GOG Dreams of Bringing Back Physical PC Games, But Logistics Are Tough

GOG would like to sell physical copies of PC games again, but the storefront says the project is far from simple. Senior business manager Marcin Paczynski calls it his "dream," while acknowledging that logistics, storage, and publisher licensing stand in the way.

Standard physical PC releases have been rare for well over a decade. Collector's editions and special prints still turn up, but the mainstream disc is gone. Fast SSDs and fast home internet made digital storefronts the default, and plenty of modern gaming PCs no longer ship with a disc drive at all.

GOG is still interested in reviving the format. Paczynski described what the ideal setup would look like:

"Ideally, my dream would be to be able to buy physical versions of those games on GOG. You go to your shelf on GOG, you click on the game that you would like to receive a physical copy of, you order it, and it gets to you. That would be a perfect scenario."

That would give buyers a digital library copy plus a physical one for the shelf. GOG sells only DRM-free games, so a disc would work without a launcher or a publisher's servers, and no one could revoke access to it. The disc would be a self-contained copy of the game, which is exactly the kind of ownership GOG has built its identity around.

A very different business

Paczynski was candid about how hard this would be. He called building a business around physical releases "a very, very complicated thing," partly because it is "totally different from what we are currently doing."

"Because we are talking about physical media, we need to think about logistics. We need to think about storage," he said. GOG would need warehousing, manufacturing, and shipping, none of which a digital-only store has to deal with. Publishers would also have to agree to the idea, so licensing deals and approvals are another hurdle.

Paczynski still sounded hopeful. "I really hope that at some point we will be able to do it. We'll see," he said.

Why physical keeps shrinking

Demand for discs has not vanished. Even Sony, which has leaned hard into digital, reportedly sees about 30 percent of its first-party sales come from physical copies. But boxed games cost publishers more to produce and distribute. Retailers take roughly a 30 percent cut, and the packaging and disc pressing add to the bill at high volume. Those costs explain why many publishers push buyers toward digital, regardless of how many players still prefer a physical copy.

GOG has not announced a launch window, a pilot program, or any partner publishers. For now, the idea is an aspiration from one of the company's business leads, and the questions he raised about storage, fulfillment, and licensing remain unanswered.