GOG.com

• 1. Introduction

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  GOG.com changed hands in December 2025, when CD Projekt sold the store to Michał Kiciński, one of the people who had founded it. CD Projekt is the Polish company behind The Witcher. The store itself sells video games and films from Warsaw, Poland, and its games run on Windows, macOS and Linux. Every one of them arrives without copy protection, so a buyer can install it anywhere, as many times as they like. That promise sounds simple. In practice it demanded years of legal detective work, code repair and public arguments with some of the biggest names in the industry. How did a business born in a country of pirated game markets come to sell old software as a point of principle? What does it take to make a game from the 1990s run on a modern computer? And what happens when a small store takes sides in fights that larger rivals avoid?

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• 2. Piracy Roots

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  Under the Polish People's Republic, copyright laws went largely unenforced, and infringement was rampant across electronic media. After the government changed, buyers kept the same habits. Pirated and bootlegged games were sold in open markets right beside legitimate boxed copies, for a fraction of the price.

  Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński founded CD Projekt in 1994 to sell legitimate foreign games anyway. They knew they could not compete with pirates on price. So they obtained import rights from foreign publishers and localized text and voice lines where possible, often by decompiling the game's code. Each game then shipped with a localized manual and other physical extras, in the hope that the extras would pull buyers away from the copies.

  Baldur's Gate in 1998 became their first major success, selling 18,000 units on its first day in Poland. Its publisher, Interplay, then asked for a similar treatment of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, a console game released in 2001. All of CD Projekt's earlier work had been on personal computers. The company agreed to try a port, but the project fell through before it was finished. The failure showed the team that it could make games of its own. That move eventually brought the rights to The Witcher series, and interest in distribution faded.

  By the 2000s, digital distribution was growing, and so was the use of DRM, software that controls access to a purchased game. Many players resented it. CD Projekt saw a way to reuse its old skills. Reverse engineering could make classic games work on modern systems, and a wide array of language options could add value. Those extras would give players a reason to pay rather than download from pirate sites. In early 2008 the company founded a subsidiary called Good Old Games for exactly this purpose.

  Finding publishers was the first hurdle. Several that the team approached had never heard of CD Projekt. Interplay Entertainment did know its earlier work, and its permission was the first big break. Ubisoft later approached the service about its own older titles. On the 26th of March 2009, GOG.com announced the Ubisoft deal for back-catalogue games, the first DRM-free arrangement with a major publisher. It even covered games available through no other online channel. Once Ubisoft had signed, other publishers became much easier to persuade.

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• 3. The Fake Closure

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  From the 19th to the 22nd of September 2010, visitors to GOG.com found no store at all. The site was disabled, and messages on the website and its Twitter accounts said it had closed. A spokesman insisted the site was not being shut down and promised news about changes. A notice posted on the 20th of September 2010 blamed "business and technical reasons". Industry journalists suspected a link to the DRM-free strategy, partly because of the company's own Twitter messages.

  On the 22nd of September 2010, GOG.com admitted that the shutdown was a marketing hoax, staged as the site came out of beta. Management apologized to anyone who felt deceived or harmed. It explained that a small company with no huge marketing budget could not pass up a chance to create buzz while launching a new version of its website and "bringing back Baldur's Gate to life".

  The site returned on the 23rd of September 2010 with an improved storefront, explained in a webcast. For that presentation, co-founder Marcin Iwiński and managing director Guillaume Rambourg dressed as monks to atone for their sins. Rambourg later judged the relaunch a success, because it reached customers who had never heard of GOG.com.

  The relaunch delivered on its promise. Baldur's Gate returned, together with Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale from Black Isle Studios. None of these had ever been offered through a download service. Atari, Hasbro and other companies had disputed who owned the Dungeons & Dragons-related rights.

  On the 27th of March 2012, Good Old Games announced that it would also carry "AAA" and independent titles. The site was rebranded GOG.com.

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• 4. Rescuing Old Games

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  Before any engineer touches the code of a 1990s game, GOG.com's legal experts must work out who owns it. Very few publishers and developers of the late 1990s and early 2000s kept digital records of their legal paperwork. Many companies were also acquired or dissolved. Tracing the rights can therefore take years. The Strategic Simulations "Gold Box" series was an especially hard case, because that company went through so many acquisitions after the 1990s.

  Players help steer the work. GOG.com lets users request back-catalog games, and it uses that list to spot titles that may need deeper licensing research. Nightdive Studios has joined some of this effort. Nightdive found and acquired the rights to System Shock 2, which had been among the most requested games at GOG.com for years. It has since found and relicensed other older games thought lost to licensing problems.

  Once the rights are settled, the games are pre-patched and restored so they work with newer operating systems and current hardware. Whenever possible, GOG.com tries to acquire the original source code, which can be as hard to find as the legal rights. With the code in hand, the team can apply compatibility fixes directly. It sometimes adds well-established patches made by a game's fan community. It also approaches developers who worked on the title in the past. If no code exists, the team reverse engineers the game. And when recoding is impossible, it packages the game with open-source emulation or compatibility software such as ScummVM and DOSBox.

