"Capcom didn't really see the value in bringing back the original versions of Resident Evil"

The market is just getting denser and tougher, which means that we need to be innovative and fast to shift things and to delight our customers. What is also very important is not getting better with time. For some of those games, we need to really hurry.
Hello and welcome to the game business show with me, Christopher Drake. Today I am meeting with GOG. Some of you may know them as good old games, the company that specializes in finding, porting, releasing, and selling classic video games. Now, they're doing a lot right now. They've launched a preservation program all about making video games playable forever. It's quite an ambitious goal. They've also been working with Capcom and having huge success releasing the very original versions of games like Resident Evil. Not the remasters, not the remakes, the very original versions. So, join me as I chat with managing director Masie Galabeski and senior business development manager Marcen Pazinski. Enjoy. Hello and welcome to the show. for the sake of the video and for people at home, please introduce yourselves and

say what it is you do.
Uh my name is Meski. I'm the managing director of GG, formerly known as Good Old Games. Uh you can find us at gogg.com and we are a leading European digital distribution platform uh with a focus on game preservation, ownership, and curation of uh of content. So that that's me.
That's a that's a lovely little pitch you snuck in the uh and yourself.
And hello, I'm Mati Pachiski. my senior business for GG. I've been with GG for 15 years. Over that time I've played different roles so to speak right now mainly focusing on talking to publishers to partners and uh you know getting all of those amazing games to go to Giog. Now this whole topic around classic games and preservations and nostalgia and it's such a ma it's it's been not it's not not that recent actually. It's been going on for a few years now. But how have you how have you at Gogg found the market for that for that bringing back classics?
I think it's just because the whole GG was created um out of a sad realization

that uh the games that we used to love or that we still love that shaped us that they are disappearing and dying. And it was actually 17 years ago. It was juju was born out of I think frustration of uh CD Project Red founders that they realized that their favorite games from their uh childhood or like young adulthood were uh not really available for sale in a legal format. They you would have to buy a copy of of eBay or some some small retailer uh and they were like hidden on the shelves. So I think it's how we came to be was really realizing that the games are disappearing. H we're seeing a lot more companies move into this, right? Whether it's remastering their own games, whether it's companies like Atari going fully retro. Um we're also seeing Nintendo Switch Online is basically a retro game service. Now, how is the expansion of this market, other people doing these things? How has that impacted you?
It's a two-sided uh thing, right? Because uh at one hand, it brings more

attention uh to the entire topic of uh preservation and nostalgia and relieving those memories. So that's that's good because people have more options to rekindle their memories and and their love for for games and at the same time the the market is just getting denser and and and tougher which means that we need to be innovative and and fast to shift things and to delight our customers.
Yeah. And uh what is currently happening is is kind of what we saw at GG for the longest time. So meaning that the the the classical games they have still a lot of value the back catalog games the games released 10 15 years ago. Uh because we know with the remasters that are currently happening, right? It's like for example Oblivion that was absolutely phenomenal, right? It's still the same game. It's just an updated engine. The game play is the same. Nothing was changed. Absolutely nothing. So the only thing that was updated was the how the game looks. And what we are GG are doing is basically now you know we are focusing our efforts on the back catalog. And what is currently happening

is a proof that there is a huge value in the back catalog games. many games that are 10, 15 years old. So that's if you maintain them, make sure that they are playable that there is audience for those games that would love to enjoy them because you know in our opinion games are aging right now extremely slowly.
Yeah.
So a game released 10 15 years ago has still a lot of value for for gamers today. Like even look at Witcher. Witcher was was released 10 years ago and the game if it was released yesterday I'm sure it would be getting you know 10 out of 10 and be praised for the graphics for the mechanics for everything there. So and what GG are we are doing is making sure that the 10 15 year old games are still playable are still working amazingly so that the current audience and the newer generation of gamers can enjoy them. If you look at the top 10 most played games, I think a lot of them are eight years, 10 years. You know, GTA, The Sims is still in there. Like, it's the idea

