By Nelson Schneider - 04/05/25 at 07:51 PM CT
Oh dear! Last we heard of Steam’s most competent competitor, GOG (formerly known as Good Old Games, but changed the name when they started to add BAD old games and newer Indie games to their catalog), the Polish company was getting into bed with Jeff Bezos via an unwholesome and unwelcome alliance with Amazon.
Amazon’s only real claim to fame within the Gaming hobby is its web services, powering both the Twitch ‘creator’ streaming platform and the Luna gamestreaming service. Conversely, GOG has built up a reputation over several decades as being pro-Gamer, pro-consumer, pro-preservation, anti-DRM, and anti-corporate. Now it seems that our former friends in Poland are going to throw all of that away.
In a new survey (which is already closed) e-mailed out to GOG members last weekend, the platform holder nonchalantly asked members what they would like to see from a subscription-based model to “support” GOG’s games preservation activities. While the survey starts out hypothetically enough, as one clicks through to subsequent pages, the questions and possible answers become increasingly pushy towards “yes, subscription!” with no options to object aside from an “other” box at the bottom.
GOG is obviously in some sort of dire financial straits if they’re willing to hop into bed with Amazon, and then only a few months later start flogging the idea of subscription models so hard internally that their survey doesn’t even include proper options to say, “I don’t want this,” or “Please, don’t.” Following hot on the heels of their newly-revived marketing campaign revolving around game’s preservation and ownership, the very idea of a subscription runs completely counter to what the company and the Games Preservation movement allegedly stand for.
I took the survey – along with quite a few other folks on Reddit – and made my dismal opinion of subscriptions clearly known. To give GOG the benefit of the doubt, most of what they floated in the survey came across more as trivial bonuses or perks than the type of core feature that would make someone part with cash on a monthly basis… but the top of a slippery slope is always where you least expect it. If GOG starts paywalling its stupid little ‘goodies’ that it has traditionally included alongside game purchases, how long before they start paywalling online multi-player?
With the fanaticism and hard-line views of most of GOG’s audience, even suggesting the idea of a subscription service that violates the spirit of ‘DRM-free’ seems like a really stupid move on the part of management. Have they even been paying attention to their audience? Do they read their own forums? (Which, not coincidentally, don’t have any threads about this phantom survey!) Have they seen how far and hard their corporate compatriots have fallen when they embrace this kind of monthly exploitation?
I rarely buy games from GOG since Steam’s client is so much better… and with their curiosity about subscriptions, I will probably use their store even less. Let’s just hope that Lord GabeN and whoever he has in mind as a successor continue to keep their heads screwed-on straight and don’t try their hand at this particular flavor of stupidity.
