Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Added to GOG Preservation Program Following Canceled Remake
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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has been added to GOG's Preservation Program, an initiative launched in 2024 to keep classic PC games playable on modern systems. The move comes after Ubisoft cancelled its planned remake of the 2003 title, with GOG explicitly citing that cancellation as the reason for restoring the original game rather than leaving fans without a modern option.
GOG's team reverse-engineered the game's original Scimitar engine to build a lightweight compatibility wrapper, adding widescreen and ultrawide support, adjustable camera scaling, selectable frame rates, and an in-game overlay for tweaking field-of-view and other settings on the fly. Previously, running the game on modern hardware caused physics and display glitches requiring workarounds, but it now runs natively and smoothly. GOG says the wrapper's architecture is "game agnostic" and could be adapted to fix other old DirectX titles in future, and Sands of Time is on sale for $2.99 until 23 August to mark the update.
- GOG adds Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to its Preservation Program
- Update fixes widescreen, frame rate and camera issues on modern PCs
- Move follows Ubisoft's cancellation of the game's remake
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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a 2003 action-adventure game published by Ubisoft, best known for its time-rewind mechanic and acrobatic platforming, and it's widely regarded as a classic of the genre. GOG, an online store known for selling older PC games in versions adapted to run on modern computers, is the platform involved here.
Ubisoft had been developing a remake of Sands of Time, but that project was cancelled after a long and troubled development. The game's original code, known as the Scimitar engine, does not run cleanly on modern PCs without technical fixes, which is where preservation efforts like GOG's come in.
This matters because it touches on a wider issue in gaming: what happens to older titles when official remakes fall through or publishers move away from supporting them, and who takes responsibility for keeping them playable as hardware and software evolve.
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