Following the change of government, consumer perception of copyright in Poland remained largely the same, making it difficult for legitimate sellers of electronic media; pirated and bootlegged versions were often sold in open markets right next to boxed copies of legitimate items, but for a fraction of the cost.

[5] CD Projekt was founded by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński in 1994 for the purpose of trying to bring legitimate sales of foreign game titles into Poland, knowing they would have no easy way to compete against pirated copies.

They would obtain import rights from foreign publishers, and where possible, provide in-game localization for text and voice lines, typically through reverse engineering to decompile the game's code.

They would then package the game with localized instruction manuals and other physical goodies, hoping that the added features would draw buyers away from pirated copies.

As their past work had been strictly on personal computers, the company accepted to try to port it, but the project fell through before it was completed.

This eventually proved fruitful, as it ultimately granted the company the rights to The Witcher video game series.

CD Projekt saw potential to look back at their distribution days to offer DRM-free versions of classic games through digital distribution, using their past experience in reverse engineering to make the games work on modern platforms and provide a wide array of localization options.

In this manner, they would have a reason to draw players to buy their product instead of simply downloading it for free from pirate game websites and services.

[6] Once Ubisoft was signed, it became easier for Good Old Games to convince other publishers to allow them to offer older titles on the service.

[12][13] The site's management, aware of the reactions to the fake closure, stated: "First of all we'd like to apologize to everyone who felt deceived or harmed in any way by the closedown of GOG.com.

As a small company we don't have a huge marketing budget and this is why we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz around an event as big as launching a brand new version of our website and even more important, bringing back Baldur's Gate to life!

[14] During the presentation, GOG.com's co-founder Marcin Iwiński and managing director Guillaume Rambourg had dressed as monks to atone for their sins.

They also have plans for adding fiction films and series; according to GOG.com's managing director Guillaume Rambourg, they were in talks with many major studios.

[26] On 9 December 2013, GOG.com introduced a money-back guarantee for the first 30 days if customers face unresolvable technical problems with a bought game.

[27][28] On 26 February 2020, GOG extended this policy to offer a full refund up to 30 days after purchasing a product, even if it was downloaded, launched, and played.

[38] On 19 November 2020, Nvidia and GOG announced a collaboration that allows GOG.com users to launch Cyberpunk 2077 through the cloud gaming service GeForce Now.

In previous years, the company had already worked on several titles (such as Alpha Protocol, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger and the original Resident Evil trilogy), porting them to PC and addressing various technical issues.

[49] In order to ensure compatibility with newer versions of operating systems and current PC hardware, games are pre-patched and restored by GOG.com.

[65] On 8 September 2021, GOG brought 6 classic Star Trek titles back and updated them to work on modern operating systems.

[66] According to the Management Board report on the activities of the CD Projekt Group in 1H 2021, the GOG.com catalog of products as of 1 September 2021 numbers over 5200 items.

[67] However, the business expansion didn't bring enough revenues to cover the rising costs - between January 2021 and September 2021, GOG lost $1.14 million.

[68] Due to poor financial performance GOG.com management announced the plan to scale down, focusing on "a handpicked selection of games" and moving staff to other projects within CD Projekt.

[70] The prices of products typically range from about $5 to $10 for older games, along with special offers in sales held several times a week.

The style of these promotions varies from a discount for products that are bought in bundles, to thematic competitions like riddles, "guess a game from a picture" contests or "best time on a specific level".

In the CD Projekt Red company update in June 2014, GOG.com announced that it would be bringing a Steam-like client, GOG Galaxy, to Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.

[84] On 15 October 2014 the open multiplayer beta of the GOG Galaxy client was started, accompanied by the giveaway of Alien vs Predator.

[85] In July 2015 the GOG Galaxy beta client was reviewed favorably by the PC Gamer magazine, especially noting the focus on user respect in comparison to Steam.

[96] As GOG.com does not typically release absolute game selling numbers, market share considerations of GOG.com among the digital distributors are a challenge.

[99] Devotion from the Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games had previously been removed from digital storefronts in early 2019 after it was found the game included content critical of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and faced numerous complaints from Chinese gamers.

GOG later issued a statement saying that they "will not tolerate review-bombing and will be removing posts that do not follow our review-guidelines", which was also met with a negative feedback.