An nameless reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The basic PC video games market is “in a sorry state,” in response to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small video games that are not at the moment promoting get deserted, and compatibility points come up as expertise strikes ahead or as one-off improvement concepts age like milk. Traditional video games are solely 20 p.c of GOG’s catalog, and the agency hasn’t really known as itself “Good Previous Video games” in 12 years. And but, immediately, GOG declares that it’s making “a major dedication of assets” towards a brand new GOG Preservation Program. It begins with 100 video games for which GOG’s personal builders are working to create present and future compatibility, retaining them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech help, together with granting them a “Good Previous Recreation: Preserved by GOG” stamp.
GOG will not be shifting its mission of offering a DRM-free various to Steam, Epic, and different PC storefronts, a minimum of not solely. However it’s demonstrably excited a couple of new focus that ties again to its authentic identify, impressed in some half by its work on Alpha Protocol. “We predict we will considerably affect the classics trade by focusing our assets on it and creating superior merchandise,” writes Arthur Dejardin, head of gross sales and advertising and marketing at GOG. “If we wished to unfold the DRM-free gospel by specializing in getting new AAA video games on GOG as an alternative, we’d make little progress with the identical quantity of effort and cash (we have been attempting numerous variations of that for the final 5 years).”
What sort of video games? Scanning the checklist of Good Previous Video games, most of them are, by all accounts, each good and outdated. Personally, I am glad to see the Jagged Alliance video games, System Shock 2, Warcraft I & II, Dungeon Keeper Gold and Theme Park, SimCity 3000 Limitless, and the Wing Commander sequence (notably, personally, Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Home windows-only, although Mac help extends to 34 titles up to now, and Linux could choose up many extra via Proton compatibility, past the 19 native titles so far. […] [I]f you see the shiny foil-ish GOG badge on a sport, it is an assurance that GOG has performed all it could to convey ahead a basic title. It is vital work, too. “Preserving” video games does not simply imply locking a secure media in a vault, however retaining video games accessible, and playable.
