This long-awaited sequel to a classic split screen survival RPG will be DRM-free on GOG when it launches later this year

Split-screen gaming is making a comeback. It's slow, but with Split Fiction and It Takes Two continuing to sell gangbusters, Baldur's Gate 3 being a massive hit, and Sonic Racing Crossworlds still being an absolute hoot hooked up to my projector, the reason to keep two controllers close to your PC's USB hub is steadily increasing. And with Outward 2, the sequel to the 2019 multiplayer original RPG on the horizon, we're about to have another reason to dig out a working USB cable or two. Oh, and it'll be DRM-free through GOG.

Announced far from the game's actual release date, the GOG socials today unveiled plans to offer Outward 2, Nine Dots Studio's upcoming co-op game sequel, on the platform "this summer" as part of the GOG Preservation Program, adding a DRM-free way to grab the splitscreen adventure should you see the need to do so. Will that match the Q3 2026 placeholder date on Steam. We can hope so, but we also can't assume as much.

Now, this sounds like a big deal, right? A massive, long-awaited multiplayer RPG sequel, revealed two years ago, finally dropping seven years after the original? It sure does to me. But will you see Outward 2 plastered all over the GOG homepage right now in some sort of celebration of things to come? No, actually. The original announcement included a link to wishlist the game, but it doesn't have any sort of pride of place on the GOG homepage just yet. Unless you click through five slides of a revolving carousel near the top, you'll have to scroll quite far down the page to spot any mention of it.

That's because news of the plan was quickly shoved aside to make way for the arrival of a new faction to Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector just an hour later. An hour after that, the recently removed PC version of the original Final Fantasy 7 came back with a few upgrades alongside other entries in the celebrated JRPG series on GOG, too. It's been a busy day for DRM-free gaming, that's for sure.

Hey, I'm not complaining. Seeing Final Fantasy 3's Luneth standing shoulder to shoulder with Cloud at the top of the GOG website nearly brings a tear to my eye. But that certainly doesn't mean this isn't something worth celebrating. A way to play what's said to be "the ultimate simulation of an adventurer's life" without an arbitrary account activation or a constant internet connection sounds perfect to me. You can fire this up wherever you want, whenever you want. Oh, and you don't need to worry about some totally breakable DRM messing with performance long after launch. Again. Now, which of the 100,000 recent playtesters do we have to thank for this bold move?