GOG is under new leadership, which just so happens to be its old leadership. CD Projekt Red co-founder Michał Kiciński left the company in 2012, which also meant leaving GOG – his creation – behind.
Now, he’s back, but users shouldn’t expect any drastic changes. In fact, Kiciński sounds more determined than ever to stick with GOG’s anti-DRM endeavours, even if it costs business.
GOG Won’t Shift On Its Anti-DRM Message To Secure Triple-A Releases
“Since the very beginning, we haven’t seen DRM as a solution for piracy, because the games get pirated anyway, nearly day one,” Kiciński tells Gamesindustry.biz. “We see DRM as something which can make the life of a legal customer more difficult. The only reason to keep it alive can be to please the owners of the games, because that’s their requirement quite often.”
True enough, the gaming community is very much against DRM. Despite pushback from publishers and DRM companies themselves, many link DRM to performance issues in games.
This is something Kiciński experienced with The Witcher 2, which was published by Bandai Namco. Even after the game had been pirated, the publisher insisted on using DRM, which CDPR was not happy with – and faced legal action from Bandai Namco for removing it.
GOG Has Had To Hire Private Investigators To Track Down IP Rights Holders
“Sorry to bother you, but you own Deus Ex.”
So, it’s unsurprising to hear that some publishers won’t work with GOG, because getting their games on the platform would mean releasing them without DRM. With that said, Kiciński doesn’t sound terribly torn up over losing these business partners.
“We’ve lost some, we’ve gained some,” he says. “Probably there are also some developers that actually choose to work with us because of this philosophy.”
Indeed, GOG doesn’t get anywhere near the same amount of games as Steam, with almost all of the major publishers skipping it altogether. Still, it does get many of the big PC games like Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, No Man’s Sky, and many more on the home page, so that’s a lot of bases covered. It’s also got some mod support thrown in there, a bit like Steam Workshop, making it a little easier to dip your toe into that.
So, don’t expect GOG to become the go-to place for triple-As in a bid to take on Steam, but do expect it to keep honing in on its particular niche. That appears to be the messaging coming from the new leadership. We’ll just have to wait and see if that’s enough to grow the site.
