How to get your game on GOG after its Steam launch

Of 5,860 paid indie games launched on Steam from 2020 to 2022, 613 (10.5%) are on GOG today, and half of those got there after their Steam launch. The door stays open once a game is out, but it is narrow.

If your game is on Steam and you are wondering whether GOG is worth a try, here is how the submission works, which games GOG has taken, and what a late arrival tends to be worth.

GOG picks its games, and the form asks if yours is out

Steam lets anyone publish for a fee. GOG chooses. You apply through a form on GOG’s “Submit your game” page, which GOG says runs to about 15 questions.

The form asks whether the game is already released, and for a link to its existing store page, “on Steam or EGS”. It asks for footage of actual gameplay and a few sentences about the game. A released game is an expected answer.

It also asks where your company is based. GOG says it cannot currently pay developers in Russia or Belarus.

GOG has described its taste in public. In 2018 its head of communications told PCGamesN the store looks for story-driven games, inventive mechanics and games its community asks for, and that a beautiful game with thin gameplay would not get in.

In 2019, after turning down a well-reviewed game and then reconsidering, GOG told PC Gamer that “our curation is a human process” and that it sometimes goes back to games it rejected. A no is one team’s read on one day. It is not a verdict on your game.

GOG also changed hands at the end of 2025, when co-founder Michał Kiciński bought it from CD PROJEKT. His statement said GOG has always looked for “new games with a retro spirit”.

If GOG says yes, its developer docs describe the rest. You upload builds through a developer portal, and GOG’s own QA team tests them. The requirements a Steam build most often trips on:

• No DRM. The game must run with no client, no login and no internet connection. Steam’s ownership checks have to come out.
• No mention of other stores. GOG’s QA page lists links or references to Steam or Epic inside the build as a common reason builds come back.
• Online features need GOG’s SDK. GOG’s docs map Steamworks achievements, leaderboards and multiplayer onto its own SDK, and offer a beta wrapper to help. Single-player must still work without it.

GOG does not publish its revenue share. TechCrunch reported a 70/30 split when GOG opened its indie portal in 2013. Ask for the current terms in writing.

Review count, a publisher and genre predicted who got in

The more reviews a game drew in its first year on Steam, the more likely it is on GOG. Among games with 10 to 99 first-year reviews, 4% are there. Among games with 1,000 or more, 37%.

1. 10 to 99 reviews (4,209 games)4.2%
2. 100 to 299 (776)20.6%
3. 300 to 999 (474)26.6%
4. 1,000 or more (401)37.2%

Paid indie games launched on Steam 2020 to 2022 with 10+ Steam-purchase reviews in year one, matched to GOG's store catalogue by title and developer or publisher credit. Read October 7, 2026.

Source: Strike Two analysis of Steam and GOG data

Review score did not work the same way, which surprised us. Among games with 100 or more first-year reviews, 26% of those rated 90% or higher are on GOG. For 70 to 79%, it is 27%. For games under 70%, 22%.

A publisher mattered more than either. Of games with a publisher credited on Steam, 24% are on GOG. Of self-published games, 4.7%. The gap holds at every size: at 100 to 299 first-year reviews it is 38% against 10%.

We can’t see submissions, so we can’t say how much of that gap is GOG declining solo developers and how much is solo developers never applying. Both are likely.

Genre also moved the odds. For games with 100 or more first-year reviews, where 26% are on GOG overall, these are the shares by Steam user tag:

Steam tag	On GOG
Metroidvania	48%
Point & Click	43%
Platformer	38%
Old School	36%
RPG	30%
Strategy	25%
Simulation	21%
Multiplayer	14%
Online Co-Op	12%
PvP	7%

Single-player games with a classic shape do best. Games built around online play do worst, which fits the offline requirement as much as anyone’s taste.

Half of the games on GOG arrived after their Steam launch

Of the 613 games on GOG, 305 went on sale there in the same month as Steam, or earlier. The other 308 came later, a median of 15 months later. And 176, more than a quarter, arrived over a year after their Steam launch.

1. Same month or earlier (305)49.8%
2. 1 to 6 months later (96)15.7%
3. 7 to 12 months later (36)5.9%
4. 13 to 24 months later (93)15.2%
5. 25 months or more (83)13.5%

Share of the 613 games on GOG. Measured from the Steam launch month (the Early Access start for games that sold in Early Access first) to the date the game went on sale at GOG. Read October 7, 2026.

Source: Strike Two analysis of Steam and GOG data

Late is the normal route for a solo developer. Of the 195 self-published games on GOG, 30% launched there alongside Steam and 44% arrived more than a year later. For games with a publisher it is the reverse: 59% alongside Steam, 22% more than a year later.

