Last week or so, Michal Kicinski, one of the original founders of GOG, bought out GOG from CD Projekt Red—making it a private company under the ownership of one. It was still private under CD Projekt Red, but it operated under a public company, which comes with uncertainty. Especially, when GOG showed not to be a company that exactly earns a lot of money. Shareholders hate that, so, it was just a matter of time before CD Projekt Red decided to cut them loose—to sell it to a horrible company that would have turned GOG into an abomination of a store within a year.
We got lucky here, let’s just say that, yet things are still uncertain—what kind of plans does Michal Kicinski have for the company? Could he be the chosen one, or is he just another rich villain—grabbing something good to corrupt it in making a quick buck? Well, we finally got an unofficial statement on the GOG forum by the man himself:
“Hi everyone, Michal Kicinski here,
Just a quick, unofficial comment and some additional context on what’s happening — because I think You, as community members, deserve to know a bit more than the general audience 😉
Basically, all important messages are already in the official communication. Short version: nothing changes for you as customers. The principles stay the same.
Please also be assured that financially GOG is very stable, and I personally have a quite extensive financial safety net in case of any needs. So while GOG is no longer part of a very big corporation (which actually has some pros too ;-)), it is very safe financially. There is really no need to back up your collections. If such a disaster would ever even theoretically happen, you would be clearly informed well in advance — but honestly, I cannot see any realistic scenario where this kind of danger would appear.
The acquisition happened after about three months of very intensive negotiations, with the final stage running from December 6th. The process was intense practically until the very last moment. I was not the only party interested in GOG, so there was real competition. As a founder, I felt a strong urge to step in and come back. GOG still feels a bit like my child, and I really didn’t want it to end up being sold to a party that might be less committed to its core values. I can’t say for sure if that would have happened or not — the names of competing parties were not disclosed to each other, so I don’t even know who we were bidding against — but in my opinion the risk was real. I’ve seen a few M&A processes before, and in such cases this risk is always present.
To fully complete the deal, there are still a few steps ahead of us, and they should be finalized around early January.
Please excuse me, but for now I won’t answer questions about the future. The reason is simple: we didn’t spend much time on that yet, because until mid-December we were not even sure if we would sign the deal at all. Once the transaction-related work is finished (early January), we’ll move on to future topics — and please be sure that we will create space to involve You, as our community members, in some of these discussions.
In the meantime, let’s relax, enjoy great games, and see you in January.
Michal
PS. If I see any questions in this thread that I can answer already, I’ll post a few replies — but I can’t promise I’ll answer many of them. I really need a bit of a break after the marathon of the last few weeks.”
Well, I got positive vibes from this statement! Nothing is guaranteed of course, but I don’t think we have to swallow the black pill when it comes to GOG’s future, just yet at least. Which makes me glad, as I have been switching to GOG as much as possible as of late. Thanks to the whole ownership issue with other stores. Losing GOG on the market would have been a hard blow in these dire times, but as it looks right now—it seems to be in safe hands!
– Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 