december 15 2014 type subsidiary founded july 10 2008 ; 8 years ago 2008 07 10 1 headquarters nicosia cyprus no . of locations 2 offices area served worldwide managing director guillaume rambourg owner cd projekt parent cd projekt website gog.com written in php c alexa rank 2 728 december 2015 update 2 type of site digital distribution advertising no registration required available in english russian french german portuguese launched august 1 2008 ; 8 years ago 2008 08 01 1 current status active native client s on microsoft windows os x linux logo from 2008 to 2014 gog.com formerly good old games is a distribution service for video games and films operated by gog limited a wholly owned subsidiary of cd projekt based in nicosia cyprus with an office in warsaw poland . 3 gog.com delivers video games through its drm free digital platform for microsoft windows os x and linux . in march 2012 it began selling more recent titles such as alan wake assassin s creed and the metro redux series among many others . 4 5 contents 1 history 1.1 launch of good old games 1.2 marketing stunt and relaunch 1.3 os x and linux support 1.4 expansion to drm free video 1.5 policies 1.6 gog galaxy 1.7 gog connect 2 features 3 market share 4 publishing agreements 5 references 6 external links history edit launch of good old games edit in 1994 marcin iwi ski and micha kici ski founded cd projekt . they originally imported games from wholesalers in america to sell in poland . 6 in late 2008 cd projekt launched gog.com under the moniker good old games . the initial goal was to release classic games to a modern audience without digital rights management restrictions . 7 marketing stunt and relaunch edit during a period of days from september 19 to 22 2010 the gog.com website was disabled leaving behind messages on the web site and their twitter accounts that the site had been closed . 8 a spokesman for good old games reiterated that the site is not being shut down and confirmed news would be forthcoming about changes to the service . 9 a clarification posted on the site on september 20 2010 said they had to shut down the site temporarily due to business and technical reasons with industry journalists believing the shutdown may be related to the nature of drm free strategy based on twitter messages from the company . 10 on september 22 2010 gog.com revealed that this shutdown was a marketing hoax as part of the site coming out of beta . 11 12 the site s management aware of the reactions to the fake closure stated first of all we d like to apologize to everyone who felt deceived or harmed in any way by the closedown of gog.com . as a small company we don t have a huge marketing budget and this is why we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz around an event as big as launching a brand new version of our website and even more important bringing back baldur s gate to life 11 the site returned on september 23 2010 with an improved storefront and additional benefits as outlined during a webcast presentation . 13 during the presentation gog.com s co founder marcin iwinski and managing director guillaume rambourg had dressed as monks to atone for their sins . 14 the relaunch of the site was considered by rambourg to have been successful having brought new customers that were previously unaware of gog.com . 15 as promised after its relaunch gog.com was able to offer several black isle studios games such as baldur s gate planescape torment and icewind dale which have previously been unreleased through any download service due to legal issues between the ownership of dungeons & dragons related games between atari hasbro and other companies . 16 17 on march 27 2012 good old games announced that it was branching out to feature aaa and independent titles in addition to older games . the site was rebranded to gog.com . 18 os x and linux support edit in october 2012 gog.com was announced to be bringing drm free games to os x. this included the previously steam exclusive os x version the witcher and the witcher 2 both made by cd projekt red . gog.com gathered user feedback in a community wishlist and one of the most demanded feature requests was support for native linux games which gathered close to 15 000 votes before it was marked as in progress . 19 originally gog.com representatives said that there are technical and operational issues which make it harder than it seems 20 however it s something they would love to do and they have been looking at . 21 on march 18 2014 gog.com officially announced that they would be adding support for linux initially targeting ubuntu and linux mint in the fall of 2014 . 22 on july 25 2014 linux support was released early and 50 games were released compatible with the operating system . 23 several of the launch titles included games that were newly compatible with linux while most of the games already supported downloads made for the operating system on other distribution platforms . expansion to drm free video edit on august 27 2014 gog.com announced the launch of the new addition to their service distribution of drm free films . 24 gog.com offers drm free downloading in mp4 format and streaming of video in standard and drm free html fashion which doesn t bind users to any specific platforms or devices . the movies are made available in full hd 1080p 720p and 576p for limited bandwidth or download quotas ; however a few titles do not have the full hd 1080p format available . gog.com started with adding 21 documentaries about internet culture and gaming . they also have plans for adding fiction films and series ; according to gog.com s managing director guillaume rambourg they were in talks with many major studios . while studios representatives liked the idea they also were reluctant to let go of their current drm approach until some other major studio would make the first step . still gog.com plan to work on overcoming the initial reluctance and moving drm free video forward . 