None Of This Digital Renting Stuff
Everybody and their dog are pretty sure that streaming is the future of gaming. You’ve heard it before: this is the last console generation, and everything afterwards will just be beamed directly to some bite-sized box without a hard drive or disc slot. Well, GOG doesn’t entertain such notions. Their entire platform is built on actual ownership and they don’t see this going away anytime soon.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, GOG’s own Lukasz Kukawski offered up his company’s perspective on this whole digital streaming enterprise. Kukawski stated that “Our stance in digital distribution is to own the games because they are DRM free, and for many gamers, this is very important.”
GOG’s business philosophy of DRM-free ownership flies in the face of game streaming. For people without a proper PC gaming rig, streaming is a useful alternative. Yet that core audience of serious gamers interested in ownership isn’t going anywhere. According to Kukawski, “streaming is more like renting a game.” For anyone exhausted by the rigors of DRM, streaming is a wholly unpalatable option. While GOG mostly caters to smaller and/or older titles and companies, their audience still represents a sizable chunk of the larger PC gaming landscape. Perhaps game streaming isn’t inevitable, after all.