GOG has revealed the latest games that they are adding to the GOG Preservation Program.
As they announced on their blog, they put a spotlight on two of these games, F.E.A.R. Platinum as well as Silent Hill 4: The Room. F.E.A.R. Platinum bundles the original game with its two add-ons, F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate.
As GOG explained, they have an informal mandate of sorts to now preserve this game after the closure of its developer, Monolith Productions. We did note that the other two F.E.A.R. games in GOG haven’t been added to the program alongside it, but they may still be working on that for now.
Silent Hill 4: The Room was added to GOG in 2020, and they have simply been updating their work on the PC version in the subsequent years. In the latest patch, they claim to have “Restored all missing hauntings for a complete gameplay experience.”
These other games were also added to the program:
- Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption
- Tomb Raider: Underworld
- Tomb Raider: Anniversary
- Tomb Raider: Legend
- Alone in the Dark: The Trilogy 1+2+3
- Ultima™ 1+2+3
- Ultima™ 4+5+6
- Ultima™ 8 Gold Edition
- Wing Commander™ 1+2
- Deus Ex GOTY Edition
- Jagged Alliance 2
- Fallout 2
- Privateer 2: The Darkening
- Port Royale 3 Gold
- Alien Breed + Tower Assault
- Cannon Fodder
GOG seems to have leaned in on the value of the GOG Preservation Program. As we started noticing, it generates good publicity for the company, but that doesn’t mean that their intentions are insincere. Rather, their decision to launch this program created a new opportunity for GOG to once again communicate their values to the public.
Because, even some GOG users haven’t realized this yet, but the old games on their store were not just Steam versions of those games with the DRM stripped out. In fact, GOG has been making these games themselves, updating the files so that they work better with modern systems. This push for preservation that goes hand in hand with selling the preserved product itself is somewhat unique to GOG. Microsoft’s Backwards Compatibility Program, which was itself an impressive initiative that brought many old games back to the spotlight, doesn’t go as far as GOG does in promising future compatibility for future PCs.
And so, GOG definitely deserves the accolades they are getting for this program. If anything, most gamers still don’t fully appreciate what they’re doing, because even if they’ve heard of the GOG Preservation Program, they don’t know how far it actually goes. We hope very much that they can get even more developers on board to preserve games with them in the future.
