r/StopKillingGames • u/quyco789 • Jul 13 '26
Question What GOG's current sentiment toward SKG, now that CD PROJEKT sold GOG?
GOG is a digital distribution platform with a mission statement of "We make games last forever". From my knowledge, they supported SKG at first, but withdrew their support later on. Now, CD PROJEKT, which is in the group of VIDEOGAMES EUROPE through NATIONAL TRADE ASSOCIATIONS, sold GOG. What is their current sentiment toward SKG? If we don't know, should we contact them for a statement?
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u/titanna1004 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Following some comments around, little story of companies:
CD-Project, in early 90's were a publisher. The name imply focusing on releasing games on cd's, back the day, when cd's were quite new format for gaming.
CD-Project started making own video games, Witcher and stuff.
Same company (so far), with many same persons, made GOG - publisher platform for old games, Good Old Games. Including many forgotten games they kept rights to sell as being publisher. The owners of GOG portal was CDP.
They dev team renamed to CD-Project Red.
CDP went low;
Some up from CDP bought out GOG, moving to independent company, kept friendly relations with CDP and CDPR, but was on their own business.
CDP decided to not be much a publisher anymore, moving all focus to being a developer, instead a publisher. They also renamed company name to same name as dev-team was already - to CDPR. As fun part - logo from pic in the post is no more, there is no CDP on the market now. Yet very this happened barely 3 weeks ago, some forgot to change it.
Little story, unrelated to why CDP/CDPR is on the nta supporter list.
edit: pre/side CDP story:
Or even more, what I did skip earlier, at early times, CDP were under Optimus ownership - tech trading company, from 1988 (times of the reds - communist political stuff, no ownership nor trademark copyright laws at all). Optimus later in mid 90's, went much tax avoiding dramas and was somehow partially illegal coz other stuff.
Actual history of even few Optimus sub companies is hard to track these days, as parent company did went making prebuild IBM-PC computers, importing stuff, publishing games (the CDP part, but few other names too), even making own games and educational programs - each of these actions under different sub-company (for sake of tax avoiding). Some CDP ownership ties lasted till 2011-2013.
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u/BlueTemplar85 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
More specifically they were first a 'legal' 'pirate' distributor, then an official localizer / distributor for the Polish version of Baldur's Gate 1 (successfully competing with 'legal' 'pirates' thanks to their fancy boxed edition).
(See also notably the CD Project Blue part.)
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u/titanna1004 Jul 13 '26
Best of all, Baldur's Gate being on five CDs meant even pirates charging £3 a CD would flinch.
It cost £30,000 to license 3000 copies from Interplay, and localization cost the same again...
So yeah, they did bought licenses to be a publisher for BG1, there was nothing pirate about it.
Also, pirated games were cut in early 1994 in Poland, once copyright law came in. Not like there was still lot black markets (mostly on stadiums or vegetable markets), but boxed game in actual stores were mostly licensed. At this time, computer stores were a thing already. Also electronic / audio or press stores had some stuff on shelves.
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u/victim2077 Jul 13 '26
A correction - the dev team was from the beginning named CD Projekt Red.
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u/titanna1004 Jul 13 '26
Ain't the localization team more a dev team than pub team? So CDP did localization dev stuff, while being named CDP. Agree, since they started to make first very won game, the dev team was CDPR, yet, that was just part of bigger company - CDP. CDPR went growing and overtook parent much later.
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u/victim2077 Jul 13 '26
During the "localisation period" they weren't doing any development work, just translating text from English to Polish and getting Polish dubbing. Aside from about 6 months work on cancelled PC port of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, no development work was happening at CDP, everyone hired for that cancelled port eventually became the first team of CD Projekt Red and started working on first The Witcher prototype (one reusing code of cancelled Dark Alliance port, then there was a prototype build on Mortyr engine and then the development started on Aurora version which ultimately released). I used to work in game localisation and you pretty much just work on something akin to a spreadsheet (sometimes you might get just an Excel file, I'd say an accountant working in Excel does more coding and development than localisator/translator).
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u/Alduish Jul 13 '26
This list shouldn't be considered as the list of companies opposing SKG without further proof imo.
game(dot)de is part of it, and beamng is part of game(dot)de, beamng said publicly that they weren't contacted when VGE opposed SKG despite being part of it.