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• 5. Rules of Ownership

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  A typical older game on GOG.com costs about $5 to $10, with sales held several times a week. Some newer titles cost more. Products can also be given to other people through redeemable gift certificates. The installers are technically independent of the buyer's account. After downloading, a customer may install the software on multiple devices, archive it indefinitely, and mod or patch it. Reselling and sharing are not allowed.

  The store's end-user license says games are "licensed, not sold", and that wording raises questions about what buyers really own. In the European Union, the European Court of Justice held that a copyright holder cannot oppose the resale of digitally sold software, because ownership is transferred. That ruling casts doubt on the "licensed, not sold" formula.

  Buyers also receive extras with many games. These often include the soundtrack, partly in FLAC format, along with wallpapers, avatars and manuals.

  On the 9th of December 2013, GOG.com introduced a money-back guarantee for the first 30 days if a customer faced unresolvable technical problems. On the 26th of February 2020, the policy grew into a full refund up to 30 days after purchase, even if the game had been downloaded, launched and played.

  Starting on the 2nd of April 2015, owners of boxed game keys could claim DRM-free downloads for select games whose original validation systems no longer worked. Examples were the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and the Master of Orion series. By November 2017, more than $1,700,000 of retail game purchases had been redeemed this way.

  Promotions add variety. They range from bundle discounts to riddles, "guess a game from a picture" contests and challenges for the best time on a specific level. Review contests can win a promotion code for a game.

  In June 2025, GOG introduced One-click Mod support. Players who already own the base game can install curated mods, from bug fixes to total conversions. Among the popular mods supported is Skyblivion, which recreates the content of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion inside Skyrim.

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• 6. The Galaxy Client

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  In its June 2014 company update, CD Projekt Red announced that GOG.com would bring a Steam-like client called GOG Galaxy to Windows, Mac and Linux. The client was designed as a storefront, a software delivery tool and a social network. Players could buy games, play them and share them with friends. It also offered an original multiplayer API, so developers could add multiplayer features to the GOG.com versions of their games. The client stayed optional and kept the DRM-free goal.

  An open multiplayer beta began on the 15th of October 2014, accompanied by a giveaway of Alien vs Predator. In July 2015, PC Gamer reviewed the beta favorably. The magazine singled out its focus on user respect, in comparison with Steam. On the 22nd of March 2017, the client added cloud saves for 29 games. The Linux version, once marked as planned, was later described as not a priority. After the Galaxy 2.0 revamp, mentions of future Linux support disappeared from the FAQ.

  In May 2019, GOG announced plans for GOG Galaxy 2.0, a unified launcher for GOG titles and for other services. Those included Steam, Origin, Uplay and the Epic Games Store, and console systems through the Xbox and PlayStation networks. An open API let users write plug-ins. At E3 2019, GOG affirmed that Microsoft was an official partner, promising strong integration with Xbox and Xbox Game Pass titles. A closed beta began in June 2019 and an open beta in December 2019. On the 20th of July 2020, GOG announced official integration with the Epic Games Store.

  A smaller feature came and went. Revealed in June 2016, GOG Connect let people with both GOG.com and Steam accounts claim certain games they already owned on Steam. They could then download the DRM-free version and its bonus items. Not every game qualified, because each publisher had to agree. Once claimed, a game stayed in the library permanently. GOG discontinued the service in January 2023, after years with no new titles offered.

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• 7. Growth and Its Limits

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  In October 2012, GOG.com announced support for OS X. The launch included The Witcher and The Witcher 2, both from CD Projekt Red, whose OS X versions had previously been exclusive to Steam. Players then used a community wishlist to push for native Linux games, and that request gathered close to 15,000 votes before it was marked as in progress. Representatives had said that technical and operational issues made it harder than it seemed. On the 18th of March 2014, GOG.com announced Linux support, aimed at Ubuntu and Linux Mint for the fall. It arrived early, on the 25th of July 2014, with 50 compatible games.

  On the 27th of August 2014, the store began distributing DRM-free films. They came as mp4 downloads and as streaming HTML video that bound users to no particular platform or device. Resolutions included Full HD 1080p, 720p and 576p. The launch catalog was 21 documentaries about Internet culture and gaming. Guillaume Rambourg said the company was in talks with many major studios. Studio representatives liked the idea, but they were reluctant to drop their DRM approach until another major studio moved first.

  Games from big publishers kept arriving. On the 5th of September 2014, Cinemaware's Amiga catalogue began with Defender of the Crown, made possible by Cinemaware's own emulator, Rocklobster. On the 28th of October 2014, Disney Interactive and LucasArts signed on, and six titles came first. They were Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Sam & Max Hit the Road, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. On the 5th of May 2015, Pacific General and Fantasy General appeared with GOG Ltd named as publisher, after the company acquired the copyright. It said it intended to acquire more.

