Posted April 18, 2025
This is the type of news I like to see. Resources going to game preservation rather than to Galaxy.
rjbuffchix
Put Galaxy behind a paywall
Registered: Jun 2017
From United States
Swedrami
New User
Registered: Jul 2018
From Germany
Posted April 29, 2025
Bartosz Kwietniewski&Marcin Paczyński on the evolution of GOG | Deep Dive
"In this special Deep Dive bonus interview, Nightdive's Locke Vincent and Larry Kuperman sit down with Bartosz Kwietniewski (Head of Business Development) and Marcin Paczyński (Senior Business Development Manager) at GOG.com to explore Nightdive's relationship with GOG, how GOG has grown and evolved over the years, the importance of game preservation, and more!"
0:00 - Intro
2:03 - Nightdive Studios origin story
4:50 - GOG is more than just a storefront
8:14 - Preservation with no source code
9:48 - Why is it important to keep games DRM-free?
13:57 - Was it hard to convince big publishers to use GOG?
15:37 - System Shock 2 - the Mount Everest of games
17:25 - Success comes through friendships and help
19:16 - Advice for people trying to release a game
21:10 - How to submit your game
21:52 - Encouragement for new developers
23:56 - How to find those 'White Whale' games
26:35 - Why GOG Galaxy is the best way to view your collection
29:30 - Final thoughts and shoutouts
"In this special Deep Dive bonus interview, Nightdive's Locke Vincent and Larry Kuperman sit down with Bartosz Kwietniewski (Head of Business Development) and Marcin Paczyński (Senior Business Development Manager) at GOG.com to explore Nightdive's relationship with GOG, how GOG has grown and evolved over the years, the importance of game preservation, and more!"
0:00 - Intro
2:03 - Nightdive Studios origin story
4:50 - GOG is more than just a storefront
8:14 - Preservation with no source code
9:48 - Why is it important to keep games DRM-free?
13:57 - Was it hard to convince big publishers to use GOG?
15:37 - System Shock 2 - the Mount Everest of games
17:25 - Success comes through friendships and help
19:16 - Advice for people trying to release a game
21:10 - How to submit your game
21:52 - Encouragement for new developers
23:56 - How to find those 'White Whale' games
26:35 - Why GOG Galaxy is the best way to view your collection
29:30 - Final thoughts and shoutouts
Post edited April 29, 2025 by Swedrami
Swedrami
New User
Registered: Jul 2018
From Germany
Posted April 29, 2025
high rated
"Larry Kuperman: ...Nightdive is planning on adding 5 titles over the next several months onto GOG.com, so be prepared for that."
Swedrami
New User
Registered: Jul 2018
From Germany
Posted May 23, 2025
Interview with GRYOnline.pl at this year's Digital Dragons conference.
In Polski, but the auto-generated captions in your preferred choice of tongue should be sufficient to get the gist/most of it.
In Polski, but the auto-generated captions in your preferred choice of tongue should be sufficient to get the gist/most of it.
Cavalary
RIP GoodOldGOG:DRMfree,one price,goodies,community
Registered: May 2011
From Romania
Posted June 05, 2025
GDC interview about the Preservation Program
"GOG engineers are working hard behind the scenes to solve compatibility bugs on every game run through the program using a custom DirectX wrapper to ensure a game released for MS-DOS will work on all future versions of Windows by translating the game purely to DirectX instead of Vulkan, the format used by XVK. Using the wrapper also allows GOG engineers to solve compatibility errors by fixing the wrapper itself, instead of making updates game-by-game.
As long as Microsoft maintains support for DirectX, all games that possess the wrapper will be backward compatible. (Mac and Linux support is hopefully on the way).
Developing and maintaining that wrapper costs money, with 15 years of development already invested in its functionality. Paczyński said that it was only early last year that deploying it on a large scale became commercially feasible, thanks to tooling advancements and sufficient revenue through GOG."
[...]
The Preservation Program came to life after the team at GOG had two major assumptions upended. First, they assumed the majority of games sold on GOG were fully compatible with modern machines.
