GOG's Marcin Paczynski says his "dream" is a button on your GOG shelf that ships you a real boxed copy of a game you already own. It's not a product yet, and he's upfront about why: logistics, storage and publisher approvals. Here's exactly what he said, what GOG already offers today with its printable big boxes, and why this matters for PC players.
PC gaming might get its big boxes back. GOG, the DRM-free PC game store, is openly talking about letting you order a physical copy of any game in your digital library and have it shipped to your door. Marcin Paczynski, GOG’s senior business development and partnerships manager, laid it out in an interview with GamesRadar+ published today.
“Ideally, my dream would be to be able to buy physical versions of those games on GOG,” Paczynski told GamesRadar+. “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.”
To be clear up front: this is not announced as a product. There’s no price, no date and no game list. It’s an idea GOG says it really wants to make happen.
What you need to know
- The idea: click a game you own on your GOG shelf, order a physical copy, and it gets delivered to you.
- Status: not a product. Paczynski calls it a dream and says, “This is an idea that has been floating around GOG for years now, and still, I really hope that at some point we will be able to do it. We’ll see.”
- Why it isn’t here yet: he calls it “a very, very complicated thing” and says a physical retail business is “totally different from what we are currently doing.”
- The roadblocks he named: logistics, storage, and “additional approvals” from publishers to sell their games physically.
- Price, date, games: none announced.
- What exists right now: printable big box files for select classic games (details below).
What GOG already does today: printable big boxes
GOG’s first step is its big box program, part of the GOG Preservation Program. Selected classics come with files built from 3D scans of the original retail packaging, so you can print and fold your own big box. “We are making small steps in that direction,” Paczynski told GamesRadar+.
In an earlier interview with Club386, Paczynski said the idea came from GOG’s own forums, where fans were already printing their own boxes and even making mock GOG editions. Club386 reported that the first batch covered five games:
- Descent
- Myst
- Hitman: Codename 47
- Armikrog
- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
The boxes were made with Big Box Collection, a passion project by Benjamin Wimmer, per Club386. Paczynski told Club386 that people were “quite enthusiastic” and that GOG would “probably be adding more in the future, and maybe make it our default whenever we can.” He also told Club386 a full physical line would be “a big separate business that we would need to realign with the platform, so it would need to be worth it.”
Why GOG cares so much about this
GOG launched in 2008 as Good Old Games, and every game on the store still ships with a standalone offline installer you can download and back up yourself, no online server needed. In a second GamesRadar+ piece today, Paczynski put it bluntly: “There is no game preservation with DRM.” He also said GOG “definitely saw a spark of interest in people downloading the offline installers” as the Stop Killing Games movement picked up steam.
A physical copy is the next logical step in that ownership pitch: a game you can hold, shelve and keep.
If GOG ships physical copies, are you buying?
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How people are taking it
The story is trending on X, where PC players are sharing nostalgia for the old big box days. Some are asking the obvious practical question: how many modern PCs even have a disc drive anymore?
See the conversation on X: GOG eyes shipping physical boxes of digital PC games
OnPoint’s take: This is a W for PC players, even as just a dream. I love that a store is saying out loud that ownership matters. You bought the game, you should be able to hold the game. That’s real talk.
What people aren’t seeing: the disc is the least important part of this. Half of y’all don’t have a disc drive in your PC, and that’s fine. The value is the shelf. The big box, the manual, the map, the stuff that made PC gaming feel special in the 90s. GOG already proved fans want that with the printable boxes, and now they’re testing whether people will pay for the real thing.
The honest catch is in Paczynski’s own words: logistics, storage and publisher sign-off. Publishers are the wall here. Getting a studio to approve a physical run of an old game is a whole negotiation, game by game. So don’t expect a “ship it to me” button next month.
For Xbox fans who game on PC too, this is the conversation worth having. Digital is where everything is going, but players want to feel like they own what they buy. GOG is betting on that feeling, and I hope they pull it off. Make it happen, GOG.
Sources
- GamesRadar+: Physical PC games could make a comeback thanks to GOG
- GamesRadar+: “There is no game preservation with DRM”: Why GOG’s leaders have spent 18 years fighting for classic games
- Club386: GOG talks big boxes, old graphics standards, and more
- X trending: GOG eyes shipping physical boxes of digital PC games
Image: OnPoint 4 Gamers
