‘You don’t want to wrestle Goliath’: GOG bosses say the aim is not to defeat Steam, but better it in certain areas

The owner and managing director of GOG say the store’s aim is not to challenge and defeat Steam, but to specialise in certain areas and do them better than Valve’s shopfront.

Last month CD Projekt sold GOG.com to its co-founder Michał Kiciński, who bought 100% of the shares for PLN 90.7 million ($25.2m).

GOG is focused on DRM-free digital games, including modern releases and the preservation of classic games, and had operated within Witcher and Cyberpunk owner CD Projekt for over 17 years.

In recent years the company has championed its Preservation Program, a venture designed to ensure that classic games remain playable on modern PCs forever, even after their developers have stopped supporting them.

In a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Kiciński and managing director Maciej Gołębiewski were asked how GOG hopes to compete against Steam and its near-monopoly of the PC market.

Kiciński replied that attempting to match Steam like-for-like would be a bad idea, because GOG has already established itself as a storefront that goes in a different direction, thanks to its focus on older games and its pledge to release its games DRM-free.

“GOG has its own strengths and really should focus on maintaining them and even strengthening them,” Kiciński said. “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.”

Despite this, he claimed that Steam “is winning with its ease of use”, and that when it comes to improving his own company’s user experience he believes “much can be done in GOG without losing its core values”.

Gołębiewski added that taking on Steam head-on would be an extremely costly risk, which is why GOG should focus more on being the best at curating older games.

“Steam is obviously a Goliath,” he explained, “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.

“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.”

The total number of games in GOG’s Preservation Program currently stands at 267, with the newest additions including Rayman 2, Screamer, Cold Fear and four Total War collections.

The retailer plans to eventually add its entire catalogue of thousands of PC games, though stresses this will take time as each game requires a different process.