GOG: Preserving Gaming's Past & Future

We hope you enjoy this dive into the work that GOG goes through to resurrect old games. This was another project that was requested by a large contingent of our community last year so we're delighted we managed to get it out. So in keeping with that spirit we'd love to know what games you'd like us to cover next? We have projects in the works already but always love hearing what you'd like us to cover. Good old games, or new!

yes there was a lot of games on our computers we dont even know where they came from, like 100 games in a folder. i am really glad with GOG i can now not only finish all those msdos games i never could finish as a kid, but i also now can buy them so that the original devs are still getting their credit, if they even are still alive lol

Love GOG 💖💖💖💖

Five years later and I still waiting for No One Lives Forever.

Man humans just suck huh. No one cares about the fans. No one cares about anything but making money. I mean of course some do. Like these guys. But overall we suck.

Great vid m8t thanks for doing this I love gog great library of good old games some of my favorite classics from over 30 years ago I've got phisical copy's original and now thanks to gog digital copy's.

This is such a awesome documentry thank you no clip for making it.

When ever I wanted to test out a game and saw gog sells it in germany I just bought it after

mad respect for u guys n ur mission <3 bringing old fond games with lots of history back to in modern os n hardware

GOG is an incredible idea and company! I have bought lots of games from them to re-live my younger days. Just downloaded The old SSI D&D games!
\

This is an insane amount of work to just sell an old game for a small amount of money. Those people are awesome for how dedicated they are.

One of the most interesting game docs I've ever seen. I wish they'd talked more about how GOG is future-proofing their stuff in turn, making sure these games get preserved not just for the next Windows, but for beyond the structure of private companies like CD Projekt. I'm thinking of great private art collections that became the foundations for museums, or something like world heritage that can't just be sold for parts or changed by future owners with different business philosophies.

These guys deserve some kind of extra pay for helping to preserve the history of games.

They should add:

-alphanatix
-lead soldier
-eat this
armored moon...

Wasn't GOG sold a few years back?

very insightful, i love their enthusiasm to their work, it's a noble cause for sure

I'm all for copyright protection but making single player games require a connection sucks, feels like almost every game has some sort of online feature these days, games cut up and sold in pieces, bleak gaming furture

GOG is an absolute GODSEND.

Since they don't say that GOG stands for Good Old Games anymore, and they have a launcher called GOG Galaxy, it's been annoying me since that happened that they don't make it stand for Galaxy of Games and just call the launcher GOG Launcher :P

Man, I recognized No One Lives Forever right away there. Haven't seen that for a while. Loved that game!

Love GOG and I wish they'd get their hands on the PC version of Oni (2001)

I was just thinking about NOLF.
What sucks for me is that I have tons of games like this (on disk) but I've lost the key.
I always wonder if, since I technically have a license, a crack would actually be legal.

I'm glad they have games for Linux users as well. GOG and Steam are my top places to buy games because of their support for Linux games. Has something happened to GOG recently? I thought I heard something in the news about ownership or something?

I am enormously thankful to these guys. I buy everything I can from GOG vs. Steam or other online platforms just to support their mission. I also have original boxed copies of much of the classic software that I've bought from GOG -- both to support the project, and to have a pre-QA'd modern version of it.

If I could make ONE request, though -- please, please, GOG.... provide the original, unaltered versions. I know the market for retro software is already small, and the percentage of us who are crazy enough to own and maintain and use original hardware are a niche of that already small niche. But, since the original files are often going to be the starting point where GOG then puts in the time and trouble to make them friendly on NEW systems, would it be that difficult to offer a way to download the existing version?

If I may provide one specific example of why this is important:

I own a boxed copy of Heart of China. It shipped on 5.25" disks, and most of them are unreadable now. (Some games' media fares better than others. This particular one happens to be a near total bust, unfortunately.)

Buying a title such as this from GOG may or may not include the resource files in their original format. If it does, it probably doesn't include the DOS-specific executables and libraries anymore - the setup executable, maybe the sound and video and input drivers, etc. So, I cannot actually reconstruct a copy that will play on a 386 PC from the GOG release. It essentially requires DOSbox or ScummVM or some other wrapper.

AND, since the game is actively being sold, it is not considered Abandoned Ware, so many of the gray-market sites won't carry it. That means I can't even download a "pirated" version to write back to freshly formatted floppies alongside my unusable genuine copy. Some of these games are really difficult to find on eBay anymore, and even if I dropped $100 on a copy just for the disks, they may or may not be readable either.

Of course "there are ways," but the whole point is to have a legit channel to pay for the rights, get an authentic copy, and minimize the effort trying to use shady sites filled with pop-ups and links to file-sharing services that make me want to run my computer through the sanitize cycle in my dishwasher.

GOG keep at it! Noclip keep at it!

too bad they've kinda given up on their philosophy: more and more games are broken and more and more come with DRM on gog. They pretend it's not happening but don't fall for it. Gog has switched sides...

Only GOG!

There isn't anything novel about the idea that the official version of something should be at least as good as pirated versions. It's just that not enough companies have taken it seriously!

The same has happened with music, of course. Sure piracy is and should be illegal, but online creators have proven that people are willing to pay for things they don't need to, just to support the creators. With music, part of the reason people pirate is because buying an album does relatively little to support the artists. Some would rather download the music elsewhere, then spend the money on the artist's merch, so more of the money goes to the actual artist.

I honestly believe that, in the long run, companies will profit more from making a product worth buying and toning down the piracy hunting. I don't have numbers to prove that, but I do know that attitudes have been changing for the past few decades. If nothing happens to change that, these industries are eventually going to have to adapt or die.

why do you keep saying Seh Deh, is that actually the right way to pronounce the company name?

GOG it's a Masterpiece. It's like selling your over used underwear yes 🤘😂🤘

I love dune and all the novels and video games.
Hate the Herbert family for how incredibly stingy they are with letting us remaster or even re-release games on modern systems.
Like they are total fascists when it comes to just getting an updated version like command and conquer got.

Honestly I want more videos of the GoG team explaining how they got more games to run.

It could be surmised that piracy helped mold GOG through competition, as well as shaped the values of people involved. To point: people ignored rules that did not make sense, GOG stepped up to make better deals. Therefore piracy was, at least in part, beneficial.

The great thing about gog is apparently once you buy a game from them they let you burn the game on a disc (as a personal use only backup sort of thing)

(Saw people say this on a comment thread on there, dont @ me, i dont know if its entirely true but from what ive seen it is)

I had a game on the Commodore 64 that used the word-from-the-manual DRM. Time went by and the manual went missing so from time to time I'd load the game and when it asked for a word, I'd try whatever I could remember from the manual. I only played the game once after the manual went missing.

"prah-YEK" ... makes me laugh everytime.

so ive been saying it right all these years when i jokingly call them "seedya proyeck red"? cool.

Absolute legends!

I had no idea Carmageddon was so hard to get working on modern systems. I got the originals for free when I was a Kickstarter backer for ReinCarnation but never realized it was GOG who ported the classic.

windows 11 foreshadowing so long ago! :p

Ouch, this does not age well, especially with the recent Hitman controversy which is pretty much against GoG's no-DRM principals.

GOG gives me an incentive to check out older titles before my time, safely. I don't have to worry about checking out sketchy sites that might give me a malware.

This is worth living. GOG is amazing and thanks for awesome documentary.

Wow the Ace Ventura game looks great. Turns out it isn't on GOG and never has been. Must be a rights issue?

So that's what those beautiful girls do there at GOG ;-)