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GameTap and Codemasters Align For Free Games
Joystiq reports that publisher Codemasters has announced an alliance with the GameTap service that raises the profile of the all-you-can-eat gaming buffet considerably. The service will offer titles like DIRT and Overlord for-purchase download, of course, but the real news is that current and future Codemasters titles will be available directly via the service. That is, if you have a subscription these games are free. "Beyond the games mentioned, potential superstar title Clive Barker's Jericho and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty will be part of that future day and date deal. All these titles will also be available to purchase through GameTap's digital store, but seriously, the cost of one game will get you four months of GameTap service. We continue to be impressed with GameTap's expanding services and ridiculously affordable price, not to mention their free ad-driven gaming space."
I've always been curious about these services, both for a sort of browsing-without-buying variety, and as a foil against the ever-increasing piles of game crap that infest my storage spaces. Anyone use these services, and have any thoughts? I'm not averse to monthly fees, but if the service is clunky and annoying to use, that would drive me up the wall.
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GameTap actually is a pretty good service, as several posters above have indicated. Lots of good games, including a number of recent releases such as Legend and Anniversary from the Tomb Raider series, and numerous older arcade and console games. The six Sam and Max episodes are worth the subscription fee alone, and there's a second "season" worth of those coming out later this year.
They recently switched to a sort of three-tier service. One tier is free, a subset of their game catalog that you can play without subscribing, as long as you don't mind sitting through an ad before you play a game. A portion of the free games rotate in and out of the selection every week or two.
The next tier is the subscription tier, in which you get unlimited access to their entire game catalog as long as you subscribe (and as long as you're connected to their servers).
The third tier is kind of separate - it's the ability to purchase and download games similar to how Stardock and Direct2Drive work. You don't really get a good deal on these games compared to Amazon, though, to be honest. Most of the purchase games are more recent, although some of them are also in the subscription tier catalog.
I do have a few beefs with GameTap, though. The past couple of months have seen the new games (they usually release about 5 new games a week) taken up mostly with fighting games. A few fighting games, sure, a dozen, maybe. But we're talking numerous fighting games here. I'm willing to forgive them this point, because they are making good deals with companies like Codemasters and Eidos to get some or all of their games on board. A dry spell isn't too bad if we get the monsoon eventually.
Another problem is that you (in most cases) sacrifice the ability to add custom mods to games that, when purchased, are very moddable. This is because GameTap uses a third-party content encryption scheme that locks up the games to prevent copying. Essentially, each game image includes two virtual drives: one for the game CD (if needed), and one for the install directory for the game itself. When you select a game to play, GameTap mounts the drive images, which have been preinstalled and configured. The virtual drive driver blocks access to the mounted images from other processes, preventing you from reading directory names or writing files to the images (there are ways to get around this, if you can convince the game process or a child process to do the work for you, but most games don't have a means of accomplishing this).
Vista's virtualization scheme concerning the Program Files directory tree is an example, though, of how GameTap could permit users to add third-party mods to the games without needing direct access to the virtual drive images. Numerous users have requested such a facility, but since the DRM is from a third party instead of being developed in-house, it's unlikely we'll see this feature request fulfilled.
The final, and biggest, beef is that GameTap does not permit you to unsubscribe without human interaction. You have to either call in by phone or use the website's online chat feature to contact customer service. The CSR will ask why you want to cancel your service, and depending on your answer, they will try to give you the hard sell, such as going through all the reasons that GameTap owns your world or offering you a free or reduced single month on the spot to change your mind. Since virtually all subscription game services, such as MMOGs, permit you to subscribe and unsubscribe with a few clicks, GameTap comes up woefully short here.