Buy once, own forever. Our stance on DRM, pay-to-win, and treating players like the adults they are.
When you buy a RookTKO game, it's yours. No always-online check, no launcher holding your library hostage, no license that quietly evaporates if a server gets shut down. That's not a marketing gimmick; we truly believe and care about not only the longevity of games but ownership, it's where we draw a line.
What DRM-free actually means here
It means the copy you download is a copy you keep. You can back it up, install it on a plane with no Wi-Fi, and still be playing it in ten years — the DRM-free build runs on its own, whether or not we're still around. We ship those builds on storefronts like itch.io, where what you download is the whole game, no strings attached. (Eventually, in more places and storefronts).
DRM is sold as anti-piracy. In practice, the people most inconvenienced by it are the ones who paid. We're not interested in punishing our actual customers to chase the ones who were never going to buy.
What about Steam and consoles?
Fair question — here's the honest version. We never add our own DRM. But not every storefront is ours to control.
On Steam, we ship with Steam's DRM turned off. The build runs on its own — you can copy the game folder to another machine and launch it without Steam even open. And if you'd rather a launcher never touch your library at all, the same DRM-free build is on itch.io.
On consoles, we don't get a choice. PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch are closed platforms — the hardware maker controls accounts, licensing, and distribution end-to-end. We can't hand you a DRM-free copy there, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.
Same values everywhere. Different amounts of control — and we'll always tell you which is which.
No pay-to-win. Ever.
The other half of this is monetization. We don't do pay-to-win, we don't do loot boxes, and we don't sell power. When you and a friend buy the same game, you start on the same footing — the difference between you should be skill and time, not who spent more at the cash shop.
You buy the game once. Updates are free. The thing you paid for only gets better.
Treating players like adults
All of this comes down to one idea: we'd rather earn your trust than engineer your wallet. Fair pricing, real ownership, and no dark patterns is a harder business model. It's also the only one we're interested in running.
If that's the kind of studio you want to support, the best thing you can do is wishlist GemCore on Steam and tell a friend. That's the whole gist for a studio our size — and it's one we're proud to depend on.
The header image is a RookTKO homage to GOG's classic DRM-free installer screen.1