Game preservation takes many forms. For some, it's archiving video game history in museums.. For others, it's fighting legal battles to make saving that history easier. Still others collect consoles and TVs from out of time, to play games precisely as they were released.

But most players just want to have access to their classic games, and that's where GOG steps in.

The acronym once stood for Good Old Games, and while GOG.com has long since become a prolific distributor of modern titles, the site's founding intention rings true today. Publishers are dipping into their archives for big-budget remakes, boutique developers specializing in remasters are cropping up with increasing frequency, and movements like Stop Killing Games making players aware of how fragile their "ownership" of modern software really is.

Modern, downloadable games are almost universally protected by digital rights management (DRM). Some forms of DRM, like the Steam launcher, are barely noticed these days, but more obtrusive types of protection like Denuvo are a constant source of controversy. They all serve the same purpose: preventing games from being pirated. But they also put roadblocks between legitimate users and their games.

"There is no game preservation with DRM," says Marcin Paczynski, senior business development and partnerships manager at GOG. These days, Steam's built-in digital rights management is so unobtrusive that players barely notice it's there. But GOG launched in 2008, when many PC players saw any DRM as an unnecessary barrier.

GOG offered an alternative, and while now there's a fancy Steam-style launcher with cloud saves and automatic updates, every single game on the store still comes with a standalone installer that you can download, back up, and use however you like without ever relying on an online server.

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