The late arrivals were not all hits. Their median was 188 first-year Steam reviews, and 31% had fewer than 100. About one in five came through three publishers of adult games. The rest look much the same: a median of 197, and half self-published.

GOG is also a store you can reach yourself. The publisher on the GOG page was a company missing from the Steam credits at most 8% of the time. On Switch we measured 51% for games that arrived after their Steam launch.

The GOG audience is small, and smaller for a late arrival

GOG shows a count of star ratings on each game. We compared it with the same game’s Steam reviews. The median game had 4.5 GOG ratings for every 100 Steam reviews. Added up across all 613 games, it is 1.9 per 100.

The bigger the game on Steam, the smaller GOG looks beside it. Games with 10 to 99 first-year Steam reviews had a median of 15.7 GOG ratings per 100 Steam reviews. Games with 1,000 or more had 1.1.

Arriving late cost audience at every size.

1. 10 to 99 first-year reviews, same month (85 games)21.0
2. 10 to 99, over a year later (55)9.0
3. 100 to 999, same month (141)6.4
4. 100 to 999, over a year later (90)2.4
5. 1,000 or more, same month (79)1.6
6. 1,000 or more, over a year later (31)0.6

Median across games. GOG's rating count for the game divided by its Steam-purchase reviews through August 2026, times 100. A rating is not a sale, and the two stores' buyers may not rate at the same pace. Read October 7, 2026.

Source: Strike Two analysis of Steam and GOG data

Relative to its Steam audience, a game that reached GOG more than a year late has roughly 40% of the GOG audience of one that launched there on day one. Launch attention does not wait for a second store.

A rating is not a sale, so read these as scale, not income. The median late arrival has about 16 GOG ratings beside about 500 Steam reviews.

When GOG is the wrong move

Your game leans on Steam for multiplayer. Moving lobbies and matchmaking to GOG’s SDK is real work, and games tagged Online Co-Op or PvP are the least likely to be on GOG at all.

You can’t keep two builds current. Every patch ships twice from now on. A GOG version that falls behind Steam is worse than no GOG version, because the people who buy there chose it on purpose.

You are hoping it rescues the game. At a few GOG ratings per 100 Steam reviews, GOG adds a slice to what Steam already does. If Steam sales are the problem, an update and a visibility round reach far more people.

The game has been out for years. Of games that were not on GOG a year after their Steam launch, 3.2% got there later. After three years, 0.8%. Games with 100 or more first-year reviews did better, at 9% after one year. It gets rarer every year you wait.

What to do next

1. Check the fit honestly. Single-player, offline-capable, with a classic or story-driven shape is what GOG has taken most.
2. Strip the DRM in a test build before you apply. If the game cannot start with Steam closed and the network off, fix that first.
3. Send the form with your Steam link and real gameplay footage. Your Steam page is your pitch, so refresh it first if it has gone stale.
4. Price it the same. Of the games on both stores, 93% have the same US base price on each.
5. If GOG says no, it is reasonable to ask again after a major update or a clear jump in reviews. GOG has said it revisits games.

If you would rather hand the second store, the builds and the patches to someone else, that is part of what a publisher does after launch. We wrote about how that works for a game that is already out in our post on finding a publisher for a released game.

How we measured it

• Games. Every paid indie game (Steam’s Indie tag) that launched on Steam from January 2020 to December 2022 with at least 10 Steam-purchase reviews in its first 12 months: 5,860 games, the same population as our Switch and Steam Deck studies. A game that sold in Early Access first is dated from its first review month.
• GOG records. GOG’s whole public store catalogue, 6,484 games and 1,756 packs, read October 7, 2026: titles, developer and publisher credits, the date each went on sale at GOG, US base price and rating count.
• Matching. A released, paid GOG product counts when its title matches the Steam title, ignoring punctuation and edition words, and a developer or publisher credit matches on both stores. Demos, prologues, numbered sequels and “coming soon” listings don’t count. We read 50 random matches by hand and all 50 were the same game.
• Timing. Months from the Steam launch month to the month the game went on sale at GOG.
• Self-published on Steam means every Steam publisher credit names the developer.
• Tags. Steam’s top 20 user tags for the 1,651 games with 100 or more first-year reviews, read September 22, 2026.
• Limits. GOG publishes no submission, rejection or sales figures. A game missing from GOG may have been declined or never submitted, and we can’t tell which. Games removed from GOG are missed, so the 10.5% is a floor. Rating counts stand in for audience size and are not sales.