Physical games are slowly disappearing on consoles, and they've effectively been dead on PC for decades. GOG aims to keep old games alive in a digital, DRM-free format, but the people behind the online store have bigger goals in mind. They want to let you buy physical versions of any game in the store, and while a series of legal and logistical roadblocks stand in the way of that happening, there's still hope that the plan will come to fruition.
"Ideally, my dream would be to be able to buy physical versions of those games on GOG," Marcin Paczynski, GOG's senior business development and partnerships manager, tells GamesRadar+. "You go to your shelf on GOG, you click on the game that you would like to receive a physical copy of, you order it, and it gets to you. That would be a perfect scenario."
Made-to-order physical PC games? That sounds like a dream to me, too. But the reason it hasn't happened yet is that it's "a very, very complicated thing" to build a business around. Even for an established store like GOG, running a retail business focused on physical goods is "totally different from what we are currently doing," Paczynski says.
"Because we are talking about physical media, we need to think about logistics," he explains. "We need to think about storage." On top of that, GOG would need "additional approvals" from publishers in order to sell these games physically.
"This is an idea that has been floating around GOG for years now," Paczynski says, "and still, I really hope that at some point we will be able to do it. We'll see."
For now, GOG hopes that its new initiative of preserving classic big boxes with 3D models and box art you can print and build yourself will tickle collectors' collective fancy, but admittedly, it's not quite the same as getting a nice, professionally produced package with a game inside. "We are making small steps in that direction," as Paczynski puts it, but for now the dream of physical PC gaming making a comeback lives on.
In our full interview, Paczynski explains why "there is no game preservation with DRM"
