The digital distribution service that offered PC games without DRM has seemingly shut its doors.
Digital distribution service Good Old Games (GOG) recently announced that it has closed its doors. According to a simple text notice now replacing the original website, the team assures current customers that a method will be established for them to re-download their games despite the site's current state.
GOG, owned by Polish games distributor CD Projekt, was originally launched back in 2008. When active, the service allowed its customers to purchase older PC games without the need for special client software to download, install, and run the game (although some titles needed DOSBox or other emulators to run).
More importantly, the games also came without digital rights management, allowing customers to download titles multiple times on multiple machines--they could even download additional items such as manuals, soundtracks, avatars and more. But for now, that's all come to an end.
"We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is," the team admitted. "We've debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we've decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form. We're very grateful for all support we've received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming."
"Sometimes it's really hard being DRM-free... hard to keep things the way they are and keep management and publishers happy," read a Twtter entry on Friday.
The GOG team assured customers that the "idea" isn't gone forever. A GOG representative also confirmed that the service isn't gone, but also added that more details will be revealed at a later date--possibly on Wednesday. Given that the site always carried a "beta" tag, this re-launch may have been part of the overall plan since the service went live two years ago.
As of June 21, 2010, GOG featured 223 DRM-free PC games from publishers such as Activision, Apogee Software, Interplay, Running With Scissors, Ubisoft, Epic Games and more.
Oh well, time to buy some of those Frictional games studio games. Does it really sound that awkward ?
Being one of its costumers, I sure hope so. When I first saw this message on GOG last night, I seriously panicked.
+1 to that, maybe for a premium after you have bought the game from Steam, you can buy original manuals or artwork.
For those who want it, of course, it could be a nice little added bonus.
Steam already has a bunch of older games which all run flawlessly on Windows 7 64.
I hope the entire catalog of games on GOG will be moved over to Steam. That would be so awesome, I'd buy a TON of stuff.
Yes we know, the good thing about GOG was being able to get some of the other things from a game such as the manuals, but being able to also get physical ones as well would make a great cottage industry.
I for one would love to get the original manuals from the Wing Commander series.
If you're right - it's quite brilliant, actually. They needed to take the site offline for a few days anyway (to go out of beta) and someone probably figured that the only way to get some free and widespread publicity would be to "feign death"... which is infuriating in its own right, similarly to how a nice and timid person might only get noticed and praised after being found dangling from a tree.
We'll have to wait for Wednesday to find out, I guess...