GOG asking for more donations from gamers with the new GOG Patrons program

While it hasn't been properly publicly announced yet, GOG Patrons is a new system launched by GOG to hopefully pull in more people to donate. This isn't the first time GOG have asked for people to donate, as back in June they added a donation form to the checkout page but this goes one step further.

The main point of the GOG Patrons program appears to be directly supporting their game preservations efforts as part of the official GOG Preservation Program. Not to paywall anything on the GOG store, just as an additional way to support GOG directly.

It seems a lot like a built-in form of Patreon, and anyone who has used Patreon (like ours) will be familiar with the idea. You pay a small amount each month to something / someone you like, and potentially get rewards for your support. In the case of GOG they say you get access to an exclusive Discord, voting on Preservation Program priorities, credit for your support on game store pages and behind the scenes content.

GOG have so far only sent an email out to some customers to let them know about it, as it's currently in "Early Access" according to GOG staff. As posted on the GOG forum from staffer "king_kunat":

Hey hey, everyone! :D Just wanted to quickly jump in and shed a bit of light on the topic:

We’ve indeed launched the GOG Patrons program today in its early access phase. Long story short, it’s a new way for players who care about game preservation to directly support our ongoing work. And as we’ve mentioned (and will keep repeating everywhere): it’s not a game subscription or a paywall and everything you’ve ever bought on GOG remains fully yours, forever.

The idea is simple: Patrons help fund our efforts to keep classic games alive by restoring, maintaining, and improving them. In return, they get access to an exclusive Discord community, behind-the-scenes content, and small recognition perks across GOG, just as Shanuca mentioned.

The initial response has been positive, and we’re already learning a lot from the feedback we’ve received. This early phase helps us fine-tune the program before it opens more broadly, ensuring it truly meets our community’s expectations and reflects GOG’s values. We'll update you more and more as we go and make the program public.

Hope this clears things up a bit!

It doesn't give any guarantees that your support will actually lead to anything, as that would be impossible to do, it all depends on what rights holders they can convince or track down to actually let GOG revive their games.

You can see more on the GOG Patrons page.