Overview
GOG, the popular digital distributor of video games on PC, has announced their Preservation Programme, designed to safeguard and modernize over 100 iconic titles. This initiative aligns with GOG’s commitment to preserving gaming history.
Details
- Titles Featured: Over 100 classic games including Heroes of Might & Magic III, Diablo + Hellfire, Fallout: New Vegas, and System Shock II will be included in the programme.
- Modernization: The preserved titles have undergone updates, optimizations, and technical support to ensure smooth performance on modern systems such as Windows 10 and 11.
- Access: Games are accessible DRM-free with additional features like downloadable content, manuals, and ongoing technical support.
Impact
The Preservation Programme is a significant step towards protecting these timeless classics for future generations. It aims to preserve games facing the risks of technological obsolescence while making them more accessible to contemporary gamers.
According to GOG’s managing director Maciej Golębiewski, the foundation of GOG lies in preserving classic games, and this program is an extension of that commitment.
Conclusion
GOG’s Preservation Programme represents a vital effort to maintain gaming history by addressing the challenges posed by technological progress.
Do you think this move from GOG will inspire other companies to do more for game preservation?
Theme Hospital (thumbnail) was dope. I used to rent the PS1 port from my local video store, but never came across it for PC. Used to love Bullfrog Entertainment back in the day and played the absolute hell out of Dungeon Keeper. Theme Hospital wasn’t nearly as good, but there was something super chill about designing waiting rooms and deciding where to put the vending machines. For whatever reason, the waiting rooms were always my favorite part.
Shame we never got a proper Dungeon Keeper 3. War For the Overworld is a worthy successor, and getting Richard Ridings ('ELLO, PEPPA!) back to narrate was a boss move, but I don’t care for the new creature designs that almost (but don’t quite) emulate Bullfrog’s creatures. Just doesn’t feel right without a few fat bile demons dragging themselves around your corridors.
Meanwhile Steam over there, cutting down support for Windows 7 and 8. Which narrows people’s visitation when it comes to old games. Like, Steam is not notorious for the upkeep of old games, let’s be honest. They never were. The only games they cared about supporting is understandably, their own when it comes to modernizing. But a lot of the time, you see old DOS games released on there, old Win 9x/XP/7/8 .etc games released and they have aged poorly. The publisher nor developer lifts a finger, leaving it to community to do the leg work.
That is why the idea of Valve cutting Windows support offends me, because if you aren’t going to put in the work to make old games work as fluently with modern Windows OSes, why bother cutting support? Because some games, actually ran better on older hardware and yes I get it, coming across old hardware tends to be a challenge but virtualization and emulation doesn’t simply cut it. So that leaves again the only option is for Valve to swing that multi-billion dollar hand around, to get a program, that will make all old games run as well on modern systems.
This is where GOG has always been strong in.
They’re cutting support for windows because Microsoft is, it isn’t valve’s responsibility to uphold a depreciated operating system. GOG is doing this because they are explicitly operated as a platform for supporting these old games, Valve is a general game marketplace without any real stated obligation to support older games if the developers won’t.
Also this has very little to do with what you’re talking about. It even states they are taking old games and supporting them for modern systems, not supporting old systems at all.
Edited to seem a little less confrontational
Not to mention the work valve have done to bring gaming to a whole other operating system!
Its just a rebrand of what they already did with bringing back old games the publishers didnt support anymore and updating them for current platforms isnt it?
Yeah, I’ve been confused about this. They are basically branding the games they don’t own but are supporting out of pocket, if I understand correctly.
So no, they don’t own Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3, but they did the work to make them run on modern PCs, so they are now flagging them as part of their preservation program. I don’t think it goes beyond that, but it’s useful to have a flag for them, I suppose. It may make it easier to sell the idea to publishers or whatever.
The GOG library has been building since 2008, when Vista was the current windows version.
Some titles that worked at some point over the last 16 years may have some developed issues on modern hardware, drivers, or operating systems.
This program is at least confirming it works on windows 10/11 and common 2024 hardware
That’s fair, I hadn’t considered the scenario of a bunch of old GOG-supported games needing updates.
I mean, in my defense that’s because a lot of the older catalogue is just running under DosBox, but there’s definitely more finicky stuff in there as well.
My personal experience has been that it’s games from the post-DOS era, especially PC games from the very late 90s and early 00s, that can be really tricky.
I’ve had better luck running games from that era from my GOG library via Lutris on Linux than Windows 10/11.
The ones that run in DOS Box are comparatively easy!
Late 90s/early 00’s Windows software was very finicky. Lots of very specific solutions to play back video integrated right into games and other weird dependencies that never carried forward (for good reason). Some decent games in there, too. Discworld Noir is famously picky, and that may be the best of the trilogy.
So yeah, I’m on board with what Gog does to those. If they want to brand that effort, I’m good with that, as long as nothing with the rest of their policies for GoG changes.
Yeah I’m not sure what they’re actually doing here, GOG has always included fixes and patches for the games they distribute.
From one side, it does seem like they’re selling something old as new, but from the other, it seems they’re retooling the adaptation process. And as people seem to slowly but surely pressure companies into going back to making quality products, perhaps it’s GOG’s way of saying they’re in this bandwagon of quality shift too.
They have a list of titles in the program here:
https://www.gog.com/en/gog-preservation-program
Change logs are on each title’s page.
That’s really helpful information. Thank you, Kelly.
