Final Fantasy 7 – developer Square Enix's 1997 contribution to RPG royalty – is a highly requested addition to the DRM-free games distribution site GOG, but it seemed slightly out of reach. Until now!
After being asked why Final Fantasy 7 wasn't already on GOG during an interview with Kiwi Talkz on YouTube, the site's technical producer Adam Ziółkowski says it's a "good question," since Final Fantasy 7 is "really the best game that was ever created" – but Japanese developers are only just beginning to soften to the DRM-free gaming that makes up GOG's philosophy; if you own a game, you should be free to play it how you want, and for as long.
"For me," Ziółkowski continues about Final Fantasy 7, "it was the first game that actually showed that video games can be much more than just pure entertainment."
Senior business developer Marcin Paczyński acknowledges that the game, on GOG, is "one of our highest wishlisted game on our Dreamlist." At the moment, Final Fantasy 7 has nearly 85,000 votes to be added to the GOG library, and the Dreamlist "really gives us [...] a clear priority list," says Paczyński.
"So you can be sure that we are working on all of those games from the top of our Dreamlist, and we've made progress on some of those titles," he continues. "So fingers crossed you we will see some of them on GOG, releasing soon. Maybe Final Fantasy will be one of them."
That decision comes down to Square Enix, which may not be as discouraging as it sounds. Paczyński says that it's "very much true" that many Japanese developers are fully in favor of DRM; however, I'm happy to say that this approach is shifting.
"The Japanese companies seem to realize the value of releasing the games – especially their older titles – without any DRM for the purpose of [...] game preservation, keeping those games alive."
