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Well since this is no longer front page I'll doubt you'll see this, but I would put your money where you mouth is as I have and just shop Good Old Games. They have tons of titles (including the Divinity series which I own and plays wonderful on X64) with more being added weekly and NO DRM AND FULL X64 SUPPORT!!!!

So I've found the best way to show these butt monkeys with their ring 0 crap is to simply refuse to buy any game with it. If it isn't on GOG I'll check Steam and if they don't have it CLEAN, as in ONLY steam required? well screw them, I'll wait until it is in the $5 or less bin where I don't give a crap whether it works or not and drop it on the XP partition I keep for crappy code.

But I would advise using system restore as well as a USB drive for weekly backups so if you do get bit in the ass by a game it is easy to fix. Otherwise I've had to do a wipe and reinstall on customer's PCs because they didn't have a backup and DRM malware made the machine too unstable to use. Despite what the ring 0 butt monkeys say many times their uninstaller DOES NOT WORK and will leave the machine even more unstable afterward. Assholes.

It's probably not so much that you've lost your "mojo" as your preferences have changed over the years. Also, you probably have less time to kill now than when you were younger.

You didn't specify how old you were when you were at your peak, but I'm guessing you were a heavy gamer in the late 90s or early 00s. You'll find a ton of games from that era from Good Old Games that ought to keep you busy for a while. There are lots of games there that I couldn't afford and/or my machine couldn't run decently back then. You could also try free retro-clones of your old favorites.

I agree with the other posters that you ought to try your hand at writing your own games, maybe surprise yourself in the process.

No need. One the things I love about Good Old Games (which if you haven't tried it sign up for the email. Their weekend sales ROCK!) is that ALL games are just a single .exe. That's it. Just a single .exe (or in games over 4GB a .exe and a part file) which means I just drop the installers on my 1TB USB drive and I'm good to go. If I need to reinstall? Boom, right there. Decide I want it on my lappy? Boom and I'm good to go.

So I gotta give the GOG guys credit. NO DRM, NO install limits, NO bullshit. Oh and for you FOSS guys there is even a list of games that run on Linux and their forums are good at helping you run them on whatever. So as long as they aren't doing an *.A.A "Give us all ur moniez lol!" style bullshit I gotta side with GOG.

Ahem... as much as I like Duke Nukem - 49.99 USD seems a tiiiny bit overpriced by now...

But on the other hand things like Steam (or worse AC2 style online "activation") are killing the used PC game market for ALL of us not just Gamestop. And don't forget this is DRM folks, which means you play THEIR game by THEIR rules, because YOU never own it! Want to mod it? Not allowed unless they say so. Want to sell it? Not allowed. I don't see how this is ANY different from the Apple walled garden approach, since they have all the rights to do as they please AFTER the sale.

So while I think Gamestop can be serious asses, let us not forget that ultimately all these Steam style distribution methods make for a great run around our first sale rights, and make every "purchase" nothing more than a really expensive rental. They can pull your account, take your games away from you, they have ALL the control in their walled garden while you have none. That is why I have been putting my money where my mouth is and been shopping at Good Old Games where at least I OWN what I pay for.

I personally see shopping at a place like "Good Old Games" as not very different from shopping on "Steam". While you might not need something like Steam to play the games from Good Old Games, something you OWN you could resell. I am sure Good Old Games and the game publishers would have a problem if you started listed your digital downloads purchased from there on eBay, Craigslist etc. So since you can't really sell what you buy from Good Old Games, do you really OWN the games?

And are you sure gog.com doesn't include any DRM whatsoever? That shocks me. And technically you never own software. You license it.

Check out point three on their about page for a pleasant surprise.

But on the other hand things like Steam (or worse AC2 style online "activation") are killing the used PC game market for ALL of us not just Gamestop. And don't forget this is DRM folks, which means you play THEIR game by THEIR rules, because YOU never own it! Want to mod it? Not allowed unless they say so. Want to sell it? Not allowed. I don't see how this is ANY different from the Apple walled garden approach, since they have all the rights to do as they please AFTER the sale.

So while I think Gamestop can be serious asses, let us not forget that ultimately all these Steam style distribution methods make for a great run around our first sale rights, and make every "purchase" nothing more than a really expensive rental. They can pull your account, take your games away from you, they have ALL the control in their walled garden while you have none. That is why I have been putting my money where my mouth is and been shopping at Good Old Games where at least I OWN what I pay for.

