Discussion What on earth is SNEG? (Or how GOG.com quietly dropped out of self-publishing)

[Krvavi Abadas]

So, a couple of days ago. A press release was dropped revealing that the Dungeons & Dragons "Gold Box" games are coming to Steam in a few weeks.
What makes this unusual is that GOG had already brought these games back in 2015, completely self-published by them.

For those of you who were unaware, this was not their first attempt by buying up the publishing rights for various games. With both Pacific and Fantasy General predating the collection by about 3 months.
It was a rather smart idea at the time, considering the fickle nature of said rights occasionally causing them to fall into the hands of companies with zero interest in the gaming market. Such as the infamous incident where the System Shock IP was inexplicably owned by an Insurance company for several years before Nightdive bought it from them.

They picked up quite a few interesting titles over the coming months, from making the classic RTS title "War Wind" freeware to picking up various Warhammer licensed games.
Though this saga would turn out to be shortlived, as after War Wind and it's sequel were released on August 2016. No further titles were brought out.

So what happened? Looking into the press release gives us a clue.

“Even decades after their original release, the Gold Box games are seen by many as iconic Dungeons & Dragons digital experiences, and they practically defined computer RPGs, ” said Oleg Klapovskiy, Director at SNEG. “Now, I’m overjoyed that we get to fulfill our dream of bringing these RPG gems back to PC gamers on Steam while introducing them to a new audience!”

Oleg Klapovskiy had, according to my research. Joined CD Projekt in August 2008, and was quickly shifted to their then-new GOG division by January. With his tenure lasting all the way into 2020.
Viewing Sneg's list of Steam titles shows that the vast majority of them were previously self-published by GOG. Including both General and War Wind titles.

Looking into trademarks, GOG's trademark for Fantasy General was quietly shifted to SNEG around October-November 2021. Shortly after it was added to Steam.
And viewing the GOG pages for the Gold Box games shows that they were properly updated to add a SNEG copyright.

I also checked the files for War Wind as it's a free download. and noticed the icon used for the GOG version still exists in the Steam data. (The circle design is typical of titles on there.)

As for when SNEG arrived. It's naturally 2020, their first proper title was an enhanced re-release of "Diggles: The Myth of Fenris" on December 2020. Though a Q&A that was buried in the Gold Box press assets states he was planning it since the start of the year.

In early 2020 a friend of mine, Elena Roor (coming from the games services business), found
herself both on maternity leave and in lockdown. To keep it together, she came up with a side
project where she'd look for games that made her feel nostalgic and were, in her mind, the
“most technically broken” and try to bring them back to life. That game happened to be Diggles:
The Myth of Fenris. Soon after, I started helping Elena as an advisor and investor. One project
led to another and fast forward to Oct 2021 the company shaped to how we know it today with
three of us pushing it forward (Elena, Artem Shchuiko, my ex-colleague from GOG days, and
myself).

Outside of that game, they've also separately revived the Witchaven series, Siege of Avalon, and Blade of Darkness. With the latter two receiving the same fully enhanced treatment that Diggles got.

What's particularly baffling to me is the fact they have zero presence outside of Steam and GOG, you'd think they'd at least have some sort of website or something for info. But no. This is despite the fact they

1. Are working with a proper PR team, UberStrategist. Which is how i was eventually able to acquire that Q&A.
2. Those enhanced ports are developed by a decently established porting team, General Arcade.

Even Strangely Compelling Media, a similarly unknown studio that quietly localized ten different Kunio-Kun Famicom games alongside their usual work of localizing more recent games. Has a website and Twitter account.

TL;DR: GOG briefly experimented with buying the publishing rights to various retro games from 2015-2016, an employee there then decided to split off into making his own game preservation company in 2020, taking those IPs with him.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

That was a nice find! Hopefully they expand their online presence.

 

[Deleted member 113]

I completely missed your post, Krvavi Abadas.
Thanks for your research.

Funnily enough, I did a similar "digging" for info when they announced the Dungeon & Dragons titles, since I couldn't find a website or social media presence, and reached a similar conclusion to yours, especially after I found a small interview with Oleg Klapovskiy, and discovered he was previously at GOG.

I own most of their releases on Steam, and it's great that they usually work with third parties like General Arcade to ensure proper compatibility, and to add QOL features like additional resolutions, achievements, and the like.

With GOG straying more and more from their original goal, I'm happy some remnants of "old GOG" continue work on making these older titles easily available to everyone.

I already own the D&D titles on GOG, but I'm planning to pick them again on Steam, for convenience (and to support their efforts).

I do wish they had some online presence, to learn more about their plans for future titles.

 

[gabbo]

I had hoped that GOG would return to this mindset of self publishing, but in the mean time I hope SNEG will at least release their games on gog continuously going forward.

They havent had a lot of games in my particular areas of interest, but preservation is preservation and I'm all for that.