Joshua Robertson is a News Editor for TheGamer. When not writing about breaking news, community stories, or covering industry events, you can find him begging FromSoftware for a Bloodborne remaster.
For a while now, GOG has been one of the leading online platforms for PC games, if you take the big boys like Steam and Epic out of the picture. It’s become a safe haven for a lot of indie titles, especially with the recent crackdown on adult content across the internet, and it prides itself on delivering DRM-free games for PC users, and puts genuine efforts into preservation. All in all, it’s a fairly popular platform.
Arguably, all of this has been made possible by its owner, The Witcher 3 developer CD Projekt Red, but it’s now been announced that the platform will be changing hands. Before you start panicking and worrying about its potential future, though, it’s worth knowing that it won’t be going very far at all, despite its sale. Announced on the GOG website earlier today, it has been confirmed that CD Projekt Red and GOG co-founder Michał Kiciński has acquired the platform.
CD Projekt Red Has Sold GOG To Its Own Co-Founder
Now, I’m sure the main question you actually have about this whole transaction is why? Why would CD Projekt Red sell GOG to someone who is already so closely linked with the studio and was actually instrumental in the creation of GOG in the first place? Well, thankfully, GOG has already cleared up the reasons for this as well.
On CD Projekt Red’s side of things, it has apparently sold GOG so that it can continue to “focus its full attention on creating top-quality RPGs.” It’s very likely that GOG doesn’t make all that much money for CD Projekt Red, and getting the upkeep of a storefront off of its list of things to do is considered more valuable, especially with development of The Witcher 4 currently in full swing.
As for what GOG is getting out of the deal, it claims that having Kiciński as an owner will help it maintain its “long-term backing that is aligned with our values: freedom, independence, control, and making games stay playable over time.” In that same vein, Kiciński has stated that his decision to acquire the platform was primarily driven by his desire to “preserve and grow the original philosophy behind GOG.” It sounds like a win-win scenario for pretty much everyone.
As for how this will affect you, it doesn’t sound like anything is going to change at the surface level. GOG will still remain the DRM-free focused platform that it has always been, and nothing will happen to your account, your library, or your donations to the platform. CD Projekt Red’s game will still be available there at launch. For now, nothing changes except who actually owns the platform.
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It’ll be interesting to see if that changes down the line though, especially since GOG no longer has the financial backing of CD Projekt Red to keep it in the clear. That being said, GOG claims that the platform is not only financially stable, but also “had a really encouraging year” this year. Hopefully, this is just a shift in the right direction for GOG, because the industry is definitely in a better state with it around.
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