Good Old Games Shutting 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.