CD Projekt Steps Away From the Store It Built
CD Projekt has officially sold GOG – the DRM-free PC storefront it launched back in 2008 – back to one of its original co-founders, Michal Kiciński, for roughly $25.2 million. On paper, it’s a simple corporate transaction. In practice, it quietly redraws the map for both CD Projekt and one of the few major stores still committed to selling games without DRM.
For CD Projekt, the messaging is blunt: the company wants its “full attention on creating top-quality RPGs.” For GOG, the message is more philosophical: a renewed focus on the idea that games should “belong” to the players who buy them.
The two will still work together – CDPR has already said that future titles like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 will come to GOG – but the era of both living under the same corporate roof is over.
Why CD Projekt Is Letting Go of GOG Now
From hybrid company to pure RPG studio
For most of the last decade, CD Projekt tried to be two things at once:
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A big-budget RPG developer (The Witcher trilogy, Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty)
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A PC platform holder via GOG, competing with Steam, Epic, and others
That made sense in the early 2010s, when digital PC distribution still felt open and unsettled. Owning a storefront gave CDPR:
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Better margin capture on its own games
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A channel to cultivate a “good guy” brand around DRM-free values
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Strategic leverage in a market dominated by Valve
The landscape in 2025 looks different. Steam remains enormous. Epic keeps buying attention with free games and exclusives. Subscription ecosystems and publisher launchers crowd the edges. GOG, even with a loyal audience, is a mid-tier player rather than a direct rival.
At the same time, CDPR’s development slate has never been more stacked:
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The Witcher 4 (first in a new Ciri-led trilogy)
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Two follow-up Witcher games in that same saga
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A Witcher multiplayer project
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Cyberpunk 2 (Project Orion)
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A Witcher 1 remake with Fool’s Theory
All of those are large, expensive, multi-year projects. For a company of CDPR’s size, running a storefront on the side stops being a strategic asset and starts being a distraction.
Risk management after Cyberpunk’s rough launch
Cyberpunk 2077’s launch problems didn’t sink CD Projekt, but they were a brutal lesson in risk. When one delayed or troubled game can lop billions off your valuation, anything that isn’t core to shipping games becomes fair game for divestment.
Selling GOG back to Kiciński:
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Puts cash on the balance sheet
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Removes operational complexity
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Lets CDPR’s management focus on production pipelines, technology, and scheduling rather than retail operations
In other words, this is as much about reducing surface area for failure as it is about “focusing on RPGs.”
What GOG Becomes Under Michal Kiciński
Independence with a very clear mission
Kiciński isn’t some unknown investor – he’s one of the people who helped build both CD Projekt and GOG in the first place. His messaging out of the gate leans heavily on:
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The idea that games should truly belong to players
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Continuing to run GOG as an independent DRM-free platform
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Maintaining a formal partnership with CDPR for future releases
Crucially, GOG’s management has stressed that the sale isn’t a bailout; 2025 was described as an “encouraging year,” not a distress scenario. That matters, because it frames the sale as a strategic uncoupling, not a fire sale of a failing asset.
The preservation push gets room to breathe
Over the last few years, GOG’s strongest differentiator hasn’t been undercutting Steam on new indies – it’s been preservation. The GOG Preservation Program, launched in 2024, is quietly one of the most ambitious efforts in PC gaming:
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Licensing and restoring older titles whose original rights or code are messy
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Getting them working on modern hardware and OSes
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Shipping them as DRM-free offline installers, not just tied to a client
Recent examples like the original Resident Evil trilogy and Alpha Protocol show the model: take a game that’s effectively in limbo, fix it, and sell it in a way that doesn’t depend on servers being up forever.
Under CDPR, that mission coexisted with the company’s needs as a publisher. Under Kiciński, GOG can lean even harder into being the place you go for DRM-free and rescued classics, without having to justify those decisions against a big RPG roadmap.
