It wasn’t the happiest email I could have received, I suppose, although in truth it didn’t come as much of a surprise.

The Ultima Codex — and Ultima Aiera, before it — has been an affiliate of GOG for a number of years now, since either 2011 or 2012 (I can’t actually recall). It was a partnership brokered in part by Mythic, who at the time were working with GOG to arrange for the Ultima games to be made available for sale.

And initially, being a GOG affiliate was good for the site; it was a bit of extra money coming in to help offset hosting costs, after all. Over the years, due to various changes GOG has made to the program, being an affiliate has been less advantageous; payouts became less frequent. And, this morning, I was informed that after January 2, 2019, the Codex’s involvement with the affiliate program will end, apparently because GOG are moving in a different direction with the program.

This won’t really mean much in the way of changes here on the Codex, however; Patreon has largely overtaken GOG as a means of offsetting hosting costs. I may consider bringing back Amazon affiliate links and/or a PayPal donation button, as additional options…I haven’t decided on that, just yet.

The GOG links — to the store pages for each Ultima game or collection — will also remain in the sidebar, though obviously I’ll be removing the affiliate ID from the links.

At any rate, if GOG was a way that you, O Reader, supported the Codex, you have my thanks for that. It’s a shame that things with GOG are coming to an end, but don’t worry: things won’t be changing for the worse around here in the wake of it.