If you are on Linux you really need to be a generation behind. Not only does that save you an assload of money (hell I'm still running an HD4650 on Windows 7 and all the new games play REAL nice) but the FOSS drivers are catching up pretty quick and should be damned good for the last gen. As for the current gen I figure with AMD giving all the docs and specs you probably got about another year and a half before the devs get up to speed. But trying the latest drivers in the repo on Ubuntu 10.04 everything is nice and smooth at least on my 4xxx.

So if you really want to support FOSS go AMD, as they are the ONLY real GPUs that give full specs. And by going a gen behind you can not only enjoy your Linux but save cash as well. Besides it isn't like you are playing the latest ePeen games on Linux anyway, right? Oh but if you do want to game on Linux check out this list for an easy way to add some games to your collection. Enjoy!

You too? Between the 3 activation bit and the whole "Oops, we just installed x32 DRM on your x64 system, you're boned!" crap I just gave up and now shop at Good Old Games where I actually OWN what I pay for, but being a fan of Diablo I was willing to put up with a little DRM if it wasn't too bad. So what is up with the DRM? Is it more like easily removable SecuROM? or is it that "always on 24x7" pile o' suck style DRM?

GoG That's probably the best bet. Although some people do whine about that PR stunt and some of their bugs.

Oh man, how EA is able to completely take such wonderful series and then piss on them and set them on fire. Lets be honest folks, as long as they have the cash cow known as exclusive NFL license to print money via Madden they are just gonna keep on sucking. Another good example of their destructive behavior is sitting in a box right in front of me...the Medal of Honor series, or MoH for short. I bought the 10th Anniversary pack and it is just sad to play them one after another and watch them fall from greatness to shit. It goes from great (original and expansions) to good (Pacific) to absolute shit (Airborne) and by the end they've turned it into a completely lame arcade console shooter complete with fricking power ups like it is Painkiller or something! WTF! Way to destroy the immersion assholes!

That is why I only buy maybe one or two AAA list titles (last was Bioshock II, and surprise! Ruined it, bad imitation of the original) and spend the majority of my money at Good Old Games where I can get games that are FUN to play, don't have to spend time dealing with SecuROM and Starforce bullshit (loooove how their installers and removal tools don't work more than half the time on x64!) and the games are cheap to boot. But as long as EA has the license to print money that is the NFL license (I know guys that have a fricking standing order at Gamestop for EVERY Madden game for EVERY system they own so it will ALWAYS be at their door on release day) EA can continue buying up and destroying the greats, whether in house or bought and crushed EA never met a series they couldn't ruin. I just hope when the license comes up for renewal the NFL refuses to grant them exclusivity, then maybe we might actually get football games that don't suck too!

If you miss some of them, maybe do something about it so you're not missing them?

Master of Orion I and II for just USD$6

The complete Total Annihilation suite, also for USD$6

Well, whatcha waiting for?

If you miss some of them, maybe do something about it so you're not missing them?

Master of Orion I and II for just USD$6

The complete Total Annihilation suite, also for USD$6

Well, whatcha waiting for?

I thought you had to rebuy all the games through PSN. You're telling me I can take a brand new PS3 and slap in ANY PS2 or PS1 game and it'll work? According to wikipedia you're wrong, as you'll have to get an old out of warranty one to actually play PS2. Meh, consoles suck now IMHO. Sony keeps taking things away from you AFTER the sale, while my friends that have the x360 like it lack of XBMC pisses me off there, and frankly a $400 PC has better graphics than any of the above PLUS lets me play anything from the 2600 up to the PS2 as well as every game made for PC since the dawn of time.

Oh and Good Old Games is having a 50% off sale on community favorites for those like me that just want to "click and run" with tons of great stuff like Duke Nukem (complete with link to all the best mods, which work great with the GoG version) and I76 and Arcanum! I picked up a half a dozen so if y'all will excuse me I got some cool gaming to enjoy. And for those into horror it isn't on sale but you might want to check out Blood (excellent Build engine game by Monolith) as I just waltzed through the mortuary from Phantasm complete with the pylons humming and the little evil midgets while chucking dynamite and spouting one liners. Cool and funny as well as fun. Peace.

I thought you had to rebuy all the games through PSN. You're telling me I can take a brand new PS3 and slap in ANY PS2 or PS1 game and it'll work? According to wikipedia you're wrong, as you'll have to get an old out of warranty one to actually play PS2. Meh, consoles suck now IMHO. Sony keeps taking things away from you AFTER the sale, while my friends that have the x360 like it lack of XBMC pisses me off there, and frankly a $400 PC has better graphics than any of the above PLUS lets me play anything from the 2600 up to the PS2 as well as every game made for PC since the dawn of time.

