The Death of Good Old Games: GOG.com

Their site is no longer up.

A steam user reported he got the following when trying to log into his account page http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/5014/gogshutdown.png.

Sad news if this is really true, that this is the end.

 

I've never used that site before. Was it like D2D and Steam?

 

Yes, they were a digital distributor of "old" classic PC games. All their games were $5 or $10, so the pricing was simple. All the games sold were DRM free, and they were seriously the ONLY source for some very old classics that you could find nowhere else. If you're not in your 30+ now or picked up PC gaming post internet era, then you might not recognize 90% of their library.

 

NeoGAF - View Single Post - GOG.com closed for now, possibly reopening soon, Crazy Polish Dance Party Supposedly they are just ending their "beta" phase and this is all a publicity stunt.

 

Word on the street is that CD Projekt is re-branding gog.com...and that a similar/improved service should be available Wednesday...

If not, this is definitely some sad news...I've bought my fair share of games from gog.com (Blood, Redneck Rampage, Beyond Divinity, Earth 2150, Evil Genius, Return to Krondor, Independence War, Sacrifice, Outcast, Pro Pinball, etc) and it was an extremely helpful community...

Steam and D2D can't be bothered with trying to support older games...they can barely be bothered trying to support recent games...

 

Odd, I just visited the website yesterday, and it was still up.

I can't imagine that GoG would simply up and disappear - it was far too awesome to do that.

 

Just read a story about this on Reddit lol. Never heard of this site, but it was about PC games so that kinda sucks.

 

I read that this is just a PR stunt. They apparently end up their beta phase and will go final phase.

There is more info on neogaff and they just dismiss it as a stunt.

 

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I hope its just a stunt. At least they said I could download my games even if they do go belly up. I sure hope not. It is a great place to buy older games, many of which you just can't find any more.

 

I wonder if Codemasters is a little pissed. This was their weekend for sales, hehe. Probably not.

 

Looks like the dark side wins again.

 

Also if they're just gearing up for an "improved" service I have a feeling that means DRM, a mandatory client, online activation, etc.

 

I wouldn't think so, the games they sell don't have DRM and adding any would cost so much it would eliminate their profits.

 

Adding DRM would just encourage their customer base to go back to doing what they were doing before - acquiring the games through less-than-legal means. I assume GoG knows this. They seem like fairly smart folks.

 

They're not adding DRMs.

Most of those games are so old that they're not even recognized or supported by the companies any more.

 

apparently people think it's a stunt. i hope they're right.

 

I hope so too, it sounds like a poorly planned stunt if it is. Making it seem like you packed up and shut down the site might make people think that it is done and might drive the member counts down transitioning from beta to release. Rrrreally hope so though.

 

Used to be true, not anymore. Most of the games they had been releasing were from 2005-present.

Also their games were plenty pirated. The myth of "if there's no DRM people will be honest" has been debunked plenty of times, most notably by te scumbags who make StarForce when they posted torrent links to GC2.

 

LOLWUT? 2005-present. Hardly. Most of the games were pre 2005, even so, except for some of the most popular games, 2005 is ancient in terms of gaming anyhow, and you most likely wouldn't be able to find 99% of games they offer for sale through any retail or etail chain.

I don't know how this service isn't a win-win. Developers/Publishers are getting little to no money from these old games, why not make a few extra bucks this way. They get paid for doing nothing basically, letting gog do all the legwork.

If they end up going with a Steam-like service, I'm ok with that, just nothing more restrictive like limited installs, etc. Steam is not very intrusive, you have to login to use your game, but have to option of playing offline.

This is the same reason I want to download all my Steam games and just back them up. I don't have a lot of them just haven't taken the time to download all of them. I hate to see when Steam decides to sell off or dump the service. Sure they may offer a limited time to download but can you imagine the server load during that time?

 

Besides, it better not be dead. I still have The Longest Journey to buy and play!

 

But the myth of "if you put DRM on it, you will sell more copies and decrease piracy" is also total crap.

 

Most likely they are moving out of Beta status and have come up with this rather confusing campaign for the launch.

 

I love GOG, I'm just saying most of the games weren't that old.

(or that good)

 

there's an update.
i'm scared now.

 

Small companies don't plan huge announcements days in advance if they're just going to close up shop.

Something's going to happen, and I don't think it's the death of GOG.

 

Here's the latest for the rest to see.

"UPDATE 20.09.2010
First of all, we apologize everyone for the whole situation and closing GOG.com. We do understand the timing for taking down the site caused confusion and many users didn't manage to download all their games. Unfortunately we had to close the service due to business and technical reasons.

At the same time we guarantee that every user who bought any game on GOG.com will be able to download all their games with bonus materials, DRM-free and as many times as they need starting this Thursday.

The official statement from GOG.com's management concerning the ongoing events is planned on Wednesday. If you want to receive further information about GOG.com, please send an email to [email protected] if you're a media representative or to [email protected] if you're a user without a GOG account."

 

I'm fairly convinced they are done.

You don't fake your own death when you are in the distribution service. Especially when you operate in such a niche market, your clients don't flow like beer, and flock like the salmon of Capistrano.

