GOG at 18: From a Fake Shutdown to Owning Itself Again

In September 2010, visitors to a small PC game store called Good Old Games found its homepage gone. In its place was a message saying the site was shutting down. Fans panicked, forums exploded, and journalists wrote obituaries. Three days later, the site came back. It had all been a stunt to announce its exit from beta. GOG apologised, and it also got more attention in a week than in its first two years.

That mix of cheek, nostalgia and principle has defined GOG ever since. And at the end of 2025 it began a new chapter. On December 29, 2025, CD PROJEKT announced it was selling 100% of GOG to Michał Kiciński, one of CD PROJEKT's co-founders and one of the people who started GOG in the first place, for PLN 90.7 million, roughly $25 million. The deal completed on December 31, and GOG entered 2026 as an independent company for the first time in its history.

Good Old Games

CD PROJEKT founded Good Old Games as a subsidiary in February 2008 with a simple, slightly radical idea: sell classic PC games that just work on modern computers, at low prices, with no DRM, the copy-protection software that ties a game to an online account or a disc. Buy a game on GOG and you can download the installer, back it up and run it offline forever.

The first big publisher to sign up was Interplay, which brought a catalogue of 1990s favourites. Ubisoft followed in March 2009, and much later, in August 2015, Bethesda arrived with Doom, Quake and Fallout. Each deal usually came with GOG's quiet secret weapon: a team that patched old games so they ran properly on Windows versions their creators never imagined.

From old games to all games

In March 2012 Good Old Games became GOG.com and began selling new releases as well as classics, including big-budget games and indies. It added Linux support in July 2014 with 50 compatible games and launched GOG Galaxy, an optional client for updates, achievements and multiplayer, later that year. Galaxy 2.0, announced in 2019, went further and let players see games from other stores in one library.

The store also kept pushing consumer-friendly rules. In February 2020 it extended its refund policy so you can get your money back up to 30 days after purchase, even if you've downloaded and played the game.

The hard years

GOG's principles have not always been profitable. In February 2019 it laid off staff and ended a pricing scheme that compensated players in regions with high prices. Between January and September 2021, it lost $1.14 million, and management announced it would scale back to "a handpicked selection of games" rather than trying to match Steam's enormous catalogue.

Being a DRM-free store in a world of always-online games is a niche by definition. Many of the biggest modern releases simply can't be sold on GOG, because their multiplayer or anti-cheat systems depend on the kind of online account GOG avoids.

Yet the niche has loyal customers, and it gives GOG a voice larger than its size. When Valve declined to publish the horror game Horses on Steam in late 2025, GOG stepped in to support it. When publishers delist old games elsewhere, GOG is often the last place you can still buy them. And because there's no DRM, a game you bought from GOG in 2009 still installs today, even if its publisher has long since disappeared.

That is the deal GOG offers: fewer games, but games you keep. For a certain kind of PC player, especially those who remember losing access to games when old activation servers were switched off, it's an offer that matters more every year.

Make Games Live Forever

Instead of chasing size, GOG leaned into what made it different: preservation. On November 13, 2024, for its 16th anniversary, it launched the GOG Preservation Program, a commitment to keep more than 100 classic games working on current and future systems. In January 2025 it revamped its Dreamlist, letting players vote for classics they want brought back, and partnered with the European Federation of Video Game Archives, Museums and Preservation.

In October 2025, it even stored a copy of Heroes of Might and Magic III: Complete on a 5D memory crystal, a glass storage medium designed to last for an extraordinarily long time. And when Steam and itch.io removed some adult games under pressure from payment processors in 2025, GOG launched a Freedom To Buy campaign defending players' right to buy legal games.

Why CD PROJEKT sold, and what changes

For CD PROJEKT, the sale lets it focus on its own games: The Witcher 4, the next Cyberpunk and its other projects. For GOG, it means a return to the founder who first imagined it. The two companies signed a distribution agreement that includes plans to release CD PROJEKT RED's upcoming games on GOG, so the link doesn't disappear.

GOG says it will keep operating independently with the same DRM-free approach. Managing director Maciej Gołębiewski said the company was "doubling down on what only GOG does," and CD PROJEKT joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said GOG was "going into very good hands." Kiciński, who financed the deal without selling any of his CD PROJEKT shares, also said he is personally involved in several retro-style games arriving on GOG in 2026.

GOG has also introduced an optional supporter subscription at about $5 a month, which works more like a Patreon than a game pass: the money goes toward securing the rights to more classic games.

By the numbers

• February 22, 2008: Good Old Games founded.
• September 2010: the fake shutdown.
• March 27, 2012: renamed GOG.com.
• 30 days: the no-questions refund window since 2020.
• 100+: classic games in the launch of the Preservation Program in 2024.
• PLN 90.7 million (about $25 million): the price for 100% of GOG in 2025.
• 17+ years: how long GOG was part of the CD PROJEKT Group.

What to watch

GOG's first year of independence will be judged on three things. First, whether its preservation work brings back more lost classics, because that's what GOG does best. Second, whether CD PROJEKT RED's next games arrive on GOG as promised. Third, whether it can make money as a small, principled store in a market Steam dominates.

The timing isn't bad. Epic has just rebuilt its launcher and put it on Linux (read more), Steam itself has grown to 43.5 million concurrent users, and more players than ever are asking what they actually own when they buy a game. GOG has had the same answer for eighteen years.

What to play next: if you've never bought from GOG, start with one of its preserved classics, such as Heroes of Might and Magic III or Baldur's Gate, and try the offline installer. Then back it up somewhere safe. That's the whole point.