When Good Old Games launched in 2008, DRM was the biggest issue for PC gamers. Digital Rights Management throttled video games, causing official, paid games to perform far worse than pirated versions, and it was a whole horrible mess. Good Old Games was founded at CD Projekt's studios in Poland as a store that revived classic games, made them work on modern computers and stripped them of any DRM. And people celebrated.
Over time, the store sold more modern games in addition to classics and abandoned the name in favor of the acronym GOG. Although it retained the no-DRM rule (apart from some controversy), it also somewhat lost its purpose. This year, GOG announced a sort of philosophical rebrandingto focus on one of the bigger issues of 2024: game preservation.
Initially, there's a commitment to a roster of 100 games, which GOG promises to maintain in perpetuity, and the company intends to add more over time. And, even if a company like Blizzard announces that it will remove classic games from its offerings From GOG, the Polish company made it clear that it would continue to support the games regardless. If they stick to it, if the commitment is real, it could set a new standard that other companies might be required to follow. -John Walker