Oh and Good Old Games is having a 50% off sale on community favorites for those like me that just want to "click and run" with tons of great stuff like Duke Nukem (complete with link to all the best mods, which work great with the GoG version) and I76 and Arcanum! I picked up a half a dozen so if y'all will excuse me I got some cool gaming to enjoy. And for those into horror it isn't on sale but you might want to check out Blood (excellent Build engine game by Monolith) as I just waltzed through the mortuary from Phantasm complete with the pylons humming and the little evil midgets while chucking dynamite and spouting one liners. Cool and funny as well as fun. Peace.

The simple answer is that selling something as an ongoing service makes a lot more money over a longer period of time than selling to you once.

Personally, I don't get the whole microtrans stuff anyway. I do use Steam, I'm a big fan of all the Valve games, but I own the boxed copies of all the games I play on Steam. I've bought no downloadable "Steam-only" games because I don't get what it is I'm supposed to be paying for.

I have bought a few applications online, plus a few games from Good Old Games because, in both cases, I have them stored on my local hard disk(s) and therefore in my possession to install, use or play whenever I want to.

I have friends who play WoW (I tried it for a month but it didn't grab me) and who pay for all sorts of in-game objects but, again, I don't get that either.

I guess it's a case of "each to his own" but I'm not prepared to put that much faith in games companies that I truly believe the add-ons they want to sell me are just that, rather than stuff they deliberately left out of the original game to sell to me later on.

Well I can't speak for them, but I can speak for myself, and I bought a Dreamcast even knowing it would probably be a loser PLUS buying games for said dreamcast specifically BECAUSE it had been jailbroken, thus allowing me to use emulators on it instead of having to keep my old consoles are wired together in a mess. I was more than happy to buy games for it PLUS buy games for my Xbox (which I had XBMC on) because they gave me MORE value for my money. The dreamcast was my one stop for all my classic games plus the newer Dreamcast stuff like Power stone, just as the xbox was my stop for playing lots of games PLUS it made a damned good media center.

To me it has always been about giving me a good value for my dollar. same reason I buy tons of games from Good old games even though there isn't a single game there I couldn't pirate, but they give me lots of extras like soundtracks PLUS guaranteed x64 support on all games PLUS make it easy and cheap to pay them. I think the bigger problem is game companies charging $50+ for frankly shitty games that are nothing but eye candy without any gameplay and then looking for a scape goat. Sure there will always be some that pirate, most of the pirates I've known were poor college students that couldn't afford the product anyway.

That is why I hope Sony gets the smackdown. Too many of these great new toys coming out are locked down tighter than a nun's thighs and there just ain't no sense in wasting all that good tech when it could do so much more. I might be tempted to get my family an x360 or PS3 if someone jailbroke it so I could have an HD XBMC and be able to run any format, along with emulators and homebrew and anything else cool someone thinks to do with one. If I buy the toy I want to play with it, no have some company tell me I'm only allowed to do what they say with it.

Personally, I found Painkiller to be a lot more entertaining than Halo. And without giving any money to MS for the privilege.

They do have a download client. The GOG.com Downloader.

You mean they won't have a GOG.com games-client like Steam? I'm okay with that. Would be nice but not necessary.

On a side-note, the link above to the Downloader currently works. But the client can't login so games don't download. Guess I'll have to wait 13 hours to download the game I bought during their last weekend sale.

That's actually quite simple: You don't, you make money off it. Folks are naturally lazy, make it easy and cheap and guess what? we buy. I can give an example from my own life, Good Old Games. I have bought MORE games from them than I have bought in the two years before hearing of them, even though I could pirate all of them, why? Because they make it easy, they make it cheap, and they actually give value for your money by making all their games Xp/Vista/7 x64 compatible. so it is actually less hassle to buy from them than it is to download a game from TPB and figure out how/if it'll work on x64.

So what I'd propose is this: download "channels" offered by your cable/DSL companies in league with the content companies. Want access to EVERY MP3 more than a year old? That'll be $5. How about every game more than 2 years old, with a special section for x64 compatible? That's another $5. 25% would go to the cable companies so these lines would be cap free, with the rest going to the content producers. But instead they want to screw you to the tune of a buck a song, what is it, a buck and a half for a single DRMed TV show? People can see when they are being boned, and that is a major screw you right there.

