The new owner of GOG discusses taking on Steam, the devil of DRM, and following in Nightdive’s footsteps

Just after Christmas, the surprise news emerged that GOG, the DRM-free distribution platform focused on classic games, had been sold by Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED (CDPR). The buyer was Michał Kiciński, who co-founded CDPR alongside Marcin Iwiński back in 1994, but who left the firm well over a decade ago.

Originally known as Good Old Games, GOG was launched by CDPR in 2008, and although it still retains its original dedication to distributing older titles, it now also distributes new games – like the controversial Horses from Santa Ragione, which both Steam and the Epic Games Store refused to feature on their storefronts.

But why did CDPR decide to sell GOG? Why did Kiciński buy it? And what does he intend to do with his new purchase? GamesIndustry.biz sat down with Kiciński and GOG’s managing director Maciej Gołębiewski to find out some answers.

Gołębiewski confirms that it was CD Projekt that initiated the sale, but adds that it didn’t come as a surprise to him. “We have different strategies. GOG has a different strategy, CDPR has their own strategy. So I think at this point it was really natural.”

The sale process itself was very competitive, although Kiciński says he still doesn’t know who he was bidding against to purchase GOG. “We suspect that there was a company from the United States, but we don’t know the name,” he says. “Until the very, very end, we were not sure if we would be on the winning side of the process.”

Looking at the numbers, GOG has never been a big breadwinner for CDPR. In the first half of 2025, it recorded a net profitability of -0.9%, compared to 35% for the CD Projekt group as a whole. It was a similar story for the 2024 financial year, when GOG recorded net profitability of 0.6%, while the overall group posted profitability of 47.7%.

It’s tempting to imagine that these weak figures were the reason why CDPR decided to offload GOG, but Kiciński disagrees. “I think the numbers were not the key point for CDPR to sell GOG,” he says. “That would be my speculation. I think that was more a strategic decision, because it’s a very common business situation where you have two businesses, and one is much smaller than the other one. And it’s very natural that most of the resources go to the parts that generate bigger margins. So in that respect, it was not easy for GOG to be in the one group with CDPR, with their blockbusters and AAA games generating huge profits.”

NNw that GOG is fully independent, it has a chance to shine. “Right now, GOG can be the boss of its own destiny, and there are no priorities other than being successful on its own.”

But what made Kiciński want to purchase GOG? The main reason, he says, is that as the original founder of the company, he thinks it has massive growth potential. “I see opportunities more than negatives, that’s my nature, and I see huge opportunities for GOG to grow. And somebody might say that having a competitor like Steam with 80% of the market share is a huge obstacle, but to me it’s the opposite. I see: ‘Oh, there is one big competitor, it’ll be difficult for them to defend the market, because they already have 80%, so it should be easier to take the market from them.'”

But there were emotional reasons behind the investment, too. After all, GOG is his baby. “I still feel attached, even though I [haven’t been] here in the campus for the last probably 13 years,” says Kiciński, who is talking to us from the GOG boardroom. “It’s my first day at work since 2012 actually. I quit CDPR when the Cyberpunk teaser released. That was the last day I was in the office, when the teaser was published on YouTube.”

He didn’t want to see the company being destroyed through the M&A process, which he notes often doesn’t end well for the firm being acquired. “I wanted to avoid the situation where GOG will be swallowed by some very big corporation, and then the user database will be transferred, and the company will be closed down, or the team will be fired. This trend of consolidation is very visible in the gaming industry, and I don’t think it’s very positive.”

But there’s also a patriotic element to the purchase. “I think that it’s good that GOG is based in Poland,” says Kiciński. “It’s a Polish company, it’s a European company, and it helps to have bigger diversity in the gaming market. We have a very active games development scene… somebody counted more than 600 development teams operating in Poland. And GOG can be a very natural supporter of the efforts of those development teams.”

Taking on Steam

How does Kiciński hope to compete against Steam’s near monopoly of the PC market? He thinks it’s about doubling down on what GOG is already good at. “GOG has its own strengths and really should focus on maintaining them and even strengthening them. There is no need to try to be like the others. GOG has its own identity and its own uniqueness, which is very much appreciated by gamers.”

