“FOROBLIVION
WEDIRECTLY
CONTACTEDTHE
COMMUNITY”BOTTOMRIGHT:
GOGworkedwiththe
creatorsofscript
extendermodsforits
releaseofOblivion.
BELOW:Somegames
takea lotofeffortto
getworkingon
modernsystems.level was gone. At first, we thought it
was caused by one of our fixes, but it
turned out that it was a known bug and
the only workaround is to restart the
chapter until it works, or to find a saved
game where the elevator is present. We
were able to fix it.
GOG’s team isn’t the only one
reworking PC games to get them
running again. Many game fans have
gathered community fixes and
patches, and their makers are almost
always happy to help.
Marcin Paczynski: The game is their
passion as it is ours, so they love the
idea that the game is kind of
immortalised on GOG. It’s under our
official care, and we commit for it to
work in years to come. But that being
said, we are not always able to use
community fixes because they can
change how the game behaves, and it’s
very important for us to maintain the
original experience. We discuss whether
to fix something or whether it’s basically
how the game is remembered. I don’t
want to mention any titles but we have
some famously broken games on GOG,
and it’s a part of preserving their history
if a character levitates in a cutscene or
something. That means we create our
own fixes, but we make sure that our
version of the game is compatible with
what the community has created.
For Oblivion we directly contacted
the community, in particular the
creators of script extenders, because
they had to be created specifically for
our version. Before the game was
released we supplied them with our
build so at launch they were compatible.Getting a game onto GOG is
tremendously complex, sometimes
taking years of detective work,
negotiation and technical wizardry.
It’s hard to see all
that from the
outside, where all
you see is the
storefront.
Piotr Karwowski:
We wanted it to be
as good a platform
as possible so that
the first
impression people would have was
positive. It’s a crazy platform from
Eastern Europe, and it couldn’t look like
some scamming site.
Marcin Paczynski: People ask us
things like, ‘Why don’t you have Diablo?
What the hell guys, what are you doing?’
Before I joined GOG I was like that, too. It
seemed simple, I could buy these
games in my local store, so why couldn’tI buy them on GOG? It didn’t make
sense, but it turns out that it’s much
more complicated than it seems.GOG released Indiana Jones and the
Infernal Machine as part of its 10th
anniversary celebration in October
2018, alongside famously graphic
shooter Soldier of Fortune. Around
the same time it also faced
widespread criticism for a social
media post for
the second time
that year. GOG
deleted the tweet
and issued a
statement that
“GOG should
focus only on
games. We
acknowledge that
and we commit to it.” It later fired
the community manager behind
those tweets.
Today GOG’s store features many
new games side-by-side with old
ones, and continues to add more
classics. In the past few months,
additions have included Flashback,
Gekido: Kintaro’s Revenge, and, yes, at
last, Diablo.10 Years of GOG
FEATURE