The problems is thanks to the cartels being allowed to buy all the major distribution channels thanks to deregulation, along with the bribing of our elected officials, means that they have tilted the game in their favor and the prices reflect that. People simply aren't getting value for their money and feel ripped off, and just like every other time the game has been rigged a black market has sprung up to fill demand. Make an easy cheap and legal way to fill that demand without price gouging, and a lot of that black market would simply die out. Sure you'd still have a few that simply refuse to pay anything, but most folks wouldn't want to jump through the hoops, take the risk of viruses and getting *.A.Aed, not when they could just pay $5 a month and have what they want. The producers could even use it as advertising by having streaming ads promoting their latest products that aren't in the channel yet.

Uh, buy them?

Uh, buy them?

Make you an account there and sign up for the email. They will ONLY send you an email when there is a sale, and their sales kick ass! I just got King's Bounty:The Legend (Great game BTW) and Fantasy wars (also great) for $10 for the pair from the last sale! Oh and as a bonus just to try their system out when you make an account you can get 3 free games to start your collection. Naturally they are 3 older point and clicks, but it does give you a chance to try out their system and games. Hell they even all worked just hunky dory on windows 7 HP X64, which if you've tried running some of the older titles in x64 you know it is hit or miss. But everything I've picked up, From the Redneck Rampage collection, which if you haven't tried is pretty damned funny, to the Descent Freespace collection and Postal2 have all worked beautifully.

So sign up and give them a spin. Hell they have so many $5.99 impulse buys I'm sure you'll find something you'd like. And most importantly it is putting your money where your mouth is and actually supporting a DRM free way of doing business. NO DRM, NO Limits on installs, NO problem backing up your game installers NO limits to how many times you can download it, and most importantly you are supporting a company that treats you like a valued customer and NO like a criminal scumbag. Trust me, a guy that has a whole wall of titles on his virtual shelf at GOG, you will like doing business with them. Hell on their last sale I used their Adobe AIR downloader app and had 5Gb worth of games bought, downloaded, and installed, in less time than it took me to have my lunch. Now THAT is nice!

Make you an account there and sign up for the email. They will ONLY send you an email when there is a sale, and their sales kick ass! I just got King's Bounty:The Legend (Great game BTW) and Fantasy wars (also great) for $10 for the pair from the last sale! Oh and as a bonus just to try their system out when you make an account you can get 3 free games to start your collection. Naturally they are 3 older point and clicks, but it does give you a chance to try out their system and games. Hell they even all worked just hunky dory on windows 7 HP X64, which if you've tried running some of the older titles in x64 you know it is hit or miss. But everything I've picked up, From the Redneck Rampage collection, which if you haven't tried is pretty damned funny, to the Descent Freespace collection and Postal2 have all worked beautifully.

So sign up and give them a spin. Hell they have so many $5.99 impulse buys I'm sure you'll find something you'd like. And most importantly it is putting your money where your mouth is and actually supporting a DRM free way of doing business. NO DRM, NO Limits on installs, NO problem backing up your game installers NO limits to how many times you can download it, and most importantly you are supporting a company that treats you like a valued customer and NO like a criminal scumbag. Trust me, a guy that has a whole wall of titles on his virtual shelf at GOG, you will like doing business with them. Hell on their last sale I used their Adobe AIR downloader app and had 5Gb worth of games bought, downloaded, and installed, in less time than it took me to have my lunch. Now THAT is nice!

Exactly! Kind of how I have bought more games in the last six months than I had in 2 years thanks to finding out about Good Old Games. Instead of having to worry about draconian DRM bullshit breaking my PC all they have is "We do a loot of work to get these going. Please don't share them, okay?" so I don't. Hell their prices are so low anybody can buy them (none higher than $10) and most importantly unlike the "limited install" bullshit we're seeing more and more I can back up, burn, and reinstall anytime and as many times as I want.

The problem with big media is they have decided their shit don't stink and it's just hunky dory to treat their customers like scum. And sadly thanks to deregulation allowing media cartels to buy up all the radio stations they'll be able to keep getting away with it too. If you were to see a standard record company contract, which I have as I've been playing with some regionally popular bands, it is truly disgusting what they do to the artist. Basically they take ALL the rights and you get jack. I had friends that were stupid enough to sign, the dreams of big tours were too much for them, and they ended up having to break up and never play together again just to get out of the contract. By the time they got done with "Hollywood accounting" the 25k they got to buy decent gear was gonna cost more than half a million to pay back, and they couldn't even play their own songs without permission!

