GOG did an AMA and here's some highlights - like how they'll continue using generative AI

With GOG under new ownership, they're trying some new things (like generative AI) and they just did an AMA (Ask me anything) on Reddit.

There's quite a number of other answers I'm not including in this article, as I'm not going to include every single thing the GOG team answered here, but I felt these highlights might be interesting to GamingOnLinux readers. A lot of answers were just pure fluff, repeated or answered again but slightly differently by other staff.

Since generative AI is a hot topic right now, naturally there were going to be quite a few questions on it. GOG already gave us a non-answer in the previous GamingOnLinux article, so I was hoping they would be a bit clearer in the AMA. The only time I can see that they replied about their use of generative AI was from Maciej Gołębiewski, the Managing Director, who said:

[…] We’re not planning on making absolute statements in either direction. AI tools are one of many technologies we test and try out, and in some contexts it genuinely helps us push the company (and the mission) forward.

What we will change, though, is how and where those tools are used; we understand that using new technology doesn’t mean skipping human judgment.

So in short — they are clearly going to continue using generative AI right now. They copied the same answer to another asking a similar AI question. So looks like in public, that's all we're getting for now.

On the subject of their plans for Linux support (which they're currently hiring for), Michał Kiciński, the co-founder of GOG and the new owner of the company, said:

We’re at a very early stage right now, but we of course see the rising popularity and importance of this OS for gamers and agree on its value. We’ve started the recruitment process for a Senior Engineer who would help handle it. When it comes to specifics, we can’t share much at the moment. Nonetheless, the work has started, and this will appear on GOG one day. That much we can say. Plus, personally, I’m a big fan of Linux :) It's a serious topic for us, where we'll put our efforts.

In a follow-up reply later, Kiciński mentioned while the process to bring Galaxy to Linux has started it's "too early to give any ETA".

When asked about how they're going to ensure they don't "incrementally lose track of your principles", Maciej Gołębiewski, the Managing Director, said:

[…] GOG’s principles - ownership, preservation, gamer-centricity - were very clear from the start. In the beginning, hiring was easy because the team just recruited their friends, guild members, and online buddies, so people who already "got the idea."

Nowadays, we have to be more intentional. We're still looking for people who "get it," or would like to "get it". So we spend time during onboarding explaining what GOG is really about and what our mission is. We also start every All Hands by reminding ourselves why we do what we do - revisiting our vision and the strategy to get us there. On a side note (just between us), whenever we're recruiting and someone knows GOG, has an account, and won't stop talking about their favorite classic - it’s a huge plus.

We’re also lucky to have such an engaged community. Whenever we get a bit lost or forget our principles in the "heat of the moment," the community is always there to help us pause and reflect on our actions.

How about their own hard-line stance on DRM and their own definition of DRM-free, again from Maciej Gołębiewski, the Managing Director, who said:

The definition of 'DRM-free' was certainly simpler when games were just a single executable on a disc.

To answer your questions: Yes, we have a hard line, but the execution is often case by case due to technical reality.

Our definition:

- The full single-player campaign must be playable offline,
- No hard DRM such as Denuvo, and no always-online or online-check-in requirements for single-player progress,
- No soft DRM, you must be able to back up your game files and install them on your machines without a client.

We want everything accessible offline and really try hard to remove every online requirements for bonus content. We did this successfully with the Tomb Raider games, for example.

However, stripping online requirements for specific in-game items requires access to the game's source code, which is developers' most treasured intellectual property. If a developer cannot share that, we are left with a choice: reject a great game entirely, or accept that optional cosmetics requires a login (or remove them entirely).

In those cases, we choose to release the game, but we ensure the base experience is untouched.

In reply to any changes with the newer ownership of the company, answered by Michał Kiciński, the co-founder of GOG and the new owner of the company:

On one hand, there are things that do not change, such as the attachment to the GOG concept and its values. Together with Marcin Iwiński and the first team members, we were the authors of them, and I believe they have passed the test of time well. They made GOG what it is today. Even though it is not a very big storefront, it has a permanent presence in the games industry and a unique position of its own. And while GOG is not huge, it is widely appreciated by many players.