  Bethesda Softworks joined on the 26th of August 2015, with Doom, Quake, Fallout and several classic Elder Scrolls titles. Fallout had previously been sold on GOG by Interplay, before the rights changed hands. In March 2019, Blizzard Entertainment brought Diablo, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition. Diablo: Hellfire followed on the 5th of June 2019. On the 25th of September 2020, three Metal Gear titles and the Konami Collector's Series: Castlevania & Contra were announced. In November 2021, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance was pulled over Konami's licensing issues and has not returned. On the 8th of September 2021, six classic Star Trek titles came back, updated for modern systems.

  Since 2013, indie developers have been able to publish on the site as well. The standard split gives GOG.com 30 percent of each sale. Developers may instead take an upfront payment, after which GOG.com keeps 40 percent until that sum is covered, then returns to 30. Those games are also DRM-free.

  Cloud streaming offered another route. On the 19th of November 2020, Nvidia and GOG announced that GOG.com users could launch Cyberpunk 2077 through GeForce Now. On the 18th of March 2024, GOG announced a partnership with Amazon to bring its library into Amazon Luna. The first wave arrived on the 19th of June, including Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Stardew Valley and Hollow Knight. Players need a Prime or Luna+ subscription but do not have to repurchase games. Supported games bought through Luna are added automatically to the player's GOG library.

  GOG.com does not release sales figures, but developers sometimes do. In an article dated the 11th of November 2011, PC Gamer reported on The Witcher 2. GOG.com sold 40,000 copies, or 16 percent, and Steam sold 200,000, or 80 percent. Direct2Drive, Impulse and GamersGate together sold 10,000, or 4 percent. On the 20th of February 2013, developer Lars Doucet shared three months of revenue for Defender's Quest across six platforms. GOG.com produced 8.5 percent, second only to Steam's 58.6 percent. Doucet wrote that "GOG's star is clearly rising". In early 2021, GOG.com was responsible for around 10 percent of total PC sales of Cyberpunk 2077 and one-third of early PC pre-orders.

  The finances were less cheerful. In February 2019, GOG announced layoffs and the end of its Fair Price Package, which had paid store credit equal to the price gap to buyers in higher-priced regions. Insider sources told Kotaku that GOG was "dangerously close to being in the red", with the market's move toward higher developer revenue shares hurting profitability. By the 1st of September 2021, the catalog numbered over 5200 items. Yet between January and September 2021, GOG lost $1.14 million. Management announced a plan to scale down, concentrating on "a handpicked selection of games" and moving staff to other CD Projekt projects.

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• 8. Principles and Preservation

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  In August 2018, GOG created an anti-DRM campaign called "FCK DRM". Its homepage links to Defective by Design, the EFF, Bandcamp, itch.io, Wikisource, Project Gutenberg and other projects that promote free culture.

  The store's principles did not always hold up in practice. Devotion, from the Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games, had vanished from digital storefronts in early 2019. The game contained content critical of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and Chinese gamers complained in large numbers. Red Candle apologized and promised to remove the content, but it could not bring the game back. When Red Candle and GOG announced that GOG would offer Devotion later in the month, GOG reversed the decision within hours. It said it had reconsidered "after receiving many messages from gamers". Critics accused the store of censorship.

  On the 17th of September 2021, the Game of the Year edition of Hitman reached the storefront. The game could be played offline, yet much of its content required an internet connection. After backlash and heavy review bombing, GOG removed it on the 8th of October. The store said it "shouldn't have released it in its current form".

  On the 13th of November 2024, GOG launched the GOG Preservation Program to keep classic games available and compatible with modern and future systems. It coincided with GOG's 16th anniversary and began with over 100 titles. The program formalized earlier restoration work on titles such as Alpha Protocol, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger and the original Resident Evil trilogy.

  Soon afterward, Blizzard requested the removal of Warcraft 1+2, two games on the program's list. GOG customers aimed their anger at Blizzard, since many felt the decision defied the program's goals. In January 2025, GOG announced a partnership with the European Federation of Video Game Archives, Museums, and Preservation. That month it also unveiled the Dreamlist, a feature that lets players prompt publishers and rights owners to release their classic games on the storefront.

  In August 2025, GOG launched the Freedom To Buy initiative. Steam and itch.io had removed games under pressure from the payment processors Visa and Mastercard. Working with other publishers, GOG made a bundle of 13 games with adult content free for 48 hours. It described the move as "taking a stand against the quiet erasure of creative works from digital shelves."

  Later that year, Valve refused without explanation to publish the horror game Horses by Santa Ragione on Steam. GOG said, "We've always believed that players should be able to choose the experiences that speak to them." With the studio at "high risk" of closure, GOG featured the game prominently and opened pre-orders to "support the Santa Ragione studio in this difficult time". Looking ahead, GOG says it intends to focus more on preservation, while continuing its support for DRM-free games.

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