of people moving on from one generation the next has sort of ended. But what I find really interesting is that you released the Resident Evil games last year, right? And but it was the original Resident Evil games, you know, as they were in 967, but they've been remastered and remade and reskinned. Did you find that there was an audience of people that just wanted that
the OG experience? I
one of the people that were spearheading the project within GG like convincing Capcom that because that was actually their main counterargument when we were try trying to bring back the classic games. They were like okay that we have all of those remakes. It's already like superior experience right to those games. So they didn't really see the value in bringing back the classical versions the vanilla ones. It would take a lot of convincing that hey guys there is an audience that has a lot of memories about those games right and they would love to be able to experience exactly the same game again right and so thankfully we were able to convince them they trust us into you know working on

one of their biggest IPs if not the biggest and you know when we launched the game on GG the reception was absolutely phenomenal like the the press and most importantly the gamers praised all of those games, right? We have like a 94% positive reviews on GG for all of them and that was also reflected in the sales. So, it proved that there is an audience uh for that type of games. So, it doesn't matter if the game was remade or not, the classical versions, you know, the the versions we all remember from our childhood, they still hold a lot of value. It's quite fascinating because the common wisdom has been, you know, if you're going to remake a game today or remaster a game today, you need to make it feel like people remember it, not like it really was. But you've gone down the route of, "No, we're going to give you as it really was." And I am and I have to I have gone back to older games and I've gone, "Oh, I forgot there weren't two analog sticks back then." And this kind of stuff. I mean, it

doesn't take me long to get over that, but it's interesting to find there is an audience for the stuff that they do want.
Yeah. Another thing I I would add here is this is I think a growing trend even that retro gaming thing like look for example at the extreme success of old school Runescape now it's an online game
if you look at this game right now it looks absolutely terrible if you do not know the context you know the the how the controls work how the graphics look like but this game is immensely popular it's even popular that it's equal so there is an audience for games like that for experiences like those old schools one and this audience is I think only growing.
You will love this just literally my appointment before this was with Jagex and we talked about old school Runescape and his point around that was it's it's almost an unsullid experience in that it's not you know there's not all the microtransactions and all the gubbins that have come to sort of associate with more modern games. There's a simplicity to them that people crave.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think often times they also crave that just like how things

were uh a little bit like the the memories right the nostalgia is a very powerful feeling right the reminiscence of past happiness which is something that I can come back to and as this happiness ages it actually like increases in value for for me right when I come back to those old all their games and those old experiences. So I think the OG experience is very important.
We talked about all the other competitors that have emerged in the market. I guess they're competitors, but that generally raises the bar and tends to bring in more audience and makes the market bigger. Do you broadly see it as a positive thing? It is in line with uh our mission cuz our mission is to make games live forever.
Yeah. Uh so if it's done by us, that that's great. That's our primary like goal. But if it's done by someone else and uh games and gamers are profiting from it, I would rather call it a like I think Night Dive used to say it's and Larry specifically used to call it like a competition rather than a competition.
Yeah. So I would like to look at this uh this way. I mean obviously it's tougher. It's a game that we all play. Uh but

there are ways that we can often times also collaborate on bringing those old IPs and games back.
Rising tide sort of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. And uh it's also important to know that uh we are great friends friends with dive. We have been for many many years like even you know the beginnings of GG are closely touched to the beginnings of night. Actually there's a story with system shock that I
system shock Stephen emailed you. I've read this story says I've got the rights to system shock. Do you want
it? It was literally like the story goes. I emailed out of nowhere and that's how System Shock was released and Nightbind was formed.
Yeah. But what we are doing in GG is that we are for those older games right for the classical games we are not working with the source code and that what makes us different from night dive and all of the other companies that are doing the remakes remasters or enhanced editions because over the years we developed tools and knowhow and basically you know this is there's a lot of reverse engineering expertise required to do the work that we are doing. So, Night Dive is working and all of those companies are working on the

