If you’re a bit of a retro gamer or has a soft spot for a game you’ve played many years ago, there’s a chance that modern PCs can no longer access them due to compatibility issues. To that end, GOG.com (owned by the same company behind Cyberpunk 2077) is launching a new program to help these games stand the test of time.
GOG Preservation Program
The fate of many classic video games is that developers often abandoned them after many years has passed, and some teams likely ceased to exist by this point. Hence, GOG is stepping in to help modifying the game’s internal code to make sure they work on modern-day systems, even when the original developers no longer provides technical support for the game. Besides from making the games work and fixing the in-game bugs, GOG is also introducing cloud saves and modern controller support, among other modern-day features.
Games that get preserved will get a ‘Good Old Game’ badge (fun fact, that’s where the name ‘GOG’ comes from), and currently 100 games are in the list, including the first three titles of the Resident Evil franchise, the first two The Witcher releases, select Fallout titles, SimCity, XCOM, Warcraft, and more. Some can be acquired for free, while most games can be purchased for $10 or less – and just like all games hosted on GOG today, these games are DRM-free as well.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t entirely new, as some games has seen changelogs several years back when GOG was already silently working behind-the-scenes to keep these classics humming along. The introduction of this preservation program simply makes this a more official effort, though this currently works with Windows systems for now, with expansion to macOS and Linux a possibility in the future. In the FAQ section at the bottom of the page, GOG says that it wants to greenlit “hundreds of games” into the program by the end of 2025.
Pokdepinion: Pulling something like this off is very difficult since it means dealing with many different game engines, each with its own quirks – they deserved to be called heroes of the gaming industry for these efforts.
