Polish digital game store GOG has built its business around bringing classic games back to life. For years, they have focused on restoring older titles that were designed for outdated computer systems and had become impossible to play. Since the company started 17 years ago, their mission has been to find ways to make these old favorites accessible again. However, the gaming landscape has changed significantly over time. Many games released during that period have become modern classics themselves, and GOG has expanded its collection to include them. Now, as time moves forward, a new and difficult challenge has emerged in the world of game preservation: figuring out how to save or revive multiplayer games that have been shut down.
Just this past week, for example, EA turned off the servers for BioWare’s multiplayer game Anthem. Without those servers, the game can no longer be accessed or played. This means that a project BioWare spent several years creating, and that many players spent years enjoying, has simply vanished. It has disappeared from existence entirely. This raises an important question: is this the type of game that GOG might be able to restore in the future?
I asked the company’s managing director, Maciej Gołębiewski, about this possibility during an interview. He replied that game preservation is a very complicated riddle. He explained that there are several major puzzles to solve. First, there is the issue of intellectual property and ownership. Second, there are the technical aspects of making the game work again. Finally, there is the challenge of making a game’s resurrection commercially viable. He noted that no one can do this work just for goodwill, because that is not how salaries get paid.
Gołębiewski added that resurrecting and bringing back multiplayer titles is something that is very complex and very difficult. However, he noted that it is clearly becoming a major topic of discussion among gamers, regulators, and publishers alike.
A large part of this conversation is being driven by consumer-led movements like Stop Killing Games and its European counterpart, Stop Destroying Games. These groups are petitioning governments and game companies in hopes of creating regulations that would stop live service games like Anthem from disappearing completely. The shutdown of Ubisoft’s cooperative driving game The Crew was the catalyst that started this movement.
Gołębiewski said there is a broader discussion to be had within the industry about what an end-of-life cycle looks like for games. He asked, what is a fair end-of-life cycle for a game? Should a game just be buried and killed so that no one can access it anymore? Should the people who spent five or seven years working on it be unable to look at their creation simply because the service was turned off? He believes that Stop Killing Games likely started this very interesting and complicated discussion out of frustration.
“At the same time, if we put too many barriers on game creators and what the end-of-life cycle looks like, we might get fewer games.”
He explained that the goal is to make games live forever. However, he warned that if too many barriers are placed on game creators regarding the end-of-life cycle, it might result in fewer games being made. People could become scared of the financial burden required to create, promote, and maintain a game for 10 or 20 years because a regulator said so. This could ultimately lead to fewer cool games available for gamers to enjoy.
Gołębiewski admitted that he does not have the perfect answer yet, but he believes it is good that the discussion is taking place.
There are glimpses of possible solutions in what games like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League have done. All active development and support for that game was stopped, but an offline mode was added to allow people to continue playing. Online cooperative play is still supported as well.
However, Anthem being a purely multiplayer game makes the situation more complicated because it must be played with other people. One obvious solution would be to let players host their own servers. In fact, we learned this week that private servers were apparently supported and working for Anthem very close to its release. Theoretically, this is possible, but it would require EA to salvage and restore the code and hand it over to the community. This is something that is less likely to happen.
It is also worth remembering what Gołębiewski said about making a game’s resurrection commercially viable. EA did not turn Anthem off because it was making money. They shut down the servers because there were not enough people playing to justify the cost of keeping them running. Why would a game restoration service like GOG take on that cost at the risk of a similar outcome? Why would GOG attempt to resurrect a game that no one would consider a classic? Nevertheless, the point of discussion remains: what should be done about live service games at the end of their lives?
GOG recently separated from CD Projekt, the company responsible for The Witcher and Cyberpunk games. GOG has been part of CD Projekt since its inception. The deal seems to have been mutually beneficial, allowing CD Projekt to focus on making games while GOG was freed from that all-encompassing focus. Nothing major is expected to change. GOG will still specialize in restoring and preserving games and offering them DRM-free. However, there are some new ideas for the future, such as a move into publishing indie games.