Nope. Only thirty percent were fully up-to-par. Players were purchasing classic games and just not reporting any issues if they ran into a compatibility error.
Second, they assumed the public—and publishers listing games on the platform—knew that GOG was maintaining about 4,000 of the 11,000 games on the marketplace.
Nope. They did market research and found people had zero idea about their hard work. Everyone thought the games it worked on were being maintained by the original developers.
[...]
Publishers have also warmed up to this pitch since GOG doesn't charge any extra money for this maintenance. It's funded by the storefront fees taken from every game purchase. It's not "free," but it's not a service developers have to budget for.
[...]
If a game is sold on Steam and sold on GOG, the version sold on Steam won't have the compatibility improvements made possible by the DirectX wrapper.
It's this process that Paczyński believes makes true preservation possible. "Preservation is not only about you having a physical copy somewhere in the closet. It's about keeping those games available and maintaining them. And because maintenance is a continuous process. It never ends."
With funding for video game preservation already tenuous, GOG's commercial venture is what's making that continuous process possible.
[...]
Paczyński said GOG is looking at methods for preserving classic mods.
[...]
Paczyński sees game preservation as a commercial process—one that benefits GOG, publishers, and the nonprofit archival community alike."
"GOG engineers are working hard behind the scenes to solve compatibility bugs on every game run through the program using a custom DirectX wrapper to ensure a game released for MS-DOS will work on all future versions of Windows by translating the game purely to DirectX instead of Vulkan, the format used by XVK. Using the wrapper also allows GOG engineers to solve compatibility errors by fixing the wrapper itself, instead of making updates game-by-game.
As long as Microsoft maintains support for DirectX, all games that possess the wrapper will be backward compatible. (Mac and Linux support is hopefully on the way).
Developing and maintaining that wrapper costs money, with 15 years of development already invested in its functionality. Paczyński said that it was only early last year that deploying it on a large scale became commercially feasible, thanks to tooling advancements and sufficient revenue through GOG."
[...]
The Preservation Program came to life after the team at GOG had two major assumptions upended. First, they assumed the majority of games sold on GOG were fully compatible with modern machines.
Nope. Only thirty percent were fully up-to-par. Players were purchasing classic games and just not reporting any issues if they ran into a compatibility error.
Second, they assumed the public—and publishers listing games on the platform—knew that GOG was maintaining about 4,000 of the 11,000 games on the marketplace.
Nope. They did market research and found people had zero idea about their hard work. Everyone thought the games it worked on were being maintained by the original developers.
[...]
Publishers have also warmed up to this pitch since GOG doesn't charge any extra money for this maintenance. It's funded by the storefront fees taken from every game purchase. It's not "free," but it's not a service developers have to budget for.
[...]
If a game is sold on Steam and sold on GOG, the version sold on Steam won't have the compatibility improvements made possible by the DirectX wrapper.
It's this process that Paczyński believes makes true preservation possible. "Preservation is not only about you having a physical copy somewhere in the closet. It's about keeping those games available and maintaining them. And because maintenance is a continuous process. It never ends."
With funding for video game preservation already tenuous, GOG's commercial venture is what's making that continuous process possible.
[...]
Paczyński said GOG is looking at methods for preserving classic mods.
[...]
Paczyński sees game preservation as a commercial process—one that benefits GOG, publishers, and the nonprofit archival community alike."
Provide_A_Username
Demo Mode. (In Sound Mind)
Registered: May 2023
From United States
Posted June 05, 2025
"GOG engineers are working hard behind the scenes to solve compatibility bugs on every game run through the program using a custom DirectX wrapper to ensure a game released for MS-DOS will work on all future versions of Windows by translating the game purely to DirectX instead of Vulkan, the format used by XVK. Using the wrapper also allows GOG engineers to solve compatibility errors by fixing the wrapper itself, instead of making updates game-by-game.
As long as Microsoft maintains support for DirectX, all games that possess the wrapper will be backward compatible. (Mac and Linux support is hopefully on the way).