Technical & System-Level View: Why GOG Is Different From Other Stores
On the surface, a PC storefront is just a catalog with a buy button. In practice, GOG’s systems are built around some very specific promises:
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No DRM by default
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Games are sold as standalone installers you can download and back up.
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You can run them offline, on any machine that meets the requirements, without logging into a client.
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Compatibility work baked into the product
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For older titles, GOG’s team often:
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Wraps games in tools like customized DOSBox or compatibility layers
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Adjusts config files, resolutions, and input behavior
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Adds optional quality-of-life tweaks (widescreen, bug fixes) where licensing allows
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Optional ecosystem, not mandatory
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The GOG Galaxy client exists for cloud saves, friends lists, and auto-updates.
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But the store’s core proposition is not tied to the client the way Steam or Epic are.
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Those design choices make GOG less sticky in some metrics (it can’t count concurrent users in the same way), but they’re exactly what many PC players value: long-term ownership independent of a company’s future health.
What Changes for Players Right Now?
Your existing library
The immediate good news: there’s no sign of anything dramatic happening to existing owners. GOG continues to operate, the same staff have been thanked rather than replaced, and both GOG and CDPR are going out of their way to frame this as business-as-usual for users.
As long as GOG survives as a company, the offline installers and your backups remain what they’ve always been: your safety net.
Future CDPR games on GOG
CD Projekt has already promised that:
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The Witcher 4
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The rest of the new Witcher trilogy
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The Witcher multiplayer game
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Cyberpunk 2
…will still come to GOG. So if you’re the kind of player who’s always bought CDPR’s games DRM-free on their own store, that purchasing pattern is still viable.
What’s different is that CDPR now approaches GOG as a partner platform, not an internal business. Over time, that could affect:
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Timing (parity vs slight delays)
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Revenue splits and promo strategies
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How aggressive GOG can be with bundles or loyalty perks around CDPR titles
None of that is visible yet, but the relationship has fundamentally changed from “two divisions of one company” to “developer and retailer.”
GOG’s Place in a Crowded PC Storefront Market
Competing against giants with a niche
Steam has the network effect. Epic has free games and Fortnite money. Microsoft leans on Game Pass and ecosystem hooks. GOG’s way forward has to be different.
Under independent ownership, its realistic play is to double down on:
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DRM-free as a principle, not just a bullet point
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Preservation and curated classics, instead of chasing every big new AAA
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A trust relationship with users who care more about ownership than overlays
That doesn’t turn GOG into a Steam killer, but it doesn’t need to. It needs to be sustainable and distinct. The Preservation Program is already proof of concept: there’s money to be made in selling older games properly, especially as other storefronts rotate catalogs and delistings become more common.
The risk: being right but not big
The flip side is that being the “DRM-free and preservation” store is morally appealing but economically tricky.
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Licensing older titles is messy and can have thin margins.
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Hardcore PC users already own many classics multiple times.
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Newer players raised on subscriptions may not care about offline installers.
Kiciński will need to balance the idealism of “games belong to players” with a hard-nosed strategy for staying relevant and solvent in a market where attention is expensive.
CD Projekt and GOG: Two Paths, Still Intersecting
What this sale really does is untangle two stories that had become tightly braided:
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CD Projekt becomes a leaner, more focused RPG studio with a stacked roadmap and fewer side businesses to worry about.
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GOG becomes a truly independent storefront again, led by someone who helped invent it and who openly shares its DRM-free philosophy.
For players, the practical picture in the short term is simple:
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Your GOG library is safe.
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CDPR games will still be there.
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The storefront’s preservation mission has, if anything, a clearer mandate.
The long-term story is more interesting. If GOG can carve out a sustainable niche as the DRM-free and preservation-driven platform, this sale may end up looking like a smart, healthy divorce: CD Projekt gets to chase its next Witcher and Cyberpunk ambitions, and GOG gets to be exactly what its most loyal users have always wanted it to be – a store that takes ownership seriously in an industry that increasingly doesn’t.
