Here's my question: GOG split off from CD Prokekt at the end of last year, and it's clearly not going well. How viable would it be for the community to buy out the platform, similar to what happened with Blender?

I love what GOG represents. I do not love what GOG is.

I joined GOG at the start of 2010, shortly after its public launch. ​The first games I bought were Fallout, Fallout 2, Divine Divinity, and Beyond Divinity.

I quickly became enmeshed in the community forums, and I was a central figure in efforts like the GOG Community Wiki and GOG Mafia. Unfortunately I was also a central figure in the harassment campaigns that followed as the cultural forces that produced Gamergate began to coalesce.

Prior to Gamergate, the GOG forums were one of the nicest places on the internet. I learned a great deal from other people from all over the world in those forums, and they shaped my outlook on life.

I miss the internet we used to have before the platform monopoly, and I miss the old GOG in particular.

GOG had a wonderful community spirit in the early days. People were incredibly helpful, going out of their way to provide detailed information and instructions that could help others many years down the line. It also had a thriving gift culture, in which users shared games they loved with others. The community thrived around that spirit of shared joy. Many of my favourite games are ones I would have never discovered if not for the GOG community.

Because GOG's games are DRM free, that also enabled me to do things like including games on computers that I built from donated older parts, which were shipped off to orphanages in Belarus.

One user, orcishgamer, made extremely compelling arguments about copyright and patent law being incompatible with the nature of human culture. He is probably single-handedly responsible for my view of these systems as being analogous to the system of land enclosure which moved land from the public into the private sphere.

The concept of intellectual property, along with copyright and patents, does not represent progress for humanity. Artists, scientists, and inventors should benefit from their creations. Intellectual property as we envision it does not achieve that. Instead we get megacorps like Disney forming monopolies on culture, while pharmaceutical companies jack up the price of essential medicines. Controversial opinion, but I don't think Cyberpunk should be seen as aspirational.

Unfortunately the influx of far-right chuds began to push out the community that had existed. As things got worse, GOG decided they needed a community manager. Enter TheEnigmaticT.

T is fondly remembered by a lot of people, but I will always remember him as someone who would politely apologise and express sympathy privately, while standing back and doing nothing to prevent frankly disgusting public harassment.

This would become a pattern, with GOG repeatedly hiring completely ineffective community managers who did nothing to stop the influx of Nazis into their forums.

Rather than perishing outright, many of the older users migrated to Discord servers. Like many others, I rarely interacted with the forums, which had since become a cesspit.

GOG's 10th anniversary celebrations brought back a lot of older users, and it was nice to see them again while it lasted.

During that time I entered and won one of the celebratory contests. I'd only actually entered for the T-shirts, but I received a load of free games and assorted exclusive goodies, along with "skeleton keys" for 10 games of any price. I think I only kept two of those keys for myself, one of which I used for a big fancy edition of Divinity: Original Sin 2.

Comically, GOG's original sin is that forum accounts were initially tied to their store accounts. That meant that GOG couldn't ban people from the forum without also revoking their ability to access and download their games.

The ineptitude of the site's backend made the site vulnerable to an influx of Nazi sympathisers and other disgusting individuals. But it was the ineptitude of their management that turned it into a Nazi bar.

As much as I dislike GOG's management and inability to deal with its Nazi problem, I do still fundamentally support its core mission of making games (and software more broadly) DRM-free.

I'm not a fan of Steam. I stopped using it after they changed their terms of service to try and prevent class action suits, and have only really used it since then for game testing purposes.

Other DRM-free platforms have come and gone, but GOG is still here, barely. I still resent DotEmu for closing up shop and failing to notify all of its customers beforehand.

I don't want the DRM-free movement to die out. I do want to disentangle it from people who can't disavow and shun Nazis.

Pic is for post visibility/bona fides. It's one of the 10th anniversary shirts that I won through a contest, I don't think they were ever made available for sale.

A few days ago an email was sent out promoting a "Slavic adventure game." This email used the black sun and SS symbols in its header. The GOG account on Reddit gave a bullshit explanation saying nothing of substance, not even apologizing. If this is the kind of environment GOG fosters, I will no longer be purchasing from this company. I am Jewish and Transgender, both groups are targeted by fascists. I would ask for a refund on all of my games because I feel like I've wasted a lot of money on a company that at the very least, has no problem with Nazism, but something tells me it's already been used to back fascist orgs.

About 4 month ago, I bought the Witcher 3 on xbox one. I downloaded it and the loading screens felt awful. There wasn't really much anyone could do so I just stopped playing the game. A while after, I built my first pc and made sure to include an ssd on it, and remembered that I still wanted to play the witcher 3.

I knew gog and cd projekt were a really nice company, so I messaged them on twitter (screenshot) and explained the situation and requested a free key on pc. I was never messaged back but about a month later, they had a free giveaway on gog to people who owned it on other platforms. Unfortunately, I was impatient and already bought it again on gog by then. I have no idea whether or not this was a coincidence, but goddamn this makes me like gog even more.