Developing and maintaining that wrapper costs money, with 15 years of development already invested in its functionality. Paczyński said that it was only early last year that deploying it on a large scale became commercially feasible, thanks to tooling advancements and sufficient revenue through GOG."
[...]
The Preservation Program came to life after the team at GOG had two major assumptions upended. First, they assumed the majority of games sold on GOG were fully compatible with modern machines.
Nope. Only thirty percent were fully up-to-par. Players were purchasing classic games and just not reporting any issues if they ran into a compatibility error.
Second, they assumed the public—and publishers listing games on the platform—knew that GOG was maintaining about 4,000 of the 11,000 games on the marketplace.
Nope. They did market research and found people had zero idea about their hard work. Everyone thought the games it worked on were being maintained by the original developers.
[...]
Publishers have also warmed up to this pitch since GOG doesn't charge any extra money for this maintenance. It's funded by the storefront fees taken from every game purchase. It's not "free," but it's not a service developers have to budget for.
[...]
If a game is sold on Steam and sold on GOG, the version sold on Steam won't have the compatibility improvements made possible by the DirectX wrapper.
It's this process that Paczyński believes makes true preservation possible. "Preservation is not only about you having a physical copy somewhere in the closet. It's about keeping those games available and maintaining them. And because maintenance is a continuous process. It never ends."
With funding for video game preservation already tenuous, GOG's commercial venture is what's making that continuous process possible.
[...]
Paczyński said GOG is looking at methods for preserving classic mods.
[...]
Paczyński sees game preservation as a commercial process—one that benefits GOG, publishers, and the nonprofit archival community alike."
"fully compatible with modern machines. Nope. Only thirty percent were fully up-to-par."
If that is true and they manage "4,000 of the 11,000 games on the marketplace," why did it take them so long to realize it? And why do they refer to modern machines instead of the latest Windows version? If tomorrow Microsoft decides to move to the Apple silicon architecture, does that imply GOG will be responsible for ensuring all my games run on that architecture? Then let's not worry about quantum computing at all!
By the way, will they ever officially take responsibility for Linux and Mac? For the latter, there is already a precedent of architecture change and as far as I know, they simply haven't done anything.
"GOG was maintaining about 4,000 of the 11,000 games on the marketplace"
Seriously? What legal basis grants them such a privilege? So I can demand the same from Amazon, Google, Apple, and other online stores. That would indeed be a milestone: many apps and games lost over the past 20 years of online shopping due to incompatibilities "with modern machines" for which no one took responsibility.
"If a game is sold on Steam and sold on GOG, the version sold on Steam won't have the compatibility improvements made possible by the DirectX wrapper."
I hope that is the case. Otherwise, they are indirectly working for free for the giant Steam. We'll see.
AB2012
Registered: Sep 2014
From United Kingdom
Posted June 05, 2025
high rated
I love what GOG are doing but it's probably best to keep "only we have the fixes" claims a bit more honest - a lot of old games do get GOG-style compatibility patches on other platforms. Real-world example - Download the Steam version of System Shock 2, and inside the game folder there's a file named "SS2 community fixes.txt" whose first line reads "This is the full list of all the community fixes that were applied to the GOG/steam build of SS2." The game folder also includes cam_ext.cfg and \OSM\squirrel.osm files (which are config / scripting files specific to the NewDark community patch), and the game is clearly running on a new upgraded DX9 renderer vs the original DX7. And to give credit where it's due, all these NewDark (and predecessors T2Fix / Tafferpatcher) fixes were created by the TTGL (Thief / SS2) community modding forum way back in 2010. That GOG & Steam have been allowed to pre-integrate such fixes is great for the average person, but let's not keep "whitewashing" out the names of the people (community projects) who've actually done 99% of the compatibility patching work there for which middleman digital resellers often then just 'borrow' and monetize...