source code and we can do all of those additional things in those games, you know, enhanced resolutions, modern controller support, multi-mon monitor support and so on so forth. We are doing all of that without having the source code.
So, that is the big difference between what we are doing and what Naid is doing on companies like DNA. So, we are kind of complimentary to all of that what is happening in the gaming industry in the retro vibe.
I'd love to be able to measure this market. I'd love to be able to, you know, look at some data and put a number on, you know, what the opportunity is, right? Because I imagine there's developers you still can't really who just going, "No, this we we we still want DRM and we're not interested in this, that, and the other." But I mean, if they could see the opportunity, I imagine it's incremental, right? It's not going to just transform their business.
I mean, the the best bet is just to like work with us and and see the results. Uh, like whether it really like works for your company or or not, we guarantee that it will work. uh but in business it always is a bet right so but yes we

believe that this is incremental and uh really that there is a strong market for that and I think really like looking at just the amount of reviews on all of the platforms for all their games or even looking at the dream list on on GG which is a uh space for like gathering the interest around those classic games we have millions of of of votes casted for those games like with black and white being at uh I think 110,000 votes specifically. Yeah. Specifically cast for this particular game and those are votes. But um we are also gathering user stories. So why this game is important to them like why like this kind of a container for emotions for people like uh memories for for those games. And it's really just like go out there and and read them and and then and see like what captivating and how like what emotional stories people are sharing when it comes to those games like how they engra how those games were engraved in their uh in their minds uh throughout those years. So I think it's very powerful.
How is the preservation program going?

It's going well for us but obviously this is very tricky uh to work on those games without source codes. we have a dedicated team that's that's working on it like basically full-time um to maintain those games and to improve them so we can assure that those are the best uh versions the finest editions of those games available anywhere on the internet so I would say that it's going fairly well but I think we can still uh we can do more that that's for sure we want to do more um but we're quite happy with what we've achieved so far uh this year with with regards to this program but
yeah with the preservation program it's uh to be perfectly honest it's harder than we thought it would be.
Oh, really?
Yeah. It's uh because at the beginning we we were kind of because there's like 3,000 games on GG that we created the bits of over the years, right? And when we started the preservation program, we wanted to you know to to take the next step and to basically have all of those games refreshed and uh you know switch to our newest tools and newest solutions and on top of that add to that the you

know the so-called like a lifetime guarantee. As long as GG exists, we will keep maintaining that those games on a platform. We are the only platform that can do it. What that practically means that if you buy the game today and you launch it with your I don't know son or uh wherever in like 10 10 years on your modern PC, Windows 12, 13 wherever it will work. We are guaranteeing that with a preservation program. But what we found out when we when we started working on it is that the games and their technical uh how they work has has deteriorated way faster than what what we thought.
Oh really?
And we are not talking only about you know the game simply not launching because we never like offered a games on GG or kept them available in sale if they are not functioning. We are talking about subtle more subtle things as well like for example the game not supporting the modern controllers. uh the game not supporting ultra widecreen or modern resolutions or uh even a simple thing like uh you know being able to minimalize the game which is I think essential feature of all of the games that are currently releasing and the

modern game is expecting to be able to you know to minimalize the game that they that they are playing and to be able to bring it up without any issues. So this is what the preservation program stands for in terms of uh the quality of the games that we are offering there and uh so yeah it's we we hope to have like 500 games by the end of the year we'll probably have around 300 350 okay
but it's only because when we started working on those games researching them seeing what's wrong what can what can be improved it turned out there is much more work that needs to be done to bring them to the standards that we defined But that only means that those games on GG are in some cases are working significantly better than outside of the program. So and the hope is actually for us it's simple like in the future we want to basically be the platform. So whenever you are as a gamer you are thinking about buying a 10-year-old game you know the first thing that you will check is basically if it's available in the program because in if it is you have

