"There! I have you! You're completely dished. Do you not know that in the service, one must always choose the lesser of two weevils?" –Capt. Jack Aubrey

By the time I found (then) Good Old Games, it had been going for 5 years. Not "going strong", mind: just around. Basically, a site that re-sold abandonware. A place where you could buy a game you finished 10 years prior, like Crusader: No Remorse, Wing Commander, Fallout, Arcanum or Baldur's Gate 2, for a hit of genuine nostalgia.

Back then, the only thing it had going for it was the fact that whatever you bought you could play offline, without additional middleware, which set it apart from Origin and Steam. Not that anybody in their right mind considered GOG a competitor to either. It was a novelty. The charming, harmless upstart.

The game selection was miniscule, with titles dating back to the 90s or early 2000s and running self-contained, pre-configured DOSBox executables. Customer service was easy to get a hold of and the community was split evenly between being helpful and plain happy they could play something (then) modern operating systems oftentimes no longer supported.

There were some problems with getting games to run properly, but between tech support and the community, most issues could be worked around.

It was a simpler time.

Back in those days, I didn't know the service was owned by CDPR (the studio resposible for the Witcher series, Gwent, and – lately – Cyberpunk 2077). To me, GOG was just my sole connection to gaming.

As hardware outpaced the system requirements of old games and more and more titles kept pushing their publisher's "solution" to DRM (like Games for Windows Live, or — whatever Rockstar bundled L.A. Noire with), it was refreshing to be able to visit one storefront, pay one price, and get one game – no strings attached. GOG became the go-to for (let's be honest) my gaming habit (while I am not the worst offender, by far, neither do I indulge in the delusion that owning over a hundred of anything is still "just a hobby").

While I mostly bought things I had already played, every now and again I'd try out some new indie title or an older game I'd missed on release (with varying degrees of contentment). But I remained a loyal customer and everything worked As Advertised: GOG provided, I played — everyone was happy.

Then came the Transitional Period.

With the overwhelming success of Witcher 2 and 3, GOG's acquisition budget ballooned and the service started expanding. First, and most welcome, came not-quite-as-old, but definitely Good and Gamey additions to the catalogue, in the form of triple-A and smaller, indie titles. With games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Dying Light, DeusEx, Knights of the Old Republic or Brutal Legend GOG still wasn't closing the gap on Steam or Origin (not exactly) but it was becoming a Serious Game Service in its own right. Being able to buy Dying Light (with its excellent expansion and assorted DLCs) in one shop, and then play it via LAN with like-minded barnyard animals was a hoot!

On top of the expanded catalogue came money-back guarantees (which eventually grew into a full-refund for 30 days, whether you play the game or not); Linux support for some titles, DRM-free videos (which, I read somewhere, were supposed to evolve into movies and TV shows from Big Time Studios but – never did); and the announcement of a little something called GOG Galaxy.

The forums were still chock-full of helpful, happy people. You could still get in direct contact with tech support who (sometimes) solved your issue or, at the very least, refunded a game that Just Wouldn't Work.

I was still as happy as a pig in mud. Modern titles that had previously been out of reach? For me to own? No strings attached? That I could play offline, or via LAN with friends? Bliss.

But, like most good things in life, it didn't last.

See, behind the scenes (or, at least, off to the side of 'em), the newly cash-injected CDPR/GOG was Making Strides – bad, anti-Pig-carefreely-enjoying-DRM-free-games Strides – which dropped one innocuous day in 2014 in the form of (imagine a tense pause here, or a peal of thunder, or that three-note, dun-dun-dun they used to play before someone Revealed Something Dramatic) GOG Galaxy.

Now, I may just be a small-town, country pig (that's definitely no lawyer), but – to me – a platform touted for being anti-DRM, that went so far as to create an anti-digital rights management program called "FCK DRM", dropping what is essentially the same DRM-like-middleware as its competitors, seems somewhat — antithetical... And subversive. And underhanded. Downright disappointing. And annoying.

But GOG personnel were quick to reassure users that Galaxy – far from being mandatory – was an entirely optional addition. If you didn't want to install it – fine! Nobody would make you. Your games would still work As Advertised and not using Galaxy would in no way affect your gaming experience...

