GoG Helps Preserve Old Games with Free Digital Copies

While browsing the aisles of Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, or any other retailer, you’ll still probably stumble upon a small selection of physical copies of PC games in some dusty corner, where a handful of triple-A PC games like Diablo or Starcraft share shelf space with hidden object games and some match-three puzzler for people without smartphones and Windows 98 on their PC.

If you didn’t know about digital stores like Steam and GoG, you might assume PC gaming to really be dying. Fortunately, that’s not the case; it’s just the vast, vast majority of PC games never get a physical release. It’s all digital, which is both good and bad, but regardless is the way of the future.

GoG, then, is taking steps to make this transitional process as painless as possible for those of us with physical PC CD’s that might not last the turmoil of time—by giving the owners of those games the chance to claim a DRM-free digital copy of their game for their online library!

It’s simple: you go to GoG.com, then to 'reclaim', and you punch in the product key on the box of your purchased game—then, if that game is eligible for the program, you get it on your GoG library, no questions asked, no fees paid. How awesome is that?

Not that awesome, actually—right now the list of games this system works for is nothing short of piddling. While GoG promises more tiles in the future will be compatible with the new system, at the moment it only works with copies of Eador: Genesis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky, Mount & Blade: Warband and Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword.

But you know, I don’t think that actually matters that much. For our purposes, what’s interesting is that GoG is doing something really cool and not charging a cent for it. Bravo, GoG, for proving to be the nice guys alternative to Steam!