This part does not change. I even feel a bit like a guardian of these values, such as ownership, fairness, and making classic games playable and preserved. We will not drift away from them.

On the other hand, there are things that I believe should be improved, and quite quickly. We need to significantly improve communication with our users. Community initiatives like the “second class citizen” list clearly show that better communication is needed. This is not only about fixing the games from this list, which by the way often happens without much external communication from the GOG team, but also about explaining why some issues are outside our reach to fix or improve. What is needed here is good, two way communication.

There are quite a few such areas to improve. We are currently collecting them, analyzing them, and preparing work plans to address them.

As for the longer term future, we have very ambitious plans for the development of GOG, going well beyond the scope in which GOG has operated so far. However, I cannot say more at this moment. First, because we do not yet have solid, concrete details, and second, because we do not want to spoil the surprises ;-)

On why the "rollback" feature is exclusive to the GOG Galaxy client, which is where you can switch to older versions of games, something not available via direct downloads there was a reply from Maciej Gołębiewski, the Managing Director:

This will be a technical answer :) Long story short because the feature is based on the Developer portal build endpoints and the offline installers section was not build to support browsing through so many files. It'd require us to rework a big chunk of the library view - so while I agree with you personally there are just more pressing issues we have to address.

Switching over to the GOG Preservation Program, new titles and receiving updates there was a reply from Adam Ziółkowski, the Technical Producer:

I think I answered this one closely in another question so I will allow myself a repost here.

Within the first year of Preservation Program we were aiming to kickstart the whole thing with inclusion of as many titles as possible.

Now, while we're still adding more games, we are also vastly monitoring the issues that are being reported. We're looking into those issues and will be addressing them now that we can lean more on a maintanance of those titles. We are also researching other ways to address them other than the rollback feature, so that users have more options when it comes to such problematic titles.

As for the games not yet included within the Program, unfortunately not every title is directly maintained by us.

About the process of getting games on GOG working on modern systems, this was answered by Adam Ziółkowski, the Technical Producer:

[…] When working on a classic title, it is important to first identify the period that the game is from to be able to foresee what work is waiting ahead of us. We have our internal classification of 4 such periods.

First would be 1980 - 1995:

For PCs this is the DOS era, so here we are mainly using DOSBox as our main tool. While DOSBox is obviously a DOS emulator, there are other systems for this era, were those game are usually also mainly emulated, like NES, SNES, MAME Arcade games, Neo Geo etc. Here the most important part is to setup the emulation elements correctly so that the game can be played as faithfully to the original as possible.

Then there are games from 1995 - 2005:

This is actually the most problematic group since this is where Windows was still let’s say forming, where different standards where shifted. With those titles we can assume that we will need to emulate the graphics, translating calls form old DirectX APIs to modern ones. Those games will probably need correct registry entries to be recreated, adjusting to current memory sizes and allocation, figuring out why it crashes right at the startup, what codes are needed for pre-rendered videos to be played correctly, how to handle CD-Audio on modern systems that no longer support it, enabling modern controllers to be compatible with those game, figuring out what legacy bugs can be fixed with what we have and if they should be fixed and so on. Here almost every case is an individual case and making those game playable and enjoyable to modern audience takes time.

The third group would be 2005-2015 and here, the games would still be mostly functional. In this case, we're just adding some Quality of Life elements like unlocking the FPS limits (often tied to in-game phisics that needs recalculation), modern controller support, and it's often enough.

Lastly there are games from 2015 and up and those usually just need adapting some additional elements like achievements or leaderboard to our platform and some occasional bugfixing. Those titles are also often still maintained by the original developer.

