CD Projekt co-founder defends selling the banned horror game Horses on GOG, stating that “curation is the privilege” of platforms like Steam, but they found the game “very cool.”

Michał Kiciński, the new owner of GOG and a cofounder of CD Projekt, recognizes that digital storefronts need to operate with a sense of taste and responsibility. This is precisely why GOG decided to offer the horror game Horses when platforms like Steam and Epic chose not to.

Santa Ragione’s unique adventure game, which involves riding humans as if they were livestock, may have raised eyebrows elsewhere, but Kiciński shared, “Curation is the privilege and prerogative of each platform. The difference here with Horses is that we’ve played the game and we thought it was very cool.”

GOG’s managing director, Maciej Gołębiewski, emphasized that supporting Horses when competitors wouldn’t was about upholding freedom. He stated, “We as a company are always ready to take a stand on values – our own and also what we believe are the right values for the industry.”

He elaborated, “We believe in creative freedom, because once a company, through their own terms of service, decides what’s good and what’s not good – what’s acceptable; what can be sold and what cannot be sold – it’s a slippery slope from that point onward.”

In the end, Horses topped GOG’s best-sellers list and brought in approximately $65,000 for Santa Ragione within two weeks. The developer attributes this success to “extraordinary coverage of the bans, GOG’s public support, and a very positive reaction from players.”

This approach reflects GOG’s commitment to allowing studios the freedom to explore their creativity. Gołębiewski noted, “We obviously are a business and we do assess our risks,” but added, “with Horses… […] the game is obviously controversial but there’s nothing there that should deem it couldn’t be sold.”

Kiciński believes that GOG doesn’t need to outpace Steam entirely; it just needs to excel in certain areas: “If there’s a version of the game that’s clearly better on GOG, and it has the promise that it will run forever… people will come.”