Physical PC games could make a comeback thanks to GOG: “I really hope that we’ll be able to do it”
(Image credit: GOG)
Tangible games are gradually vanishing from consoles, and they have essentially been extinct on PC for many years. GOG strives to keep vintage games thriving in a digital, DRM-free format, but the team behind the online marketplace has larger ambitions. They aim to enable you to purchase physical editions of any game in the store, and although a series of legal and logistical challenges hinder that from occurring, there remains optimism that the vision will materialize.
“Ideally, my ambition would be to be able to purchase tangible copies of those games on GOG,” Marcin Paczynski, GOG’s senior business development and partnerships manager, informs GamesRadar+. “You approach your shelf on GOG, you select the game you’d like to receive a physical edition of, you order it, and it arrives at your door. That would be an ideal situation.”
Custom-made tangible PC games? That sounds like a fantasy to me as well. However, the reason it hasn’t come to fruition is that it’s “a very, very intricate undertaking” to establish a business around. Even for a well-established store like GOG, managing a retail operation centered on physical merchandise is “completely distinct from what we are currently engaged in,” Paczynski notes.
“Since we are discussing tangible media, we must contemplate logistics,” he clarifies. “We need to consider storage.” Additionally, GOG would require “extra approvals” from publishers in order to distribute these games physically.
“This is a concept that has been circulating around GOG for years now,” Paczynski expresses, “and still, I sincerely hope that eventually, we will be able to achieve it. We’ll see.”
For the time being, GOG aspires that its new initiative of maintaining classic big boxes with 3D models and box art you can print and assemble yourself will delight collectors, but admittedly, it’s not quite equivalent to receiving a beautifully, professionally crafted package with a game inside. “We are making incremental progress in that direction,” as Paczynski puts it,