However, this is true mostly to single player games. Modern games that offer multiplayer functionalities often rely on a specific platform solutions or developer servers to work. To be able to keep those functionalities we would often need to work close with original developers or if not possible, we might decide to remove the multiplayer elements all together. Sometimes we are able to make those available offline.

Answering a question about how they handle preserving multiplayer titles, Adam Ziółkowski, the Technical Producer, said:

It all depends on the title really and how to aproach it with DRM-Free mission in mind.
Everything depends on how the network play is handled and to alter it, it often requires some additional cooperation with original devs or access to the source code.
Handling multiplayer better is also something on our roadmap. We have to bear in mind the impact on our backend solutions and the perception on what is DRM-Free.
For those reasons, we're currently focusing on the mountain of excellent single player games that still need to be preserved, while also keeping an eye out on how can we tackle the multiplayer cases.

Reply to a question about regional pricing not being great in some regions, Maciej Gołębiewski, the Managing Director, replied to say:

We know that our experience in many geographies is sub-par, including inadequate prices, and a too narrow selection of currencies and payment methods. While we've not yet decided the sequence of the interventions we want to bring, and to which geographies, I can confirm that we're looking to correct a lot of it, this year.

Why some games are only available in English on GOG, but have more languages available elsewhere, Adam Ziółkowski, the Technical Producer, answered:

[…] For Oblivion, we are definietly looking into this.
As for other titles, if the language is no longer available on other platforms, there is often a legal reason for that, and it needs to be looked into. Sometimes the localization rights did not carry over to the original publisher and we we need to make sure that there are no such obstacles.

They've also teased that more Final Fantasy titles are to come, as mentioned by Bartosz Kwietniewski, the Head of Business Development:

First of all - stay tuned as there is surely more to come ;)

But long story short, sometimes the decision on the order of releasing games is not dictated by GOG, and we need to accomodate. Sometimes publishers prefer to be cautious and first test some of their 'smaller' games before they bring the 'big guns' to GOG - to me it's understandable, but I'm also happy that every time we (with your help!) deliver - your excitement and enthusiasm when such games finally grace GOG makes a huge difference and is actually one of the things that surprises IP owners and encourages them to bring more of their back-catalogue to GOG.

We are very pleased with how the Final Fantasy IP was welcomed on GOG and can't wait for your reaction when more games drop on our platform!

How about more AAA games? Bartosz Kwietniewski, the Head of Business Development, said:

AAA games are the most challenging segment of titles - here our DRM-free policy is oftentimes the reason we don't get them on Day-1, but rather much later (with dev costs of these games being much higher than AA/indie games, publishers take every measure to protect the launch sales with extra DRM, even if it's a very soft one).

Slowly, however, these publishers warm up to us as they see this is a phantom risk, and honest players that want to have a choice between buying a game DRM-free or not palying it at all, are everywhere and want to buy the game legally and safely via GOG.

Finally, I strongly believe the upcoming CDPR games like the Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk sequel will make it much easier to convince AAA Publishers to work with us (it did help our team a lot back when CP2077 was releasing :))

As for their curation of indie games, with some not appearing on the store or getting denied Bartosz Kwietniewski, the Head of Business Development, said:

We're working on loosening up our curation guidelines, but to be frank, I don't want GOG to become a platform hosting every game, because the quality of games is something GOG stands for (ok, fine, I admit sometimes we get it wrong but everybody makes mistakes ;)).

In general, any indie game, especially game like Balatro, VS, Sea of Stars, Hades, and many more is a game we dream of releasing on GOG so rest assured we try, but were it so simple, we'd have them on GOG alrady. So again - why is it so hard? Sometimes it's due to the size of these indie studios that simply don't have capacity of another pipeline, sometimes it's about paying them upfront (a common practice in the industry, but needs to make sense for us as well), or there are other factors in play we can't really overcome/work with. Games like that we treat with priority anyway, and re-approch devs a couple times a year, looking for the right window of opportunity - it usually comes, but it can take anywhere from couple weeks to years.