like 95% chance that it will work while anyone else I think that percentage will be significantly lower. So that is a goal with what we are doing. Hm. What needs to happen in the industry to overcome some of the preservation obstacles that we keep running into? Do you think it's difficult, right?
I mean, I don't think anyone has the answer to that question yet. We don't have the answers, but at least we have the questions now that everyone is aligned on the question. Okay. Like what should an end of a life cycle uh look like for a game? Like what should happen to the game, right? Um how to make sure that it is available for future generations. There are other questions like are games art like are games should games be preserved the same way poetry sculptures paintings are and I think like we have our answer that yes games are art and games are a cultural heritage so they should be treated as such but I think there's no clear answer yet how to make it right in the UK I used to work in magazines I used to run MCV magazine I worked on 450 magazines

and every single week when we did a magazine we had to send it to the British library preservation and so they've since lost their archive MCV and they talk about it a lot and I went you should have every single magazine should be in the library you should still have they should still be out there so even a a weekly UK trade business title is preserved somewhere right so surely
surely video games
should be but at the same time I would say that it's easier to pres preserve a paper or a even an ebook than is to preserve a game because a game is a very complex system that relies on the frameworks, the hardware that's connected around it and so on. So I would say that it's much more complicated, but it is possible uh to to make it preservable. I would say I think that's that's one of the reasons why we are a DM free platform that we vouch for like no constraints in in terms of how you access your games and what's if there is a centralized server somewhere

that decides whether you can launch the game or not because
for the sole reason that if we want the game to be preserved and we want to be forever accessible it cannot rely on any like third party architecture third party system somewhere like um behind the ocean.
Well, I was going to ask because games are living for so much longer now and there is a long tale to these games that they didn't exist before.
I was going to ask, are you finding it hard or easier to convince developers and publishers not to go with DRM to go DM free? Um but it sounds to me like maybe they they understand the the benefits a little bit more now that their games are living for 10, 15, 20 years. Yeah, I I think it's natural for game developers that want to protect their IPs and they they are really trying to protect the launch windows because they are obviously investing a like very meaningful resources into realizing their creative visions and this is a a lot of creative and financial risk that they are undertaking. So it's it is understandable that they're trying to protect their uh their business. At the

same time after this like initial period the hyper sensitivity period is like ends I think there is a question like does it really like does it really warrant um having those all of those obstacles and the and the DM in those builds for the for the future for like 5 10 15 years like in the future. I think one of the biggest obstacles that we've uh run into when preserving and bringing back games was they the old DRM systems that were implemented for those games and um you know the creators of those of these software are no more. So it was very uh hard to get rid of that right and to make the game playable again.
Yeah, I ask this question a lot when I talk to people working in this space. What goes into finding games when you're sort of looking for projects to preserve and look after? Uh, how much work does it take to unearth? Like I talked to Stephen example at night dive around, you know, trying to find out who's got the rights to this and turns out it's some chicken farmer in, you know,

or a oil extracting company like oil refinery. Yeah.
Yeah. And so how much work goes into it and is it really worth the effort?
Yes, it worth the effort because otherwise like why we why would we exist really, right? If we if we believe that this is not worth the effort. I mean, I will pass the mic to Marie in a second, but I I would say that it takes more effort than you would think. Really, even if you like think of like it takes more effort than you think, it takes even more effort uh to to get those games because it's really about like understanding who owns what piece of the game, like who owns the soundtrack, who owns the code, who owns who owns the trademark, um what was the history of those uh those IPs and so on. is a lot of just like in intelligence work kind of going into that investigations. Yes. Really like like like that like like
who inherited the rights and which part and and some of that but there are basically but this is not the end right. There are three riddles in like I I like

