GOG Rallies Community Support To Save Gaming’s Lost Classics From Obsolescence

GOG (formerly known as Good Old Games) has been fighting an uphill battle for some time, despite being generally well-received, in a battle to stay relevant amid Steam's unapologetic market dominance. Despite gamers' widespread hatred of DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy protection software, Steam's relatively lax DRM has long been allowed to skirt on by, unlike GOG's true-blue anti-DRM policy. GOG's mission of game preservation also sees the company go to farther extents than Steam will to secure modernized versions of retro titles. An example in recent memory was the releases of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3. It's particularly interesting since Capcom itself showed no interest in preserving the original releases of those games, instead thinking that gamers would only care for the Remake titles and their overhauled, modernized AAA graphics, despite the Resident Evil 3 Remake missing a substantial amount of content compared to the original title.

While one could make a strong argument that games are an art form in their own right, even the developers of those games can wind up neglecting the historical titles that gave us the foundation of what we have today.


In an interview with RPG Site, the CEO of publisher New Blood Interactive, Dave Oshry remarked on GOG's nature as a market underdog as well as the abysmal state of Epic Games Store. As Oshry puts it, "Steam would be for your new games and GOG would be for all your old games, right? Then Steam let anybody put anything on there, and then all of a sudden who needed GOG anymore? [...] The problem is it's still 1 to 5% of the sales on Steam, where it used to be closer to 5 or 10%. [...] Everybody roots for GOG, right? We want GOG to be a great thing, and GOG's great. It's just that I don't have a reason to use GOG or GOG Galaxy instead of Steam. [...] I mean, GOG is great.  I love their preservation efforts and everything they're trying to do, but they need enough people to give a shit, or, how long are they even going to be around?"


Over on X/Twitter, GOG caught wind of these remarks and replied earnestly. "We appreciate Dave's honesty, and he's right about one thing: game preservation only works if people care. [...] The future of preservation is decided by players who give a shit. So buy DRM-free, vote on the Dreamlist, join GOG Patrons. If games matter to you, show it. And let's prove that preservation isn't niche. It's necessary." GOG's rally for support has shown some success, but there is a rightful point of contention with the platform buried in that X/Twitter thread: specifically, the lack of Linux support for the GOG Galaxy launcher. Reliance on Windows is a weakness for GOG versus Steam, and gamers aren't happy about how long GOG has promised but not delivered that Linux support.

The full RPG Site interview also includes some truly hilarious insights about Epic Games Store. Oshry recalls, "When we took over publishing for Blood West, they were like, 'Hey, do you want the Epic Games Store stuff?' I was like, "No, I don't give a shit. What does it sell? Like, five copies a month? They're like, "Not even." [...] It turned out Blood West Steam sales for those two days [free on EGS] actually were, up, like, 200% because it was just free advertising for Blood West. So people saw that Blood West was free on EGS, and they went and bought it on Steam instead, which is hilarious. So, it's not a black hole. It actually advertises for other platforms. That's how bad EGS is."