New GOG owner and original cofounder at CD Projekt, Michał Kiciński, understands that digital storefronts like his own must act with taste and discretion – and that's exactly why GOG sold the horror game Horses when Steam and Epic wouldn't.
Developer Santa Ragione's surreal adventure game about riding humans like farm animals may have caused anxiety for those other guys, but Kiciński tells Eurogamer, "Curation is the privilege and prerogative of each platform. The difference here with Horses is that we've played the game and we thought it was very cool."
GOG managing director Maciej Gołębiewski adds that standing by Horses when GOG's competitors wouldn't was a "matter of freedom," explaining that, "We as a company are always ready to take a stand on values – our own and also what we believe are the right values for the industry."
He continues, "We believe in creative freedom, because once a company, through their own terms of service, decides what's good and what's not good – what's acceptable; what can be sold and what cannot be sold – it's a slippery slope from that point onward."
Ultimately, Horses dominated GOG's best-sellers list and earned Santa Ragione around $65,000 in two weeks, which the developer credits to "extraordinary coverage of the bans, GOG's public support, and a very positive reaction from players."
That's the GOG way, to give studios a chance to see where their unbridled creativity will lead them. Gołębiewski concludes that, "We obviously are a business and we do assess our risks," but "with Horses... [...] the game is obviously controversial but there's nothing there that should deem it couldn't be sold."