However, he does see room for improvement in terms of adding better content and faster infrastructure, as well as more reliable and easier-to-use software. “Steam is winning with its ease of use,” he says. “In that regard, I think much can be done in GOG without losing its core values and the way it operates in general.”

“Steam is obviously a Goliath,” adds Gołębiewski. “So for any company to try to tackle Steam is a very hard battle. We’ve seen Discord launch their store, we’ve seen Epic Games launch their store – and thanks to the lawsuit with Apple, we know how much it has cost them to launch this battle against Steam. So the fact that GOG is expanding, developing, and still kicking, I think it’s a testament to the fact that GOG really has its space on the market with its mission of making games live forever.

“Whenever a company is trying to win a market, it needs to just be better at a certain segment. In the case of GOG, that is classics and modern classics. Our aim and our vision is to just simply provide a superior service.

“GOG really has its space on the market with its mission of making games live forever”

Maciej Gołębiewski

“Steam is doing an awesome job, but they have different values. I’m not sure what their mission is and what they stand for, but certainly we can do more for classic retro and modern classics in terms of accessibility, in terms of discoverability. But it’s not a competition in the fullest sense, because you don’t want to wrestle with Goliath, right? You need to have a different idea.”

Would edging into Steam’s market share necessarily mean that GOG will start focusing more on newer games? “If you look at the best games of 2025, I’m not saying that all of them are on GOG, but some of them are, and each year we are getting better at getting new games,” says Gołębiewski, pointing to titles like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Clair Obscur, and Hollow Knight: Silksong being available on GOG. “There’s more and more independent studios that are willing to work with independent stores.”

Kiciński adds that GOG isn’t aiming to compete on AAA titles: “It’s not the GOG way.” He sees the future as being about greater collaboration with smaller developers and publishers, rather than “competing for AAA smash hits and competing with prices.” That said, GOG does offer regular sales, and it does have a few AAA titles in the form of CDPR’s back catalogue – a key component of the buyout deal was that these get to stay on GOG for the next six years. “I doubt that will ever change, because it’s a good business for CDPR, given that they have such great royalty rates,” says Kiciński. Indeed, the terms of the deal mean that CDPR gets preferential rates for its games – Kiciński notes that if fans want to support CDPR, GOG gives a bigger share to the developer than any other store.

On the subject of royalty rates, Gołębiewski says that GOG’s are set on a case by case basis, rather than fixed at a standard rate. “The industry standard, the starting point, is the 70/30 split. And in most cases this is fair, but depending on the content, depending on the […] relationship, if both parties are happy with the business, we might entertain different setups. I would say that we are just more flexible here, and we really try to assess each contract individually.”

“This also means that certain games can have special treatment in GOG,” adds Kiciński. “GOG is a very curated platform. This is, I think, one of our strengths: we don’t release hundreds of games daily, 95% of which are really not super high quality. The game Warlock, for example, had a period of exclusivity on GOG and very good promotional coverage. So it helps more developers to reach good numbers, even though the market share of GOG is not that big.”

DRM be damned

One thing that has been a foundational pillar of GOG since the very beginning is its commitment to selling games that are free of DRM – that is, piracy-prevention technology that requires things like online activation or account linking – and Kiciński is adamant that this will continue. “This is a core value of GOG, and there’s no signs that it might die in any visible future. This is not only an ethical value, but it’s also very pragmatic. It helps people to enjoy games no matter what happens with the software provided by the platform or what internet connection they have.”

“Most corporate people, they make plain stupid decisions”

Michał Kiciński

This issue of access is something that has been raised in the public consciousness recently through the efforts of the Stop Killing Games campaign, and Kiciński is committed to letting players enjoy games “whenever you like – and nobody can take it away from you.” He criticises recent trends where the gaming world seems to be going in the other direction, “where you pay full price, but your rights are more as somebody who rents the game. I experienced this a few times in my life where some games disappeared from my library, and I have no bloody idea why. So GOG is against that, and it’s a part of consumer-centric friendly politics.