As a musician I can say the quicker the RIAA dies in a fire the better. The bands I play with always share at least part of our albums and all we ask for is credit for non commercial use or a little change if you want to use it in something for sale. You won't live in a Metallica mansion doing it that way, but at least you don't have to suck the corporate penis either. If someone wants to check out the rough drafts of my latest (kind of a blues/funk thing) they are here but be warned that they are live rough mixes with a little digi-corder. We are currently building our own little studio and hope to have it and the album done by spring. If you want to support art, go see a show, buy from your local artists. Don't support the raping of our culture by multinational corps.

Hey no problem, glad to know somebody else remembers that great old system and games. Speaking of cool old games, if you haven't put yourself on the mailing list for Good Old Games you don't know what you're missing. NO DRM, you can download your purchases anytime and as many times as you want, easy backups (just burn the .exe installer to disc or put in on your portadrive) with no limits on number of machines in your home you can install to, and no prices over $10. They are having a killer RPG/Strategy sale on right now, I just picked up King's Bounty: The Legend (great game BTW) and Fantasy Wars for $10 for both!

Oh and thanks to their custom DOSboxes even on x64 installing their games is just a "clicky clicky" and done affair. Great if you're like me and enjoy a game because it is fun, not just because its pretty. I've found GOG a great way to support DRM free gaming while still enjoying kick ass titles and easy purchasing. That's a win/win in my book. Happy Labor Day!

I've had plenty of practice ;)

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/evil_genius

Off Topic: Quite off topic, but if you use a tool like http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ , you can get Exchange email in any client. I recently switched from Evolution (because I don't like it) to Thunderbird 3, which runs pretty sweet on Ubuntu 9.10.

On Topic: I really only play one top end to-pay game any more. Everything else I get usually runs for free on Linux. If a native version of Civilization were released on Linux, I'd buy it. Hell, it would save be the $150 I need to spend to get windows just to play one game). And if a portal existed that provided other games with simple installation and payment, I'd buy those too. I've bought several games from http://www.gog.com/ that I run in Linux via WINE or dosbox. But if Steam was available with native builds, I'd probably buy those too.

Steam may have had serious problems in the past, but nowadays I find it to be the easiest form of DRM to get along with. Beyond that, being able to cloud-save my games, buy-one-copy-play-it-on-PC-or-Mac, and ease of reinstallation if/when I format my hard drive make it worth dealing with. There are also some games that, using their original install disc, can be a bit wonky on XP or Windows 7...but with Steam, they work perfectly. True, that means you have to rebuy the darn thing, but if $5 means I can play some of my older games without having to jack around with them, I see it as just a convenience fee.

Steam hate made plenty of sense back in the day when it first started up...but nowadays, it's the only way I purchase PC games (other than Good Old Games, of course.)

I can second your recommendation of gog.com - I've bought a few classic games from them, and had no trouble getting them to work (on a WinXP machine). I hadn't heard of direct2drive.com, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have Civilization 5 available for pre-order. Unfortunately, they don't mention DRM (which probably means that they're using it), and say that it requires Steam (with which I've had uniformly bad experiences). So, unlike GOG, I don't think I can really recommend direct2drive.

3. Can I backup games downloaded from GOG.com? Yes you can, and as a matter of fact we strongly recommend you do so - backing up your stuff is a very good habit, you know? Because our games are DRM-free, as soon as you download the setup file, you can back it up on a DVD or your external hard drive without hassle. Plus, as our installers are wrapped in nice exe files, you can save them in one folder and create a nice local backup of your games library! And if you forgot to backup your purchased games, fear not. You can always re-download them from our website for free - see below for more info. Sure, downloading will take a little bit longer than launching an installer from your backup disc, but that's no big deal.

4. Can I re-download my purchased games? Is there a limit to the number of re-downloads? You can always re-download games bought at GOG.com via the "My account" page. Also, there is no limit to the number of re-downloads, but please remember that you're not allowed to share your GOG.com account with other users as only you are entitled to download games from your account.

Also if you have more than one computer they don't have a problem with that either:

9. Can I install one game both on my laptop and desktop PC at home? Yes. We are not limiting the number of installations or re-installations as long as you are installing your purchased game on PCs in your household. So yeah, if you've got a render-farm in the basement, you might actually break the world record for the number of legal Fallout installations in one household. However, if you think about installing your game on a friend's PC or sharing it with others then please don't do it, okay?

