I hope so. They are all good games.
Thank you!

Yes, Been waiting for The Summoning since this store opened.

Indeed, the OST is amazing on this game.
One of the few I actually leave on playing.

I found a working copy a couple of years back, which i safeguarded with my life. Alas, ground combat was poorly implemented and i could not get the soundtrack to play after the opening song. It was the 1.1 version. I'm curious to see how Gog will submit their offer.

So, it's been two weeks since the announcement, are there any leaks/rumors/anything about the release?

Sorry, I'm just so impatient about that Star General :P (and Dark Legions)

(also really wish to know, if we'll receive both Windows and DOS version of SG, or DOS only)

Matt Chat 504: Oleg and Artem of SNEG

"SNEG is bringing back some of the best CRPGs and strategy games of all time to GOG and other distribution platforms. Gold box, Black box, silver box and more! Oleg and Artem are super fans of the games they're publishing and have ambitious plans to bring back even more games from the golden age!"

I found this to be interesting, especially after earlier this week noticing at the end of a trailer that fantasy general and pacific general where part of the trademark gog text shown at the end.

TL;DR: GOG briefly experimented with buying the publishing rights to various retro games from 2015-2016, an employee there then decided to split off into making his own game preservation company in 2020, taking those IPs with him.

So, a couple of days ago. A press release was dropped revealing that the Dungeons & Dragons "Gold Box" games are coming to Steam in a few weeks.
What makes this unusual is that GOG had already brought these games back in 2015, completely self-published by them.

For those of you who were unaware, this was not their first attempt by buying up the publishing rights for various games. With both Pacific and Fantasy General predating the collection by about 3 months.
It was a rather smart idea at the time, considering the fickle nature of said rights occasionally causing them to fall into the hands of companies with zero interest in the gaming market. Such as the infamous incident where the System Shock IP was inexplicably owned by an Insurance company for several years before Nightdive bought it from them.

They picked up quite a few interesting titles over the coming months, from making the classic RTS title "War Wind" freeware to picking up various Warhammer licensed games.
Though this saga would turn out to be shortlived, as after War Wind and it's sequel were released on August 2016. No further titles were brought out.

So what happened? Looking into the press release gives us a clue.
“Even decades after their original release, the Gold Box games are seen by many as iconic Dungeons & Dragons digital experiences, and they practically defined computer RPGs, ” said Oleg Klapovskiy, Director at SNEG. “Now, I’m overjoyed that we get to fulfill our dream of bringing these RPG gems back to PC gamers on Steam while introducing them to a new audience!”
Oleg Klapovskiy had, according to my research. Joined CD Projekt in August 2008, and was quickly shifted to their then-new GOG division by January. With his tenure lasting all the way into 2020.
Viewing Sneg's list of Steam titles shows that the vast majority of them were previously self-published by GOG. Including both General and War Wind titles.

Looking into trademarks, GOG's trademark for Fantasy General was quietly shifted to SNEG around October-November 2021. Shortly after it was added to Steam.
And viewing the GOG pages for the Gold Box games shows that they were properly updated to add a SNEG copyright.
oMaHMGg.png
I also checked the files for War Wind as it's a free download. and noticed the icon used for the GOG version still exists in the Steam data. (The circle design is typical of titles on there.)
bRgXItE.png

As for when SNEG arrived. It's naturally 2020, their first proper title was an enhanced re-release of "Diggles: The Myth of Fenris" on December 2020. Though a Q&A that was buried in the Gold Box press assets states he was planning it since the start of the year.
In early 2020 a friend of mine, Elena Roor (coming from the games services business), found
herself both on maternity leave and in lockdown. To keep it together, she came up with a side
project where she'd look for games that made her feel nostalgic and were, in her mind, the
“most technically broken” and try to bring them back to life. That game happened to be Diggles:
The Myth of Fenris. Soon after, I started helping Elena as an advisor and investor. One project
led to another and fast forward to Oct 2021 the company shaped to how we know it today with
three of us pushing it forward (Elena, Artem Shchuiko, my ex-colleague from GOG days, and
myself).
Outside of that game, they've also separately revived the Witchaven series, Siege of Avalon, and Blade of Darkness. With the latter two receiving the same fully enhanced treatment that Diggles got.

What's particularly baffling to me is the fact they have zero presence outside of Steam and GOG, you'd think they'd at least have some sort of website or something for info. But no. This is despite the fact they
Are working with a proper PR team, UberStrategist. Which is how i was eventually able to acquire that Q&A.
Those enhanced ports are developed by a decently established porting team, General Arcade.
Even Strangely Compelling Media, a similarly unknown studio that quietly localized ten different Kunio-Kun Famicom games alongside their usual work of localizing more recent games. Has a website and Twitter account.

The steam page for SG still persistently reports May as release month

edit:
forgot to add a source

source : https://famiboards.com/threads/what-on-earth-is-sneg-or-how-gog-com-quietly-dropped-out-of-self-publishing.2331/

General Arcade ... has a nice site btw

makes one ponder how much it would cost to remaster star general :p
i might win the lottery .. who knows.... of course some money would go to the general good ...
or crowd funding

Have hope it's still valid and that tomorrow we'll be pleasantly surprised. I don't remember last time when I waited with such anticipation for GOG release.


Sad, but true. Although the idea itself is magnificent.

Steam release date for the summoning is now "coming soon". I was actually quite hyped to play this again :(

Wonder what is taking so long... Take the game files, slap dosbox on it - about 30 minutes of work. So probably legal problems, can't think of anything else.

edit: or they don't want to steal the spotlight from system shock

Not possible.

Damn, legal problems is very negative scenario :( (not to mention how unprofessional is announcing game's release without having all legal stuff dealt with).

Really have hope that it's either some kind of trivial stuff (like someone did not prepare installers on time) or that it was intentionally postponed to not clash with recent "loud" releases.

Either way, I want them now :P

Maybe GOG worked out some kind of exclusivity deal and they'll release at the start of GOG's summer sale. shrug (I could totally be wrong, just spitballing) GOG has been pushing the SS remake, and of course we just got Dawn of War, and I imagine they wouldn't want all these fairly highly-anticipated titles competing.