“And also there are other practicalities. Since the very beginning, we haven’t seen DRM as a solution for piracy, because the games get pirated anyway, nearly day one. We see DRM as something which can make the life of a legal customer more difficult. The only reason to keep it alive can be to please the owners of the games, because that’s their requirement quite often.”

In that sense, have publishers refused to do business with GOG as a result of its insistence on making games DRM-free? “Of course,” says Gołębiewski, although he notes that it’s a less controversial issue now than it was in the past. “We’ve lost some, we’ve gained some. Probably there are also some developers that actually choose to work with us because of this philosophy.” He makes the point that from a preservationist standpoint, “the less third-party software around the game, the better for its longevity.”

Kiciński has little time for publishers that insist on DRM. “Most corporate people, they make plain stupid decisions. I had firsthand experience of this with The Witcher 2, where our own publisher sued us.” CDPR sent out an update to The Witcher 2 after release that removed the DRM, which prompted Bandai Namco to take legal action. “They couldn’t understand that it [wasn’t harming] their business because the game was already pirated. But they were not sensitive to the voices of gamers complaining that the DRM was causing some errors or slowing down the game.”

The future of GOG

Given GOG’s historically low profit margins, we’re intrigued as to whether the new management will be happy to continue coasting along at minimal profit levels, or whether the plan is to boost profitability. “Obviously, the aim of every company is to be healthy,” says Gołębiewski. “So, for sure, the idea for GOG is to grow, be healthy, and have healthy profit margins that allow the company to expand.”

“I’m exactly on the same page,” says Kiciński. “Being a healthy company means having healthy results.” But he adds that money won’t be the main motivating factor, and instead the focus is to “do a good job, have good products and good services, and then as a consequence and as a reward comes good money.” It’s a point that he thinks is obvious, “but many companies fall apart on that, putting the spreadsheets first.”

It helps that GOG isn’t immediately under pressure to repay huge loans. Kiciński still owns just under 10% of CDPR, and has previously appeared on the Forbes list of the 100 richest Poles – hence he was able to purchase GOG using his own personal fortune. Just yesterday, he paid over the agreed $25.3 million to CDPR.

So GOG enters its newly independent phase on firm financial footing, but there are still some question marks lingering over its future direction. When GamesIndustry.biz spoke to GOG’s head of business development, Bartosz Kwietniewski, at Gamescom in August last year, he intimated that GOG was interested in buying up old IPs and creating its own remasters of old games, in a similar way to the Atari-owned Nightdive Studios.

“If we were the actual owners of these IPs, we would not only fix them, bring them back, we would probably remaster them, do them justice,” Kwietniewski told us. “I think what Nightdive is doing is the perfect example of what we would like to embark on: have these IPs, bring them to your engine, make them work, play better than ever, potentially do a spiritual successor of the game, or maybe even a new installment of the game, like what they’re doing with System Shock.”

Given that Kiciński has only just been installed as the new owner, the company still hasn’t decided whether it will definitely continue to proceed in this direction. “It will take some time for us to align our plans,” says Gołębiewski. “If you had asked me two weeks ago, I would probably have given you the same answer as Bartosz did during Gamescom: that it only feels natural for GOG to expand on its business model and get even closer to the value creation, to the creative side of things for gamers. Today, I would say that we need to talk, and I hope it will be only natural.”

“It’s very close to what I’ve said about development and publishing, being close to those processes,” adds Kiciński. We have a very big talent pool in Poland in that regard. So it feels very natural to grow in that direction, but it’s too early to say any concrete things.”

Of course, following in Nightdive’s footsteps would be no easy task, and would require considerable investment in building up an internal studio. “That’s why probably it has to be taken step by step,” says Kiciński. “We [haven’t discussed] any big steps as of now, but the direction is there, I would say. […] And the talent pool is there – and by there, I mean here in Poland. For sure, there’s a lot of work to build this offering, but I think we can do it.”