The rising value of videogames is a standard concern amongst those that play them—witness, for example, the upset over the prospect of an $80 Borderlands 4. However what when you assume video games do not value sufficient? What when you, the involved shopper, need to pay extra? Now you can just do that on GOG, which has carried out a brand new system that permits customers to donate to the positioning prefer it’s a charity or one thing.
The donation system (it strikes me as extra of a tipping system, though that is splitting hairs), dropped at our consideration by Reddit, is basically fairly easy: Once you go to pay to your buy, a separate window provides you the choice to kick in slightly further, in preset quantities or no matter you are feeling like paying.
“Hold recreation preservation alive,” it says. “Videogame preservation is an ongoing effort. Any extra quantity you add to this order helps to fund fixes, ports, and DRM-free releases.”
The donations are tied to GOG’s Preservation Program, which goals to maintain previous video games working on new {hardware} even after they’re now not supported by their unique builders, however the choice to pay further applies to new video games in addition to previous: I tossed Larian’s sensible, groundbreaking RPG Divine Divinity into my cart, after which the also-pretty-good Baldur’s Gate 3, and in each circumstances I used to be requested if I needed to pony up a pair bucks (or extra!) for the trigger.
All of it appears slightly bizarre to me. GOG has by no means been an enormous moneymaker for CD Projekt, but it surely retains its head above water. Extra to the purpose although, it isn’t my drawback if it does not, proper? It isn’t Save the Whales or an underpaid server at Benny’s Beer and Burgers—it is a for-profit distribution platform run by one of the vital profitable recreation studios in Europe, an organization that pulls in thousands and thousands of {dollars} in revenue each quarter, even with none new video games to launch. I am gonna donate to them?
I used to be thus genuinely shocked by the reception of the brand new donation characteristic on Reddit. As a substitute of a pointy slapdown of the greedy hand, most respondents (and there are admittedly not many at this level) appear blissful about it; just a few have already donated, and one individual truly expressed hope for extra methods to donate that do not have to be tied to a recreation buy—simply give ’em cash for the hell of it, I suppose.
Honest sufficient, I suppose. I am not against preordering video games and I believe Kickstarters may be nice, so if you wish to fork over much more of your hard-earned inexperienced to giant, rich firms for no explicit motive besides that they are asking properly, nicely, have at it.
I believe I cannot, nonetheless: I actually dig GOG, however the CD Projekt Group reported income of greater than $120 million in 2024—I reckon it might squeeze a couple of dollars out of that to maintain the lights on if it actually must.