to say that there are three riddles to to each revival of a of a classic game. Um there is the IP riddle. So who owns what exactly? Um and how to interact with the IP owners or the lawyers or uh with the people who again inherited the the IP. So that's one riddle. There's another riddle which is uh the techn technological uh riddle the the one that we mentioned all of the rappers the systems that need to be in place in order to run the old game in the new system. Right? So that's the second riddle. And the third riddle, how how to make it commercially viable for everyone that's involved. How to make it worthwhile for the player, for the developer, and for ourselves because we are also like bearing the the cost of doing all that work. So, so far we are like uh so we are quite good at solving all those all of those three riddles, but this is not an not an easy job I would say.
Yeah, you I think you covered pretty much uh the whole of it. Yeah, there were a lot of I could probably like with VG we could probably write a book about

uh
I'd love to hear a story. Is there a story? Do you have an example of a
We have an example for well the the oil company that was a good a good one. There was a guy who in the 80s he was actually Vietnam veteran.
Oh wow. got back and he was like very still into like military stuff and stuff like that. And he created a couple of games, a military titles, started a small company and then he uh transitioned to like a big oil multi-million dollar company then in Texas or wherever. And we were, you know, we found out that he has the rights to all of those games that are not released. We we sent in an email and uh we were not really expecting much because you know every minute Oskis time is probably quite valuable and we we are asking him about hey you remember those games that I don't know 2,000 people bought in the world we would like to bring them back but he was super supportive and he was like yes of course this is you know part of I love those games this is part of my heritage and

stuff like that and it's the the passion that he shown while getting back to us that was that was really really inspiring. Think another story is for example we had a guy and at least I think it was in in UK we know that through different means that he inherited rights to certain games but that guy was nowhere to be found
because he kind of like fell off the grid. So we hired a guy in in UK that was supposed to find him and that was you know the type of a person that was was really really living off the grid without any cell phone without any online presence and stuff like that just just chilling and you know he didn't even know that he owns the rise because this was just just a package with his inheritance or wherever. Yeah but also a very very similar case super supportive to preserving the legacy kind of of of his of his family. Uh so we have we have a lot of stories like that and those topics can get even like complicated scary complicated. There are you know stories of companies that had fires that

you know burned all of the records of them owning a certain game especially in the like ' 90s and early 2000s like still everything was in physical form. What is also very important is not getting better in time. for some of those games we need to really hurry on there or they indeed will be unsolved
after this. Uh cool. I'm g introduce you to my producer. Um anyway, who um um how is this working for you as a business? Because this you this sounds like an awful lot of work. There's a lot of projects. You're working with a lot of brands. I know it's a passion, right? You don't do this to become, you know, you know, to you're doing this because, you know, you love this thing. But is it delivering the levels of profit that you need to be able to keep investing and keep delivering the dream?
Um, it allows us to innovate. It allows us to keep making bets uh and to develop our products and um to get more content, more quality content uh on on GG. So, I would say that we are quite um that we are quite okay. Yeah, I wouldn't say I

mean obviously that the market is tough with Steam being so so huge and some of the compet competitors trying like to fight for this for this market and are also fighting for the same content uh that we are fighting for because we release classic games and we revive them but we also release modern games right so we are directly competing with all all of those other platforms uh but I would say that we are putting up a a fair fight I wouldn't say it's easy but it's doable and I think we will only get better uh with time
since this might be the last question We'll see how it goes. But like what's your goal? What is what do you hope to achieve? Where do you where would you like to be in 10 years? What is your what's your vision?
Okay, that's that's a that's a loaded question. That's for sure. I mean want to Okay, like I
mean obviously would like to release all of the games that are on Dream List right now. So all of the top voted games that are on Dream List would like to see them out, see them being released. So you would see like freelancer being released, black and white, black and

white to none lives forever like all of those titles that people really love. We would like to see them just being alive again. That's one thing.
And I would say in 10 years I don't like we are in this very strange spot. It's very hard to predict what will happen like in the next year or two. So
I know it's a very it's a I asked that question to people in the video games industry. 10 years give me two.
Yeah, exactly. give me like I would say three is the optim like three is the maximum two is the optimum but I would say but I would say that in 10 years
the community will have a much bigger will play much bigger uh role in game preservation as a whole uh cuz we are a company obviously and we are doing our best but it's really those are like people and communities and their emotions that are really involved and that's why they want to keep those games alive. So our mission should be to empower them and and to help them be more active in in terms of uh game preservation and and and keeping those games uh alive for the future

