GOG now accepts donations when you buy a game, like it’s a charity or something

The rising cost of videogames is a common concern among those who play them—witness, for instance, the upset over the prospect of an $80 Borderlands 4. But what if you think games don’t cost enough? What if you, the concerned consumer, want to pay more? You can now do just that on GOG, which has implemented a new system that enables users to donate to the site like it’s a charity or something.

The donation system (it strikes me as more of a tipping system, although that’s splitting hairs), brought to our attention by Reddit, is really quite simple: When you go to pay for your purchase, a separate window gives you the option to kick in a little extra, in preset amounts or whatever you feel like paying.

“Keep game preservation alive,” it says. “Videogame preservation is an ongoing effort. Any additional amount you add to this order helps to fund fixes, ports, and DRM-free releases.”

The donations are tied to GOG’s Preservation Program, which aims to keep old games running on new hardware even when they’re no longer supported by their original developers, but the option to pay extra applies to new games as well as old: I tossed Larian’s brilliant, groundbreaking RPG Divine Divinity into my cart, and then the also-pretty-good Baldur’s Gate 3, and in both cases I was asked if I wanted to pony up a couple bucks (or more!) for the cause.

It all seems a little weird to me. GOG has never been a big moneymaker for CD Projekt, but it keeps its head above water. More to the point though, it’s not my problem if it doesn’t, right? It’s not Save the Whales or an underpaid server at Benny’s Beer and Burgers—it’s a for-profit distribution platform run by one of the most successful game studios in Europe, a company that pulls in millions of dollars in profit every quarter, even without any new games to release. I’m gonna donate to them?

I was thus genuinely surprised by the reception of the new donation feature on Reddit. Instead of a sharp slapdown of the grasping hand, most respondents (and there are admittedly not many at this point) seem happy about it; a few have already donated, and one person actually expressed hope for more ways to donate that don’t have to be tied to a game purchase—just give ’em money for the hell of it, I guess.

Fair enough, I guess. I’m not opposed to preordering games and I think Kickstarters can be great, so if you want to fork over even more of your hard-earned green to large, wealthy corporations for no particular reason except that they’re asking nicely, well, have at it.

I think I will not, however: I really dig GOG, but the CD Projekt Group reported profits of more than $120 million in 2024—I reckon it could squeeze a few bucks out of that to keep the lights on if it really needs to.