25 policies edit on december 9 2013 gog.com introduced a money back guarantee for the first 30 days if a customer faces unresolvable technical problems with a bought game . 26 27 beginning april 2 2015 gog.com began to offer drm free downloads to holders of game keys from boxed copies of select games whose drm validation systems no longer operate ; 28 examples are the s.t.a.l.k.e.r. series and the master of orion series . 29 over 800 000 of retail game purchases have been redeemed through this system until 2016 . 30 gog galaxy edit in the cd projekt red company update in june 2014 gog.com announced that it would be bringing a steam like client gog galaxy to windows mac and linux platforms . the client is designed as a storefront software delivery and social network client allowing players to buy and play games from gog.com and share them with friends . galaxy is also going to include an original multiplayer api allowing developers to include the same kind of multiplayer functionality in gog.com versions of games as on steam . the client is optional and will retain the drm free objective of the gog.com website . 31 on october 15 2014 the open multiplayer beta of the gog galaxy client was started accompanied by the giveaway of alien vs predator . 32 in july 2015 the gog galaxy beta client was reviewed favorably by the pc gamer magazine especially noting the focus on user respect in comparison to a competing client . 33 gog connect edit revealed in june 2016 gog connect enables users with both gog.com and steam accounts to claim certain games they already own on steam as part of their gog.com library allowing them to download the drm free version and other bonus items for that game offered by gog.com . not all such games are part of this offer as it requires gog.com to work with the game publishers to enable this . further the time to claim such games will be limited though once a user has claimed their game on gog.com it otherwise remains in their library indefinitely . 34 features edit the offered digital goods video games and movies can be purchased and downloaded online and they are distributed without digital rights management . 35 the prices of products typically range from about 5 to 10 for older games along with special offers in sales held several times a week . some newer titles have a higher price . gog.com s digital products can also be given to other persons via redeemable gift certificates . 36 the user does not have to install special client software to download or run the games 37 although a download manager which is due to be phased out 38 and the gog galaxy client which is currently in beta are available . after downloading the customer is free to use the software for any personal use like installing on multiple devices 39 archiving on any personal storage media for unlimited time modding and patching ; with the restriction that reselling and sharing is not permitted . 40 the software installers are technically independent of the customer s gog.com account although still subject to gog.com s eula where a licensed not sold formulation is used . 40 the licensed not sold model frequently raises questions of ownership of digital goods . 41 in the european union the european court of justice held that a copyright holder can not oppose the resale of a digitally sold software in accordance with the rule of copyright exhaustion on first sale as ownership is transferred and questions therefore the licensed not sold eula . 42 43 44 45 46 47 in order to ensure compatibility with newer versions of operating systems and current pc hardware games are pre patched and restored by gog.com . this is achieved either by bundling such games with open source emulation or compatibility software such as scummvm and dosbox or by source code adaption . 48 additional compatibility fixes are included if required sometimes coming from the game community itself community made patch . 49 examples of games which have such additional fixes are outcast 50 51 52 or dungeon keeper 2 . 53 along with the games customers are also able to download numerous extra materials relating to the game they purchased . often these extras include the game s soundtrack partly as flac 54 wallpapers avatars and manuals . gog.com also offers full customer support for all purchases and a money back guarantee for the first 30 days . 26 promotions are organized regularly . the style of these promotions varies from a discount for products that are bought in bundles to thematic competitions like riddles guess a game from a picture contests or best time on a specific level . also gog.com gives away promotion codes for a game with review contests . market share edit as gog.com does not typically release absolute game selling numbers market share considerations of gog.com among the digital distributors are a challenge . but sometimes an individual game developer releases their internal statistics about the selling performance on different game distribution channels for their specific game . in an article dated november 11 2011 pc gamer reported statistics for online sales of the the witcher 2 . 55 according to pc gamer direct2drive impulse and gamersgate s combined sales were a total of 10 000 4 % 55 gog.com sold 40 000 copies 16 % 55 while steam sold in the same time period 200 000 copies 80 % . 55 on