generations for their kids, grandkids and and or nephews, right? So I think we'll uh in in in few years it'll be clear that the community is much more involved into it and I think there is a lot of potential and a lot of possibilities in terms of IPS as in uh IPS that people love but there's not much happening around those IPs nowadays because because I because priorities probably of the companies that own them but I think that there is that people deserve more as in gamers deserve more uh quality work being done on some of those like classic uh eps. So that I think that that's what I would like to see in I don't know in three years but I like
yeah just just moving forward. I mean I I'm of an age what I find really interesting is game people do age out of gaming right you know particularly console gaming and and what I find brings people back it might be a GTA trilogy or something games that are I play these games I remember them in the days being 100 hours long and taking forever and actually there were 10 hours I got Shadowman recently and I remember

that game taking me months but I finished it in like a week and and I've got kids I don't have time for that kind of stuff and I it's amazing but I I realize now that that games were just they were shorter and they're quicker to get into and and I think for a certain generation of people that and the industry is young, you know, we don't there are generations of people alive today that never played games, right? So, we're still there isn't the generations of people of gaming people disappearing, you know, dying or dying off. We're still
we still got that audience to talk to and I think it's and it's great to see industries. I know GOG was one one of the originals, but you know Atari and what they're doing, accessory companies resurrecting old controllers and all that kind of thing and Nintendo with its stuff and
yeah is an interesting case the whole like resurrection of of the of the of the trademark and all of the the stuff that they're doing. I think it's I think it's really cool. Uh at the same time, you know, like people grow out of gaming, but I think there's also a point in time that they will grow back into gaming, right? Because right now you have kids, but at some point you'll have probably more free time. Maybe this this

will be a great moment to get back to to the books or movies that you once loved and games that you once loved.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't think they grow out of it in terms of they don't like them anymore. They just don't have time. They don't have the capacity anymore and the games are so big and complicated. Um uh and I what I love is I I used to think I only got into I only bought games that I used to like. So, you know, I get and um but but I fell in love with Night Dives games and I um I bought uh Power Slave Exoomed that they did. I have never heard of it before, right? Um I bought it. It was one of my favorite games of that year, right? And I've never heard of it, right? They got the PlayStation version, the Saturn version. They created like a new version, Director's Cuts basically, of that game. And now I buy everything they do. And I don't, you know, I I I I'm I'm going to get Outlaws. Never heard of it before. Right. And it's it's delightful to discover this stuff, but it's not nostalgia for me cuz I didn't play them back in the day. Exactly. So, it's just I just like the fact that
I I think this just showcases that the fact that there's a lot of uh work to be done on the discoverability, not only on the new titles, but also the

discoverability of the of the older titles, right, from from back in the day cuz you were born in a certain era. You were growing up in a certain era. There were some games that shaped your childhood or your young adulthood, but there were other games that were like also great at that time that that you've never experienced, right? because you only had so much time and so much money, right, to to be able to to spend all those on those games. And I think it's still it could be very like interesting and very u emotional to get back uh to to games just from this era, right? From this cuz I think again like with any other types of art, this is kind of a of imprint of what humanity was back at this stage right in this year. And it's very interesting to to experience that to me. I think I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much for your time and good luck with all of the uh all of the stuff that you've got coming out and the preservation project and everything that you've got going on.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's it for today's episode of the game business show. I think you agree

that Gog are an interesting company and it's a fascinating area of the industry. In fact, if you want to go back a few weeks, we recently interviewed Atari CEO Wade Rosen on the same subject. So, do check that out. Now, we will be back with more news, analysis, and interviews in the days and weeks to come. Until then, thank you for tuning in.