Crap like this is why I put my money where my mouth is and buy from Good Old Games. NO DRM, NO limits on installs, easy and hassle free, and even works perfectly on x64.

Try Painkiller. Great mindless action coupled with awesome level design.

Indeed. Someone tell this guy about Good Old Games

Oh!

You wanna know why there is so much piracy? it is because developers are retarded! As another poster recently said it is like the entire games industry has decided that Buggati roadsters are the ONLY way to go, and they are cranking out games that are $60+ in a world economy that is so dead I'm surprised peasant revolts aren't breaking out. Nobody has any money, those that do are using it to keep the roofs over their head, and they expect folks to shell out $60+ for a 5 hour game and THEN shell out another $25-$50 for the DLC which they ripped out the game in the first place to "maximize their profit potential". Yeah right!

What they SHOULD be doing to "maximize their profit potential" is taking a page from Good Old Games and taking those games that are 6 months old and no longer getting shelf space, or simply not selling at all, and offer them at GOG prices. I have bought more games from GOG in the past 6 months than I had in the 3 years before I heard of them, why? Because they are cheap ($10 max price, often sales below $6) they have NO DRM (which means no jumping through hoops or starforce fucked drives) and they make it EASY to buy from them! With their fast bandwidth I can click on a game from my account and purchase and have it installed before I finish my morning coffee.

And before they think consoles are the magical cure, they may want to look around. Console hacks and mod chips are selling like mad, just look at all the banned x360s floating around Craigslist loaded with hot games. Make it easy, make it fast, make it cheap, don't kick them in the nuts with DRM. But $60 a game in a dead economy is just asking for a fail.

Oh don't even get me started on my favorite genre FPSers! I'm so damned tired of pretty bling bling and shitty console style gameplay, even Bioshock 2 they dumbed down the hacking to make it more console friendly,lame. I bought the MOH: 10th anniversary edition, and it was a crying shame to watch that series go from the goodness of the earlier games to the stinkiness that is Airborne. I swear the rubber band AI in that game makes the shitty AI on Madden look like a bunch of geniuses!

And thanks for the tip about SR2, if I run into it in the bargain bin I'll have to remember to pick it up. Honestly after enjoying the sales they send via email from Good Old Games (if you haven't tried them you really should, no DRM, no game over $10, unlimited downloads and installs, easy to back up installers, all games work on x64 flawlessly) I've got a good half a dozen games I haven't even gotten to fire up yet. That's what happens when you have a wonderful GF that is constantly coming over to give you great sex and is hinting at wanting to move in, it really cuts into your fragging time! ;-)

gamersgate.com works great. i have a hoard of games there. no client, no strings attached, you download, install, play. then you may delete the game. if you later on want to play it again, you just download it again.

I'd rather go to GOG.com where they actively encourage you to keep your own backups of the games you buy from them. You buy, download, play, uninstall, reinstall from backups, play, etc. No need to worry about gog.com going under and not having the ability to redownload later on if desired.

http://www.gog.com/en/search/sort/search/abe Already available for windows and was available.

Would it be perhaps that the game was just buggy? I remember having a nice long argument (sorry I didn't think to save the link) over Titan Quest because the developer blames every bug in the game on piracy. This moron even blamed bugs in the demo! on piracy. WTF? I never did get the asshole to explain why exactly I would have pirated the demo when I could download it for free. Never did get that game to run stable BTW, the demo would crash or lock up less than 5 minutes in for me. Yet the developers insisted their shit didn't stink and what killed Titan quest was piracy. Well if most who ran the demo had my experience it was because their code sucked ass. I never even bothered to pirate it because if I can't get the demo to run, what are the odds the full game will?

So any time I see "it was because of piracy!" when talking about a game I think of TQ and what a POS it was. I have found you give people a good value for their money, and don't try to assrape them on price or with buggy code, and people will buy. BTW Evil Genius is on sale right now at Good Old Games as part of their rebellion pack. Pick any games you want or get the whole 11 game set for $40. But considering how much alpha quality game code I've seen lately, and the fact you can't return it if the thing won't even run, I wonder how many just didn't bother because of reviews saying it is buggy. I know when I see buggy in a review I stop there and walk away. I deal with enough PITA programs without dealing with shitty code in my games.

Dude I have built decent gaming PCs for less than $300. Here is a dual core AMD kit for $200, go to your local mom&pop shop and pick up a dead box with an XP OEM license (usually around $30-$50, and you can get some good parts like an extra HDD or DVD ROM) and a $70-$100 graphics card and you are good to go.

