Dead ends are common as they trace company liquidations and genealogical trees to figure out who may hold the key to bringing back a classic game, but through persistent scavenging GOG has managed to bring back some games that were otherwise lost to history. “Finding out who has the rights can be impossible,” says Marta Adamska, head of business development at GOG. In extreme cases, GOG has hired private investigators to help track down rights owners.

Licensing rights are inherently transitory the further you get from the date of the original release, the more likely you’re going to run into a roadblock as companies close, creators die, and paper trails disappear. But this process is rarely as easy as picking up the phone and meeting for a handshake deal. Just today, the company announced a partnership with Blizzard to bring Diablo and Warcraft to the platform. The list of titles GOG has saved from obscurity is impressive, from floppy disc classics like the Dungeons & Dragons “Gold Box” games of the late ’80s and early ’90s to more recent cult favorites like Irrational’s beloved tactical shooter SWAT 4. The CD Projekt subsidiary frequently generates headlines for its impassioned stance against digital rights management – if you buy a game on GOG you own it – but perhaps its most important work ties into games preservation.įor the past 10 years, the company has tracked down license holders for long-lost games no longer available for purchase and painstakingly resurrected them to work on modern PCs. It may not have the clout of Steam, but over the last decade GOG.com has slowly and steadily built its reputation as an attractive alternative digital marketplace for PC gamers.

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