Wrestling The Steam 'goliath,' Pulling A Nightdive, And Seeing Off... (2026)

In an industry whose most recent high-profile buyouts cost tens of billions of dollars, the December sale of GOG—for the relatively humble sum of around $25 million—might seem like barely a ripple in the pond. But the impact of the buyout was incommensurate with its cost. For years, GOG has marketed itself as the videogame storefront with values: preserving games, keeping them DRM-free, and letting you actually own them. But values have a tendency to fall by the wayside in the tumult of a corporate sale. Players were concerned.

But perhaps there's comfort to be taken from the fact that GOG's new boss is, quite literally, the same as the old boss. The store was acquired by Michał Kiciński, its original co-founder, under the explicit banner of preserving its integrity and mission statement.

"I think it has a very solid foundation as a company," Kiciński tells PC Gamer. "Good results, a very good brand—known, respected—with very clear values, and customers love it and stand behind it."

Plus, Kiciński has a sentimental attachment: "The less business[-y] reasons [for buying GOG] were: I'm kind of a parent of the company. I invented it back in 2005 together with Marcin Iwiński, and, for a moment, I was the first boss of the company… So I know the business. I know the company, and I didn't want it to be sold to, I don't know how to say it, to some random company." You know, the kind that might see all that chatter about DRM and game preservation as an obstacle to maximising profit.

The sale itself occurred in a remarkably compressed timeframe. "It was rather faster than it usually happens," says Kiciński. "Around September [2025], I found out that CD Projekt planned to sell GOG," recalls Kiciński, "so I joined the process around September." The next few months were a flurry: "It was quite an intensive few months: September, October, November, and especially December—the process was quite competitive."

Kiciński doesn't actually know who he was competing with for ownership of GOG—"We know only that there was one, probably big company competing with me," he says, and "some science shows" it was likely a US one—but he says he was concerned nevertheless. "I've seen some M&A [mergers and acquisitions] processes in the past, and I saw smaller companies being purchased by bigger companies, and then within a year or two disappear from the market.

"The database of customers was taken, the database of products was taken, teams were fired, things like that. I didn't wa

Source: PC Gamer