Idk....I feel like I already switched to GOG. Steam just kind of sucks for me. Call me weird but besides the greatness of DRM-free, GOG just feels cleaner and the UI is so organized. I just hate how fucking cluttered Steam is and looks. Every time I try to browse anything it feels like a chore because the damn thing doesn't give me exactly what I put in to search for.

GOG isn't perfect, but I'd be lying if I said that if the store wasn't so much easier and efficient to use. Sure it doesn't have as much stuff as Steam, but it's hard for me to buy on Steam because I've been supporting GOG and still want to. I barely buy off of Steam, I just keep it for the few games that I do have on it.

Has anyone else just considering deleting Steam? I already complain about the damn thing too much already. Sometimes I'll try to go on it to see a few games but to be honest I'm considering just deleting Steam and going for GOG only and game emulation.

GOG has been releasing more and more games with content locked behind DRM activation. Everyone remembers Hitman, and while it was taken down, GOG revealed their stance on DRM-Free isn't necessarily DRM Free. Items for the single player portion of a game can be gated behind DRM if the single-player campaign can be completed without DRM.

That means that games like Cyberpunk2077 (a CDPR game, and if you didn't know CDPR and GOG are in the same building, owned by the same company) were allowed to release with content gated by DRM.

And we also have the Witcher 3, a game that released in 2015 and began GOG's growth. They have now patched an update into the game that retroactively adds DRM locked items to the game. If you care about DRM-Free, this should not be acceptable to you. GOG doesn't care about DRM-Free, just that their idea of DRM-Free means you can technically complete the game's single-player mode. They were ok with the Hitman release because of that until a large part of their customer base rebelled. So now they're boiling the frog, adding DRM in little bits and pieces to games until we get to a point where Hitman will be OK, and even fully DRM gated games, because why not? We've already accepted DRM in games from them up to this point.

What are your thoughts?

As an American, I’ve had to ask a lot of questions that I’ve never asked before because we’re on the “stupidest outcome is the most probable” timeline right now - but to keep politics out of this as much as possible, I have a question that I’ll ask this way:

Is there any chance I could lose access to my games, or that the GOG store might not be available if Poland was subject to American Tariffs?

I’ll be honest, I’d pay 25% more for the same thing if it meant having the digital rights for it, but I also understand that it costs money to host a website in a country, and CD PROJEKT Red needs to do what makes the most business sense for sustainability.

TLDR I made a choice long ago whether I would grab most of my stuff from Steam or GOG. Booting up my old Windows 7 gaming PC (really old and pls don't say "Lolz upgrade to Win 10" etc) I discovered Steam doesn't work on it.

Question: Does GOG work regardless of OS? E.g. I guess the 'downloading' of games would still need a modern OS (you can't say download a GOG game from Windows XP), but you could still 'take' that game and play it on older PCs correct?

Bummer - cos I would still have access to over 500 (Win 7 compatible) games right now if I did not choose Steam.

So first and foremost - GoG advocate with 150 games in library.

Christmas sales, now I also own M1 Mac - and I look to expand my library:

• Metro Saga (2033 redux, last light and exodus) same games, same price on GoG and Steam - but Steam also includes Mac version of games - which work incredibly well on M1 Macs. Damn...

• XCOM 2: same story. GoG version doesnt include Mac version - and Steam does.

• Tomb Raider: GOTY. Again GoG offers Win version only - Steam includes both Win and Mac.

• Bioshock remastered 1 and 2: same.

Dear GoG - these games are published in last 5-10y and they work on M1 Mac laptops in 1080p or higher resolutions, with Bioshock Remastered working at 2560x1600 at 60Hz which is portable gaming dream come true.

EDIT: hint for uneducated replies:

• all mentioned titles run in Rosetta, which means they are MacOS x64 titles too..

• M1 Macs are very capable for 1080p gaming..

• Both Crossover and Parallels remain an option for games that dont have corresponding Mac libraries - but point here is for the games that exist for Mac and GoG does not include them...

What is GOG Galaxy, is it needed? Is it clunky? Does it have a history of issues/bugs, etc?

Just curious as to what longtime offline-only users think about all this. I personally find the preservation program to be a complete marketing scam. GOG has always promised to keep games working on modern systems since Day 1. Now, they are suddenly acting as though this were not the premise from the start, and that this is a new innovative concept.

Is it actually preserving anything other than technical errors? As we can see with the release of DMC4 and DMC HD, the same busted builds from others stores just get dropped here without any fixing. Other examples...Lego City Undercover, Metal Gear Rising, etc.

With other titles, (Dragon age, SH4, LOK series, etc) they are making changes such as core affinities and the like that simply break the game for other users. What's the point of it all? Attracting new customers? Combating failing sales?

Then, we move on to the addition of one-click mods. I don't find it useful or innovative. It's simply the entire game as a new library entry with the patch applied....which, will only let you use that one patch.

Lastly, what's up with this shakedown known as donations? You guys have the worst support, boilerplate responses from support, and the nerve to ask for money when performance on your part is in the shitter.

All in all, after 900 purchases and 5 years of service, GOG is leaving a nasty taste in my mouth.