Post edited June 05, 2025 by AB2012
Swedrami
New User
Registered: Jul 2018
From Germany
Posted June 06, 2025
high rated
Interview with Gaming Bible
"Before I leave the GOG offices, Marcin touches on another positive function of their work. He explains how GOG can take a franchise and become a test bed for publishers, seeing whether there is enough discussion to develop a modern installment. “There are things like that happening right now, but I cannot talk about it,” laughs Marcin, though he does reveal that publishers keep a close eye on how their older games perform on GOG.
“[Publishers] could see the recent comments that people make about these games. They could see if the mechanics are still relevant. They could see how strong the community is. And also talk to them. And then if there's an active, alive community, it's much easier to market [a new game] and sell in an already known franchise."
"Before I leave the GOG offices, Marcin touches on another positive function of their work. He explains how GOG can take a franchise and become a test bed for publishers, seeing whether there is enough discussion to develop a modern installment. “There are things like that happening right now, but I cannot talk about it,” laughs Marcin, though he does reveal that publishers keep a close eye on how their older games perform on GOG.
“[Publishers] could see the recent comments that people make about these games. They could see if the mechanics are still relevant. They could see how strong the community is. And also talk to them. And then if there's an active, alive community, it's much easier to market [a new game] and sell in an already known franchise."
Swedrami
New User
Registered: Jul 2018
From Germany
Posted June 06, 2025
high rated
Part II, from yesterday.
"Marcin notes, however, that publishers can benefit greatly from taking the risk, and he explains that very recently, a GOG release surprised a publisher so much that they reconsidered the reception of the franchise - though he didn’t want to name names.
“This was last year, for one of our big, big classic releases,” he says. “There was a situation in which the game already had a remaster, and we wanted to release the classic version of it. It was not easy to convince [the publisher] that, ‘hey guys, this game has value.’” The company assumed that because the remaster was already out there, nobody would care. Marcin continues, “We finally released the game on GOG, it was massively covered by the media. The sales were great. The reception absolutely amazing. This caused a shift in the publisher, and this allowed us to open many more doors to projects that we are currently working on to bring more classic games back.”
While Marcin doesn’t want to say who the publisher is, I’d have to think it’s likely Capcom, seeing as they’re one of the bigger publishers GOG has dealt with, and the original releases of early Resident Evil games have done very well on the storefront. Those games, in their original state, evoke a very different emotion in players as remasters and remakes, and nostalgia for those moments is powerful. It’s perhaps key to the business that GOG does."
"Marcin notes, however, that publishers can benefit greatly from taking the risk, and he explains that very recently, a GOG release surprised a publisher so much that they reconsidered the reception of the franchise - though he didn’t want to name names.
“This was last year, for one of our big, big classic releases,” he says. “There was a situation in which the game already had a remaster, and we wanted to release the classic version of it. It was not easy to convince [the publisher] that, ‘hey guys, this game has value.’” The company assumed that because the remaster was already out there, nobody would care. Marcin continues, “We finally released the game on GOG, it was massively covered by the media. The sales were great. The reception absolutely amazing. This caused a shift in the publisher, and this allowed us to open many more doors to projects that we are currently working on to bring more classic games back.”
While Marcin doesn’t want to say who the publisher is, I’d have to think it’s likely Capcom, seeing as they’re one of the bigger publishers GOG has dealt with, and the original releases of early Resident Evil games have done very well on the storefront. Those games, in their original state, evoke a very different emotion in players as remasters and remakes, and nostalgia for those moments is powerful. It’s perhaps key to the business that GOG does."
Post edited June 06, 2025 by Swedrami
JomVanFliet
New User
Registered: Dec 2023
From Belgium
Posted June 07, 2025
Considering that Capcom most of the time displays rather disproportionate sales expectations, the classic Resident Evil re-releases must have done more than decent numbers if "sales were great" and "this caused a shift in the publisher" - good to hear/read.
HunchBluntley
language geek
Registered: Jul 2014
From United States
Posted June 09, 2025
GOG had a 45-second-long ad for their new mod initiative played during PC Gamer's "PC Gaming Show 2025". (It's different than the somewhat longer ad (3:42) about the same topic that they just posted on their own 'GOG Classics Vault' YouTube channel.)