In a way the consoles dragging their feet on putting out a new rev has helped lower the cost of PC gaming. Both consoles have a 7600 era GPU, which means most mainstream games had to lower the system reqs if they wanted to release on consoles as well. I'm using an HD4650 I got for a grand total of $36 after MIR and it plays everything I throw at it, just got done with a little Bioshock 2 before getting on here.

And finally I would point out that PCs have a MUCH longer life and can be re-purposed after they are no longer your main rig. The Celeron 3.06Ghz I gamed on in 03 and the 3.6Ghz P4 I gamed on in 05 are both being used by my two nephews to play MMORPGs and do that job quit well as well as helping them do homework, and my 1997 733Mhz P3 is now my mom's Internet box. If you build it yourself you'd be surprised how long they'll last. PC gaming is very cheap, not only cheap on the PC itself but with places like good old games I can get the games I missed often for less than $5. You can't get cheaper than that.

That is why I buy from Good Old Games, and suggest that those here that still play games on a PC do as well. NO DRM, NO activation, NO game over $10, NO limits to how many times you download your purchases, NO limits on how many of your PCs you're allowed to install to, NO problem backing up installers (just a single .exe, even for those games with expansion packs), NO waiting thanks to their high speed connection, NO problems if you are using X64.

So if you want to do business with a company that treats you like a valuable customer and not a dirty thief, shop GOG. It has to be the easiest and most pleasant game shopping experience I've ever had.As for TFA? Duh, who wants to pay nearly full price and not get a disc?

You can do the same thing (I would argue even better) on a PC, just use a TV Tuner (I got a nice ATI USB Tuner for $20 at Woot!) and Windows 7 Media Center. record, skip around, tell it to only record a specific series, can easily and cheaply add space for more recordings, burn recordings, etc.

As for TFA, am I the only one smelling the gangrene of slow death around Hulu? Who is gonna want to pay $10 a month for a service that has been steadily creeping up the ads, when there is Netflix, DVRs, and of course BT? It seems the greed of the media companies knows no bounds and keeps them from ever learning. I have over a $1000 in DVD box sets and swag from Joss Whedon shows because I was able to catch a couple of episodes of BtVS on P2P. The more people you expose to your product the more related products you can sell them, just look at how much more business the record companies have thanks to cheap DRM free MP3s or how good old games allows game companies to easily sell older product with NO work involved.

Customers want easy, they want fast, they want cheap. Instead the movie/TV corps are gonna piss everyone off by making them pay money for the privilege of ads and instead of letting Hulu build an international audience and help sell their product will slowly but surely kill it with stupid restrictions and endless greed. Congrats media companies, for proving you STILL don't get it.

You're welcome! I swear that game used to draw in so many females my former boss bought a case of the game, and then had me install it on every PC. I was like "WTF Doug? AoE 1? Two is out already!" and he just put a couple of PCs running the game in the windows and said "Watch and learn kid" and sure enough, it wasn't 20 minutes before girls started walking into the store going "Age of Empires? I looove that game!". We really increased sales to women by offering that game free with any PC purchase.

I think it is because unlike most games you never have to fight to succeed in AoE1. There are several ways to win without violence, such as building a monument, or a strategy I watched played many times by my sister I call the "Priests o' doom" where you build large walls around your camp and then send priests out to convert the enemy. With a large enough priest brigade one can take over entire villages without firing a shot.

But if you like long games with several ways to play give it a shot. I'm sure with the expansion packs you can get it for a little of nothing on Amazon, and with its random level generator you'll never play the same game twice. You might also want to try Good old games for tons of great strategy and other games, all under $10. For RPG I would suggest Divine Divinity or Sacred Gold (both great and looooong) and for strategy/rpg try King's Bounty: The Legend. By concentrating on magix you can kick butt on the above games without resorting to violence, and KB:The Legend even has your play affected by which woman you choose as a wife later in the game (don't choose the frog princess, she is seriously whiny!). All of the above are quite fun for both sexes IMHO. Enjoy!

I'm at least one person who will buy Civ5 if it's a non-Steam game, but won't buy it if it's Steam-only. I never quite got Half-life 2 working correctly with Steam - eventually I realised that I had better things to do than mess around with software designed to stop me from playing the game, and found some other options.

