Today, GOG announced on their Twitter account that they are launching the GOG Preservation Program, a new initiative which seeks to restore old titles to working order in an effort to “make games live forever.”
To this effort, GOG also released updated versions of 100 classic titles from their catalog, promising “updated, improved, or quality-tested builds” for games like Fallout: New Vegas, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, and the original Diablo. GOG plans to continue to bolster the ranks of the Preservation Program going forward, updating and re-releasing additional older games, be they new classic titles or entries from their own already-impressive library.
In the wake of the US Copyright Office taking a hard stance against the remote access of games for archival purposes, GOG seems to be taking a more market-friendly approach to the idea of video game preservation. Seeing as the platform was originally founded with this very concern in mind (GOG itself is an acronym for “Good Old Games,” after all) it does feel like an important way for CD Projekt Red to cement the place of its distribution platform in the overall online gaming ecosystem.
On a personal note, I’m just happy to know that I can keep putting countless hours into Heroes of Might and Magic III no matter what kind of hardware I’m running!
You can find out more about GOG’s Preservation Program here.
