• Interview
• Video

GOG devs talk piracy, the history of DRM, and the future of games

From getting developers to trust the store to what happens to games with DRM in the future, we talk about it all.

Sam Chandler

January 26, 2023 10:00 PM

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Spend any amount of time playing video games these days and you’re bound to run into some form of DRM. Whether it’s forced updates, online-checks, or something else, games aren’t as easy to play on your own terms as they once were. We recently had the pleasure of speaking with GOG about DRM, piracy, and everything in between. Please, take a look at this special double video.

We sat down with Marcin Paczyński the Senior Business Development Manager and Bartosz Kwietniewski the Head of Business Development at GOG. During our discussion, we talked about DRM, what it meant originally and how it has impacted legitimate buyers. Paczyński spoke to how some forms of DRM have actually prevented paying players from being able to even play the games.

However, what’s interesting is hearing about how developers used to incorporate a sort of DRM into their games before there was even a term for it. One example that Paczyński used was a game that included a cypher in the box that you had to use in order to input the correct code to travel to a planet. It basically ensured that the person playing the game had a legitimate copy containing a manual and not just a CD-ROM rip.

In this second part, Shacknews Head of Video Production Greg Burke asks about how the team at GOG convince game developers to give them DRM-free codes. Part of the answer to this question involved pointing out torrents on well-known piracy platforms. According to Paczyński, at one point a game that released on a competitor’s platform before GOG had in fact more seeds for illegal downloading than the GOG one. Paczyński believes that the supporters and users of the GOG platform have the same principles and values that game developers do.

There is a lot of great insight offered by Paczyński and Kwietniewski in these two interviews, so take some time to check them out. For more developer interviews, subscribe to the GamerHubTV YouTube channel and then there’s the Shacknews channel for exclusive gameplay, reviews, and more!

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler