GOG Launches New “Games in Development” Early Access Program

Online PC game seller Good Old Games (GOG) has announced the launch of Games in Development, a new storefront that allows consumers to purchase games before they are finished in a model similar to that of Steam Early Access.

In case you disagree with this assessment, GOG is also offering a no questions asked 14 day refund policy. Early access games, by definition, are incomplete. This allows GOG to avoid over-saturation of titles for the programme and having games getting lost in the void of trash.

All of these extra features were important to GOG as the company was looking to give customers the option to buy games still in development in a way that it considers responsible. “We’re hand-picking only the games we can truly stand behind”, said the site’s announcement. These games will be considered some of the most promising titles, as well as those that have been highly requested via the Community Wishlist.

To deliver a better experience with games in development, the optional GOG Galaxy client offers both automatic and manual updating, as well as the unique rollback feature.

The program opens up today, with five games being offered in early-access.

GOG will even let you roll back your game to a previous version if something ends up borked. While there are likely to be a few disappointments in the mix as the program evolves, Early Access has been a pretty beloved system over on Steam.

“As an added bonus, rollback actually stores historical snapshots throughout a game’s development”, GOG managing director Piotr Karwowski said in a canned statement.

GOG is celebrating the launch of early access by offering discounts ranging from 15% – 40% off for the five games. Though some fantastic games have been funded using this idea, people have also been screwed over by games which just stopped being made, and were left unfinished and often broken.