Has anyone tried getting the games at Good Old Games to work in Wine? I know they're older titles comes with a pre-configured DOSBox (works 100% better than DIY DOSBox and is 100% X64 Win7 compatible) so those shouldn't be a problem, and since ALL their games have the nasty DRM stripped out and use a simple .exe installer the games there should be easier to get going than all those infested with SecuROM or Starforce. And of course at $5-$10 the price is a hell of a lot better than the prices you get for ported games.

So how about it? Has anybody given the games at GOG a shot on Linux?

At least Activision saw fit to release Arcanum here. It's possible they re-released it to see if there's enough interest to develop a sequel. Wouldn't be the first time an old game has been released to get people interested in the sequel. See Star Wolves and King's Bounty for examples.

You'd be better off getting Sacred Gold, which has random drops, huuuuge game world, tons of side quests (which you can choose to do/not do), rare set pieces to collect (which are also dropped randomly), cool skills to upgrade, just a better game. Also Divine Divinity is quite good and large, although it isn't quite as huge as Sacred IMHO.

The problem with the DS games is they are VERY linear, with the cool set armor always in the same place guarded by the same monsters, and by the time you really get something good to use the game is finished. It just doesn't have much in the way of reason to replay and while it looked good at the time the whole thing was just kinda...meh.

If you like those style of games you'd be better off with one of the above, and since GOG has NO DRM and everything "just works" on x86 and x64 it is just a better deal. Also their prices are cheap enough their games are pretty much impulse buys, so if you decide you don't care for one it isn't really gonna bother you. But if you want more than just a couple of days play either of the above will be a better game than DS 1 or 2, both in length and gameplay wise IMHO.

You'd be better off getting Sacred Gold, which has random drops, huuuuge game world, tons of side quests (which you can choose to do/not do), rare set pieces to collect (which are also dropped randomly), cool skills to upgrade, just a better game. Also Divine Divinity is quite good and large, although it isn't quite as huge as Sacred IMHO.

The problem with the DS games is they are VERY linear, with the cool set armor always in the same place guarded by the same monsters, and by the time you really get something good to use the game is finished. It just doesn't have much in the way of reason to replay and while it looked good at the time the whole thing was just kinda...meh.

If you like those style of games you'd be better off with one of the above, and since GOG has NO DRM and everything "just works" on x86 and x64 it is just a better deal. Also their prices are cheap enough their games are pretty much impulse buys, so if you decide you don't care for one it isn't really gonna bother you. But if you want more than just a couple of days play either of the above will be a better game than DS 1 or 2, both in length and gameplay wise IMHO.

That may have been true during the days of Win9x, or even pre SP3, but honestly I haven't had to tweak squat to game on my PC in so long I can't even remember. One of the reasons I pushed my gamer customers to get Windows 7 (which they all love BTW) is that it takes the guesswork out of modern games. The WEI (Windows Experience Index) shows you where any weak spots may be, the games library shows you what the games WEI is, will even allow you to update manually or have it auto updated for you, it is pretty much "click and go" now.

Between Windows 7 HP X64 taking care of my new games, and Good Old Games offering tons of games that all "just work" on x86 and x64, the days of jumping through hoops just to play games are pretty much over. Between Steam and GOG you don't even have to leave your house anymore, just whip out your CC and in a couple of minutes you have a new game installed and ready to play. I honestly don't know how you could ask for easier than that. And of course with Steam and GOG I don't have to worry about switching discs and scratched games, something console games can't match.

Alright! It's nice to see a fellow GOG'er, welcome brother! After trying Good Old Games I don't know if I can really stomach jumping through the other guy's hoops anymore. Having to deal with a bunch of discs, or having it phone home, install nasty viruses like SecuROM or Starforce, no thanks.

And from the looks of it they are just trying to put on a "happy face" to the same Ubisoft horseshit. And I quote "If we've done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way people will want to be connected while they're playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends on Battle.net and earn the achievements on Battle.net"

So how exactly is this different than the Ubisoft bullshit? He is just basically saying "We will make it so you WANT us to screw you hard baby!". I shouldn't need a fucking Internet connection to play a single player campaign and yet again it is just another excuse that screws the paying clients while the actual pirates laugh their asses off and don't have to deal with the bullshit. At least GOG treats me like a valued customer instead of a criminal. NO DRM, NO phoning home, NO payment hassles, NO limits to your installs, NO problems backing up the installers (just a single .exe), NO problems running on x64, in other words they make their option a better value than piracy instead of treating me like a thief for daring to give them my money.