Then, gradually, offline updates got second-billing to Galaxy releases: they arrived slower – sometimes by hours, sometimes by days. Incremental patches got sidelined in favor of having to re-download an entire game updated to the latest version (which is fine if your gaming tastes run to Bioforge, at 102 Mbs; but less-so if, say, you can't patch Cyberpunk 2077 and have to re-download over 100 Gigs' worth of files).

On top of the Galaxy drop, Odd Things started happening to the service.

Review-tweaking became common practice (where GOG personnel would de-rank negative reviews for a release, pushing 'em to the end of the queue where they were harder to notice; or delete them outright).

Tech support grew increasingly inadequate to the complexity of newer releases (in 7 non-refund interactions that required some actual know-how, they didn't solve a single issue); but at least you could still get a hold of them if you needed a refund.

The forums turned a bit jaded, with some users posting complaints about their games not running, some offering helpful advice, and the remainder taking a well-deserved day away from collecting tolls on bridges.

But, hey, GOG was still selling games you could play DRM-free (so long as you only did it in single player, as most subsequent releases required Galaxy for multiplayer support); and the game library kept growing with newer, Big Name titles like Fallout: New Vegas, X3, Mechwarrior 5, Life is Strange or Homeworld. And, anyway, it wasn't like you could close your account without losing access to everything you'd bought. Users like myself who had flocked to GOG because of its DRM-free boasts had effectively been bait-and-switched into supporting a sometimes-DRM platform.

Which brings us to today.

GOG's list of games is more extensive than ever, with over 7,000 games available. From delicious, indie titles like Disco Elysium, Mutant Year Zero, and Ring Runner to big, triple-A productions like Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Evil Within 2 or Mad Max, there is something for everyone here. And with frequent sales, markdowns, and free offers – you can often get it at a favorable price.

For a truly DRM-free experience, however, you are limited to single player only. Most games that had a multiplayer component have been hard-coded to use Galaxy for a connection. Equally annoying is the second-rate-citizen status awarded to users who don't use Galaxy. In Cyberpunk 2077, which offered a few items as thanks to people who bought the game, only Galaxy users could actually get them (which is odd, because non-Galaxy users spent the exact same amount of money; where's the thanks for that?).

The patching trend remains the same, with offline patches relegated to the backseat and having to download entire patched games the only reliable way of keeping your games up-to-date.

Tech support is – gone: secreted away behind a chatbot SO annoying, just trying to open a ticket with it without getting redirected to a list of useless FAQs is a Herculean Feat. Honestly – I'm fairly tech-savvy – but in four attempts of just trying to submit a ticket, I was successful once – and I honestly couldn't tell you HOW.

The forums are very hit and miss. Some games have nothing but pages upon pages of rants and complaints, while others retain a dedicated core of Genuinely Helpful users. It just depends. But any sense of an overarching "community" is pretty much gone. I hardly ever post anymore. It's not worth the aggravation.

What started out as a promising service opposed to the status quo has evolved into Just Another Origin or Steam – with the sole difference being that if you play by your lonesome, you can skip installing the middleware.

GOG's game selection, while still not up to the newest releases, is broad and varied enough to guarantee something for everybody. So long as you don't mind the offline-only limitation, there are plenty of Great Games available here.

For those of you looking for a community of like-minded gamers to interact with – there are a few Good Folks on the GOG forums, but whether the amount of bile you'll have to wade through to find them is worth it is — debatable.

For those of you who are looking for reliable tech support– Run.

I wish I could honestly say that I keep using GOG because it's a Great Service. In truth, though, it's simply a Known Quantity: something I've used for years, with benefits that – to an extent – still outweigh its faults. I keep toying with the idea of just downloading what I "own", closing my account and giving it all a rest, but – with no viable alternative – that would probably mean turning my back on gaming altogether. Something I'm not sure I want to do. Not just yet.

So, for now at least, I remain a GOG customer. Because, to paraphrase Captain Jack: "it's the lesser of (three) weevils."

Pig Recommends:

Listing every game mentioned in this article would make for A Very Long List Indeed, so let's just say that – Gwent aside (which I never played the standalone version of – only the one in Witcher 3) – every other game in this article is Worth Your Time. I'm not saying I would recommend every one of 'em to everyone (wouldn't try to push a sim on someone who enjoys puzzles); but if the genre agrees with you, the game will as well.