Popular digital retro game store [Good Old Games (GOG)](https://gog.com/), does not _really_ care about vintage PC hardware fans. That is my conclusion after watching GOG evolve from a superb retro PC game fixer to a giant struggling to compete with the Steam and Epic game stores, thereby also catering to the needs of not so _Good Old_ gamers. GOG has been in trouble financially speaking a few times, especially combined with the botched Cyberpunk release, as [The Verge reports](https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/29/22808199/cd-projekt-gog-losses-restructuring-earnings-2021):
> GOG launched in 2008 as Good Old Games, a platform built around selling hard-to-find classic games without digital rights management or DRM. Since then, it’s expanded into a more all-purpose storefront selling new third-party games and internal studio CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, plus an online service called GOG Galaxy. But it’s also faced apparent financial problems before, laying off a reported 10 percent of its staff in 2019.
All-purpose storefront, selling new third-party games? That worked out really well didn't it? Or how about that new GOG Galaxy game launcher, a butt-ugly and pathetic attempt to emulate the even more butt-ugly Steam application that simply gets in my way when I want to play something. Luckily, there's still the option to download the _Good Old_ (ha!) single-binary installer.
Except that now we're facing a new problem: "old games"---that's subjective, right?---such as my beloved point & click horror adventure [Sanitarium](https://www.gog.com/game/sanitarium) now suddenly require Windows 7+ to play. It was originally released in 1998 and ran on Windows 95/98. If I download the file on my mac and use a simple USB stick to transfer it to my Win98 machine, I won't be able to extract it. I don't have a modern Windows machine: a 32-bit Windows XP is the best I can do. To add insult to injury, GOG does not provide Mac-compatible installers or even stupidly simple `.zip` files.
It gets worse. Most DOS games come packaged with DOSBox, an emulator that does its job relatively well. some adventure games come packaged with [ScummVM](https://www.scummvm.org/) (great!), opening up compatibility to multiple platforms. Except, well, the original platform a vintage gamer wants to run it on---you know, DOS?---won't work, because the GOG installer does not even come with the original `.exe` binary, as ScummVM only requires the data files.
That meant I had to download an illegal version of a game I just bought to get one file to run it on the original hardware. I'll let that sink in for a while.
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Thankfully, the [VOGONS Community](https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=48490) (_Very Old Games On New Systems_) stepped in and created [a digital DOS games retro PC compatibility sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jojqkdH47c7XarISYTFm6dnr6D4YdG5Q_MRJCxNP5eQ/edit#gid=0). The sheet comes with handy columns such as "How is the game packaged?", "How do I install the game on a DOS PC?" among with specs, and "how do I configure this game?". If you scroll down to "Gobliiins 1--3", it states _N/A. Necessary executables are not included._
Unfortunately, Sanitarium isn't on the list, and I should add it after I cursed my way through the installation process. No wonder that GOG is losing money. Is it too much to ask for a simple zip file with original files that can be opened on any operating system? I don't care for support, provide both if you're into self-unpacking Windows installers.
GOG used to make me [really, really happy](/post/2021/02/the-insanity-of-retro-game-collecting/). Nowadays, I only go there to buy something during a sale if I can't easily get it elsewhere. That said, "elsewhere" isn't a great option for PC gamers either: I've had second hand floppy disks fail on me, I've bought scratched-up and thus unreadable CD-ROMs, and I've tried ignoring outrageous prices of older big box PC games.
Even worse, GOG is silently removing games from their digital shelf. Seminal first-person dungeon crawler _Ultima Underworld_ was no longer available. It was just... gone. Why? I have no clue. Rights management gone wrong? And we're not talking about an insignificant release here: _Underground_ was---and is---a big deal, a huge milestone in computer role playing games. And then, suddenly, in August last year, it returned, and was free until September. Why? I have no clue.
Remember, digital purchases mean squat. [Keep it physical bro](/post/2021/05/re-is-collecting-physical-games-worth-it/).
