GOG Boss Says We Might Get “Fewer Games” If Regulators Drive Devs To Preserve Them Without end

The boss of digital PC storefront GOG has weighed in on the dialog round Anthem’s demise, saying that there could also be a future wherein fewer video games might be developed and printed if regulators demand that creators preserve them alive ceaselessly.

Speaking to Eurogamer on January 15 after Anthem was laid to relaxation, GOG’s managing director, Maciej Gołębiewski, stated it is good that the dialogue round sport preservation is occurring as soon as once more, however that the dialog will get a bit difficult when speaking about video games that have been designed as online-only experiences.

“There is a broader discussion to be had within the industry of what does an end-of-life cycle look like in games–what is a fair end-of-life cycle for a game?” he stated. “Should it just be buried and killed and no one can access it any more, and people who spent five or seven years working on it cannot really look at their creation any more because the service turned off? There is a very interesting and very complicated discussion that Stop Killing Games probably kick-started out of frustration.”

Referencing the lobbying group Stop Killing Games, which was shaped in April 2024 in response to The Crew’s delisting, Gołębiewski stated regulation seems like a good suggestion within the quick time period, however any statutes round sport preservation–particularly relating to live-service video games, which have gotten the norm these days–could probably have opposed results in the long run.

“We want to make games live forever,” he stated. “At the same time, if we put too many barriers on game creators and what the end-of-life cycle looks like, we might get fewer games, because people will be scared of, ‘Okay, now I need to put up the funds to create it, promote it, and then upkeep it for 10 years, 20 years, because the regulator said so.’ That might in turn cause there to be fewer cool games for gamers. I don’t have the perfect answer yet, but it’s good that the discussion is taking place.”

As of January 12, developer BioWare’s pretty-cool-but-ill-fated Iron Man-esque action-RPG is not playable. With Anthem being an online-only multiplayer sport, you may’t boot up and fly round on this planet of Coda now that writer EA has pulled the server’s plug. It’s a bummer of a state of affairs, and a blatant reminder that no sport lasts ceaselessly, one thing GameSpot examined in a July 2025 characteristic when Ubisoft took the net racer The Crew completely off the monitor in March 2024.

Gołębiewski’s feedback come as Amazon introduced its 2021 MMORPG New World: Aeternum will get Thanos snapped from all platforms on January 31, 2027. And if I can get private for a second, this additional heightens my fears that Full Circle’s 2025 skating sim Skate might get pulled offline ceaselessly in some future as properly. Skate remains to be doing comparatively well–with a consistent player count of approximately 3,500, based on participant tracker SteamDB–but you may’t assist however marvel simply how lengthy till Electronic Arts decides to hold the skateboard up.

In the top, as Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated in a July 2025 shareholders assembly about The Crew: “You provide a service, but nothing is written in stone, and at some point, the service may be discontinued. Nothing is eternal. Support for all games cannot last forever.”