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?
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