 

I dunno. Didn't you see the votes for games in the area to request games to be added? Top requested games numbered in the multiple thousands, maybe over ten thousand. Yes in the grand scheme of things, that's a niche market, but to have that many VOTE, let alone for that one particular game, is probably no more than half the users at gog.com. They have a significant market, and even if they make $2-3 a purchase (say $3 for sake of argument), that's fairly significant.

 

I don't know if they make that much. When you figure their average game cost $5, then you factor royalty cost to the publishers, server costs, billing and maintaining a customer database and someone has to remove the DRM profits are tight to say the least.

 

Eh, most of the games they peddle come DRM-free anyway, and haven't been supported by the publisher for several years. Basically, anything they give in royalties is free money for the publisher, so the publisher would be better off accepting only a penny per sale than nothing at all.

Considering that you can invest in a whole development team, advertising, distribution costs, localization, legal fees, and a cast of a few hundred employees on a triple-A title and still turn a profit at $50 a copy, I'd be surprised if you couldn't turn a profit at $6 a title while having to do basically nothing. They're probably charging more per game than the entire profit Direct2Drive earns on each sale, and D2D has way more costs in terms of server maintenance and customer services.

 

My sentiments exactly Histidine. I have no idea how many people are on the Gog team, but I bet to say not a whole lot, maybe a dozen at most, probably half that. They basically ask the pub/dev for rights/permission to recompile and make it available for download. Debugging and making it Windows 7/Vista/XP compatible is the hardest part but I'm sure 90% of the games run without much need for adjustment. Games are (were) $5.99 or $9.99 probably just based on what cut the pub/dev wanted to get their shriveled green little greedy hands on. That leaves probably a good $3 for Gog...

I still don't see how this business couldn't make money. No competition, basically redistributing existing games, inexpensive distribution costs (internet). Unless people redownload all their games every month, bandwidth is relatively inexpensive.

Here's to hoping these guys have a sick sense of humor and will just be rolling out of beta.

 

maybe the customer group is too small for a reasonable turnover?

 

Which is why they stopped doing that within the first month and just bundled everything with a very well configured Dosbox.

 

From what I read it was caused by 2 things.
1) the market isn't going anywhere. They rarely get new titles.
2) Legal issues with removing DRM. Even steam has run into these issues. Remember having to turn to page X going to line Y and typing in word Z? Well, a lot of publishers had fits when companies removed that.

 

GOG.com usually ran sales and when they did the games were between $3-5. When they weren't on sale the games still averaged around $5. What I liked about GOG games was that they were freshened up to work with Vista and W7.

 

Care to tell us where you read this?

 

I'd like to say that this must be some kind of sick publicity stunt, but it's either 5 1/2 months late or 6 1/2 months early for that kind of trick to be pulled. At the same time, I really hope that it is. I would lose some respect for the site, but keeping the only legitimate source of some great classic games open is more important to me than maintaining their untarnished reputation in my mind.

If it's a stunt, though, I totally get it. It's buying a lot of publicity, and all of the panic-stricken users with a wishlist will be buying their wishlisted games the instant they open it back up. After that update, though, it just seems so unlikely.

 

I think I bought most of what I wanted to buy, I just need to download probably half of them!

If they are going belly up, I can guarantee that it's the greedy publishers again that went from getting nothing for the games to getting something, now its not enough. Stupid donkey orifices.

 

GoG is back, bringing more games with them.

Good Old Games "closure" is site relaunch, Baldur's Gate incoming - Neoseeker News Article

 

DAMN you gog for screwing with me!

 

well that stunt worked until today i didnot know about GOG it seem like they found how to use the gaming comunauty tendency to make drama out of nothing to thied adventage

 

Hahaha. LOL. I knew it. Just too much business to be had. Thanks for that link though +1. I guess we find out Thursday.

And for the lazy link clicker:

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This is the part where I get to say: I @$%&ing called it.

 

You seem to have some sort of grudge towards a company providing a service that other people love and doesn't really do anything to affect you. Care to share?

 

Glad it was just a publicity stunt. They're the same people who helped get the Witcher out so if the website failed it would have been detrimental to the 2nd game's release schedule and polish.

 

What they did was incredibly annoying. I don't think I'll be buying anything more from them, at least for a while.

 

So... in retaliation for them staying in business, you're going to refuse them your business?

Logic, she is such a fickle thing...

 

I don't have a problem with them, as I said earlier I love GOG, I've been a member since the beta launched and have purchased many games from them.

That being said, the bulk of the games they sell are neither good nor old.

 

That's the only way to show a company your dissatisfaction....

To use another example, you can [female dog] at Ubisoft all you want about their DRM, but they won't do a single thing about it until it hurts their sales.

 

So... you expect them to continue pulling this type of stunt if their sales aren't hurt?

'Cuz otherwise, you don't get to use that example. The Ubisoft thing works because I won't give my money to a company until they make products without extra-stupid DRM. By refusing to give them money, potential buyers provide financial incentive for Ubisoft to remove their DRM.

But I'm betting you're refusing to buy stuff from GOG just to get back at them for tricking you.