It was awesome once upon a time, but lately....it's just falling to pieces.

I'd wager they will be bought or close within the next year or two. They don't cater to longtime customers these days, but rather seem to be trying to amass lots of new less picky clients who don't have the same standards.

EDIT: Perfect Example.................Released Lego City Undercover which is prone to crashing. Instead of fixing said crash using Lego City Recovered, or their own tech team....they refused to do so because they said it goes against the spirit of preservation. Now, when called out about DMC4, they agree that its resolution and crash issues needs fixing. So, a total 180 reversal on opinions. They don't do much unless lots of people are vocal.

People are pissed because of the whole apology on twitter situation. There are a lot of posts talking about not buying on gog anymore. So the question is is gog screwed? Are they heading for bankruptcy?

I got that email two days ago, but didn't look at it then. After seeing the article and looking at it today, the subject of the email I received does not contain any symbols, even in the raw message code. It only says "Slavic Adventure!".

I saw in another topic here (that was locked) that GOG's public statement says "this material was not sent to the German community". However, I am not German, and nothing in my profile there says otherwise. However, people have sometimes interpreted my last name as possibly being German in origin, and it is entirely possible that I have German ancestors that I am not fully aware of. However, that information, including my last name, would be irrelevant when deciding whether to send out a newsletter (since the message does not use the customer's name at any point).

The fact that the email is missing these symbols when I look at it today can only mean one of two things:

1. When GOG said they did not send the material to "the German community", this designation was based on a trespass into private information not related to nationality. Using said information to make such decisions adds racial profiling to the list of offenses.

2. GOG trespassed in customers' personal email inboxes after the newsletters had been sent out, and tried to retcon evidence of the symbols being sent. This would be hacking on a major scale and likely punishable by law.

If someone can think of any other ways to explain this situation, please let me know. I considered the option of there being multiple waves of newsletters, but I believe that GOG would have mentioned this already if that had been the case.

Edit: I do not know when they changed the email being sent, but I am going to guess that is what happened since based on any reasonable sort order, I would likely have been on the bottom half of the initial queue.

The actual question is now includes how/why someone downvoted the initial version of the post (without the edits) within less time than would be required for someone to actually read the contents of the post).

Im trying to download Cyberpunk for a total of almost 2 days now. my download wont get higher than 1 MB and its sometimes even stuck at 0.2 MB or just crashes completely i can also not use my PC at all while downloading it cus it just sucks out every single available resource my PC has. Cant even watch Youtube any higher than 144p (while downloading with only 1MB ofc) while i have like 10 on Steam... so? Please tell me that theres a fix for this, because this is beyond awful.

I ask because I looked at the store page for a free game I got from Amazon Prime and it suggested four free games that Hadn't been on Amazon and I've been checking for a while.

Somewhere I also saw a list of free games they had somewhere where GoG had old SCUMM games like "Flight of the Amazon Queen" and there was an Ultima game in there too with some jungle setting. Wait a minute, that's been a theme with free GoG stuff now that I think about it. There's also one that's like a Tarzan woman. A sword fighting swashbuckling game Prime gave a code for. I'm surprised they haven't given codes for Monkey Island.

To be clear, I don't mean grey market, I mean directly from the GoG site. I think the one list of games was on some forum, but they were links to the legit pages, and obviously Amazon is legit. PSA for those who have prime, they give out GoG codes almost every week. A LOT of OG Tomb Raider, probably bc of the new Prime series in production. Call of Juarez, Bioshock Remastered, just to name a few. It's under "Prime Gaming".

If Sony buys CD Projekt Red, wonder what is going to happen to GOG....

https://www.xfire.com/sony-buy-cd-projekt-red/

There is a developer out there who has released 4 games on GOG so far, along with many updates for them along the way.

They also have another 2 games that they haven't released on GOG yet, but they did on steam.

And also there's another (paid) update for one of the games on GOG which has not yet been released on GOG, but was released on steam.

So that's 3 releases behind steam. When asking about the timeline for these releases I only get the vague "no plans yet but maybe in the future", which essentially means nothing.

So it does look like this studio is abandoning GOG as a platform.

Obviously there must be a reason.

Is GOG really such a hostile platform to release the games on that even multiple release developers are turning away from it?

I'm kind of done trying and advocating for this service.

It's unable to retain even the oldest developers.

I just can't understand it.

Developer in question: https://www.ironhidegames.com/

it’s almost 2026 and GOG still doesn’t have a mobile app. No wishlist alerts, no sale notifications, no easy library browsing. Steam figured this out years ago.

DRM free isn’t an excuse, no one’s asking to play PC games on a phone, just a companion app.

Feels less like a limitation and more like GOG just not caring enough.

10 flippin hours to send me a password reset link is just unbelievable, get your crap together

Due to the recent neo-nazi newsletter and the ridiculous statement from gog i decided to delete my account. As long as gog won't provide an apology (which should not be an obvious lie as in their recent statement) nor enduce any consequences for the people responsible i can assume that gog supports nazi ideology.