GOG going back to their roots a little here with the announcement of the GOG Preservation Program, with an aim to ensure various games get to live on forever. A fitting announcement for their 16th anniversary don't you think?
What's it all about then? GOG will be directly maintaining various classic games, ensuring they work on modern systems, and giving each of them a big special stamp on the GOG store page to show you. Like this one for one of my faves, Theme Hospital:
They've already been doing it for a while, and this includes the re-releases of recent classics like Alpha Protocol and the Resident Evil Bundle — but now they're putting an official stamp on it. GOG said in a press release that "100 classic games from our catalog are being re-released today with updated or quality-tested builds" including Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Complete and Dungeon Keeper 2.
However, it's not just classic retro games, they will be up for maintaining any game, even if it was only released "just a few months ago" but not brand new games as they expect the developer to do that directly. As long as GOG can commit to it, they'll seemingly look at any game to keep it going.
They won't be using community fixes and patches though, as they "want to avoid passing the responsibility of maintaining the game’s quality on to the community" and to preserve the original experience.
GOG say the GOG Preservation Program is currently Windows-only as their "priority is to preserve as many games as possible under the Program, before expanding to other operating systems". That's pretty much expected really from GOG.
See more on the GOG website. They also launched a big 16th anniversary sale.
You can install and keep GOG games easily up to date on Linux / Steam Deck with the Heroic Games Launcher.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
If they announced that they would start making sure classic games were properly preserved in their full original release states, that would be much nicer news to me. As an example, "Gorky 17" is sold on GOG, but only the Windows version, despite the game releasing on Linux and AmigaOS as well - hunting down those versions is actually tricky these days, so the "preservation" of that game would actually be generally useful.
Now, I know that "Gorky 17" isn't on their list of "preserved" games, but "SimCity 3000" is and it's only available for Windows, despite also releasing for Linux and MacOS; "Worms United" is and it's only available for Windows, despite originally releasing for Amiga (there are a couple more Amiga games on their list as well that are in the same situation).
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I just don't like them using the word "preservation" when they actually mean "ensuring they work with modern Windows versions" - those are two different things.
QuoteCan a game be removed from the Program?
We never want a game to be removed from the GOG Preservation Program, and at the time of this writing, we don’t see a reason it should happen.
Normally I would not ask for this kind of proof, but we just lost a few games like The Suffering and Spec Ops: The Line, and far before that, stuff like Riddick. While the automation of patches and fixes for modern systems is appreciated, this mission statement doesn't really mean as much as it should to me if the games they pledge to preserve can just arbitrarily get yanked from the store.
now with this program, i have one less argument to use, at least for the games covered...
still a good thing this is happening, now if only someone could get ride of censorship, region locking and delisting...
Quoting: WMan22Normally I would not ask for this kind of proof, but we just lost a few games like The Suffering and Spec Ops: The Line, and far before that, stuff like Riddick. While the automation of patches and fixes for modern systems is appreciated, this mission statement doesn't really mean as much as it should to me if the games they pledge to preserve can just arbitrarily get yanked from the store.The problem with some of those games is that they use licensed properties that isn't cheap to upkeep for the games companies and they would rather delist them instead. Also, some of the games get delisted because they would rather you pay for their newer remastered version instead. For GOG to preserve these games, they would have to do a lot of back and forth with the game companies that make the delisted games just like what happened to Alpha Protocol earlier this year.
see governments? we dont need piracy to ensure video game preservation, nor mods to ensure the games still run on modern systems! we as an industry can provide that service!
sure, but if they plan to patch the game everytime it break on newer versions of windows, what they gonna do if their patch isnt compatible with an mod?
and what about people who purchased those games elsewere and will have to purchase again?
or all the games they dont sell?
so... i hope they dont plan to use this as an bullshit argument against regulations that allow "fair use preservation", its an good thing what they are doing lets hope its not for some nefarious reason.
Quoting: hell0Reading the headline I was expecting gog to have taken over publishing rights for these games or something similar. But given their entirely noncommittal FAQ entry, I will chuck that one in the "marketing intern had a cool idea so we ran with it" bin.
QuoteCan a game be removed from the Program?
We never want a game to be removed from the GOG Preservation Program, and at the time of this writing, we don’t see a reason it should happen.
sigh, in other words, useless
Quoting: KlaasThe interesting question is if any of those changes break wine compatibility, since they explicitly mention that they only look at things from the Windows perspective.so long as we can install old versions, its not a big deal
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