So for me VGE's statement was only in VGE's name and not its members. And without further proof I consider that we can only blame VGE for their statement and each member of VGE should be treated independently and should only be blamed for things they actually said or did.
PS : that said, contacting CDPR to ask them to clarify their position on VGE's statement or SKG as a whole is a good idea.
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u/Keensworth Jul 13 '26
Sold to who?
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u/quyco789 Jul 13 '26
Michał Kiciński.
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u/Keensworth Jul 13 '26
Is that a person or another business?
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u/quyco789 Jul 13 '26
According to GOG, one of the co-founders of CD PROJEKT, and the co-founder of GOG.
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u/blackSwordsman1310 Jul 14 '26
The current owner support the movement the other day gave bunch of retort games
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u/Brave_Explorer5988 Jul 13 '26
Why GOG withdrew their support? Didn't know that
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u/quyco789 Jul 13 '26
GOG removed their SKG banter on their website, and went silent. From my knowledge, it seemed like an order from the higher up. Most of us speculated that it is to avoid conflict with doing business in the industry, especially with AAA's publishers.
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u/h3lion_prime Jul 13 '26
In a nutshell, being part of VGE doesn't mean you're not allowed to support SKG.
VGE is supposed to represent them, not the other way around.
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u/That-Advance-9619 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
People had to recently pry an answer out of GOG when they accidentally, allegedly, sent nazi runes in an email to everybody in their mailing list (except those in Germany, curiously enough).
Don't expect them be communicative.
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u/Naddesh Jul 13 '26
except those in Germany, curiously enough
As a person who works in localization, that is actually really easy to explain.
- Depending on what is used for QA, this might get caught by automatic QA checks for German (not even humans). It even catches when you try to use SS acronym for Stainless Steel.
- Many localizations into German remove even similar symbols and replace them just in case.
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u/That-Advance-9619 Jul 13 '26
In their official disclosure on the whole ordeal, GOG themselves decided not to send it to Germany.
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u/Naddesh Jul 13 '26
GOG themselves decided not to send it to Germany
??? They literally said that since it looks close to the nazi runes it was decided that it will not be send to germany so exactly my scenario #2. It didn't specify if it was GOG's decision or localization team that made that call. "We decided" might as well refer to contractors
I will tell you, in 99% of cases it is the localization team that bring it up because they deal with that stuff on a daily basis. It might be contractors or in-house.
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u/SechsComic73130 Jul 13 '26
(except those in Germany, curiously enough)
False, they only blocked it for German , not Germany.
If you live in Germany and used English, you'd've still gotten the Newsletter with the Nazi symbol.
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u/titanna1004 Jul 13 '26
Sending these emails was probably mistake. Someone missed a brain cell to spot game runic symbols could be so similar to racist symbols. Being a person to copy-paste ads and formatting stuff.
What was much meh of GoG back then - they tried to cover it, deny, then accuse others for. Instead simple "yes, that was a mistake, we admit, sorry, that was not the intention ofc and fuck nazis, we guci". Nah, they felt guilty of liking nazi runes? That directly imply - they do like these? fuck what?
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u/quyco789 Jul 13 '26
That is interesting bit of information.
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u/That-Advance-9619 Jul 13 '26
Links to the incident and official comments on it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1txmcyd/ts_gotta_be_racist_gog_explain/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1txsl6d/gog_statement_on_the_newsletter_from_the_forum/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1uq7qql/more_thorough_apology_and_denouncement_about_the/
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u/Underlord_Oberon Jul 13 '26
It's hard to define GOG's position on SKG. They historically are pro-consumer, but they also need to keep good relations with all other publishers to earn their trust and add more titles to their catalogue. They tend to be neutral if you ask me. Despite showing some support to SKG from time to time.
This should not change even after CD Projekt sold them.
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u/ShadowslnTheDark Jul 16 '26
CDPR is not the same company everyone knew with Witcher 3, they dont care about SKG or preserving games. They even sold GOG to one of the og founders of CDPR
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u/Plamcia Jul 13 '26
They sold GOG at December 2025. This is over half year old news. Currently owner of GOG is still supporting initiative.