Slashdot Mirror
DRM-Free Games Site GOG.com Gone
An anonymous reader writes "Just a day after adding a new game and a handful of promotions, GOG.com, a seller of classic games in a DRM-free format, has closed shop, leaving only a sparse placeholder page and a mention on Twitter that 'sometimes it's really hard being DRM-free... hard to keep things the way they are and keep management and publishers happy.' The site mentions that games purchased in the past will become accessible for downloading within the week, but there is no word on how long this will continue to be possible."
The announcement on the site's front page says, in part, "This doesn't mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await."
They closed down right in the middle of a sale. A lot of people are unable to get what they purchased.
I don't think this is the end of it.
Perhaps they got hit with a massive lawsuit or someone is considering buying them out?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Publishers don't get it. I purchased more games from GoG in a year than I have in the last 10 through any other channel. Specifically BECAUSE they were DRM-free. ;-/
Not because of the no DRM thing, but because all they sold was old games. Those are going to have to be budget priced, of course, and are just not as popular. They probably had trouble making much money since they didn't make a whole lot each sale (at least half, maybe more, of the price goes to the publisher) and there just weren't the numbers. this is particularity true since Impulse and Steam, the big download services, do old games too. You can find a lot of old title on them, and they add more all the time. More people will shop from them, since they already have an account.
Be nice to put what they can give out free to anyone!
But any way there is alot of old software / games out there that one want's to sell but it's not free so make it free or like $3-6 just to cover the costs.
It's starting to look like the platform's shutdown is just a marketing stunt. Good Old Games spokesman Tom Ohle told us that "as the site says, this doesn't mean GOG is dead. We will have more to share in the next couple of days." A NeoGAF poster dug up a Polish business forum, in which CD Projekt co-founder Micha Kiciski purportedly mentions a conference dated for this Wednesday, adding, "we'll post information about this soon on GOG.com (please do not panic after reading the information contained there.)" We'll keep an eye out for more info.
Joystiq
in the age of internet and digital downloads, the middleman, publisher, is the problem. not needed anymore, yet they still introduce problems into the production to consumer sequence, right in the middle. actually, in some sectors, they totally control entire sequence.
they need to be removed.
Read radical news here
You guys will definitely be missed. I really respect what you tried to do there.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I bought several old games from them. Fortunately, I have backups of the installers.
I guess that teaches me to not take advantage of a chance to get Total Annihilation for cheap :(
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
WTF???
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Steam is a master of painless and organized installation and management -- especially important with older games.
I would have bought stuff from GOG but I got the feeling I was going to have navigate a bunch of installs and manage a bunch of loose zip files.
There is a good amount of information suggesting that this may in fact be a marketing stunt; have a read of Kotaku's write-up: http://kotaku.com/5642141/what-happened-to-good-old-games. Personally, if this is in fact a marketing stunt, I will -never- purchase from GOG again. Lying to your customers doesn't make them want to spend their money on your products.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
I bought the Fallout games from them, real sad that they're gone now (or at least, appear to be gone).
The value they added wasn't just removing DRM, but in also making the old games compatible with new operating systems. It's a pain in the ass for me to get some of my older games to work, and I'm more than willing to pay $5 to let someone else do it for me.
...which means they were useless to me...and likely a majority of people who bought games....
Thus, even if they come back, they will be just as meaningless.
It's sorta like comparing Linux on the Desktop to Windows.
"this time, we're gonna do it!"
Posted 3 hours ago:
The official statement from GOG.com's management about the whole situation will be announced soon. We'll have more details about this tomorrow.
Sigh. Sure hope this isn't just a gimmick. Like many here, I still have or had quite a number of planned purchases.
This,
I think the most recent games they sold were before 2005, many of them were late early 90's. In addition to that many other services like Steam and Impulse sold the exact same products for pretty much the same price so the market was not only small, but highly competitive.
The timing of this is terrible for me, with the AUD being so high, I was about to make some purchases.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
There's no "stunt" to this. It says right in their notice that the site is ending in its "current form" and that it will eventually return. Which contrasts with Joystiq's sensationalist headline that GOG "shuts down" (also Slashdot's).
What CD Projekt actually said in the forum was that posting the notice on the current site (which IS closed and isn't just going to be reactivated) was part of a process to raise awareness of the new site that will take its place, which is pretty plain from the notice that they posted, had anyone bothered to actually read it.
Marketing yes, stunt no. This isn't Death (and Return) of Superman. They said right up front what was going to happen. Just because people glossed over the text and rushed to print a headline, well, that kind of makes the editors at Joystiq (and Slashdot) out to look like tools. Don't try to shift blame to CD Projekt for this.
That's a blatant lie.
They offered old games that worked on modern systems without tinkering. Can't get that on Piratebay. You sure can get dubious "cracks" and viruses though!
The main function a publisher provides for videogames is money. Games are expensive to develop. Game studios cannot always assume that financial risk. Remember that if you self develop you have to pay everyone's salaries, all the costs, while it is being developed. If it flops, you are SOL. So publishers are companies that put up the money. That is their primary function. You sell them a game idea they like, they put up the costs of developing it.
Along those lines, they function as the business side of things. A bunch of programmers might not make for the best business team. The most classic example is Duke Nukem Forever. 3DRealm had lots of money from the original Duke title so they could self publish, if they wanted to, and elected to do so. However that meant nobody was minding after them to release it. So they faffed about and delayed things and so on. Eventually it became a joke, a lot of wasted money, and ultimately their demise. In a situation with a separate publisher they could have said "No, the game is looking good as it is. You go in to crunch mode, and we ship in 9 months." Might not have been The Best Game Evar(tm) had that happened but it would have been a game, not a perpetually half-finished project.
Publishers also do marketing and distribution. If you think that is easy or unnecessary then that only exposes your ignorance of the situation. Stores are still where most sales happen (ask Stardock, they publish, develop, and sell online, they'll tell you stores still outsell online 3-4:1). Publishers make sure people know the game is coming out, negotiate with stores for shelf space and release dates, and so on.
In fact, because of the distribution, even some self funded shops use publishers. Valve funds their own development, but uses a publisher for physical distribution (Activision I think).
Also none of this is relevant to the older games being talked about. Even if you think they shouldn't have been paid for by a publisher, they were, meaning the publisher owns the rights and sets the rules.
They were profiting by selling games which rightfully belong to the public domain.
No they don't. Idiot.
"In a situation with a separate publisher they could have said "No, the game is looking good as it is. You go in to crunch mode, and we ship in 9 months."
what you speak of is the demise of a lot of games even before they start, and the reason market is overflowing with shitty rehash games with little replay value.
Read radical news here
As I understand it, Valve claims to have put unlocked installers for all of its own games in escrow to be opened once Valve goes Chapter 7. So if you've backed up your downloaded game, the unlocked installer will install it for you.
The store is gone, they are planning to make the downloads available again, but it looks like their not opening up again in their current form. What exactly they mean by the end of an era is somewhat up for interpretation and conjecture.
I suspect what they're going to try to do is change formats a bit, probably include newer indie games and anything that is DRM free. I suspect that they were profitable, as the licensing cost couldn't have been too high for them, and it's been seriously hard for me to control my purchases.
Last time I checked they didn't sell Ubuntu apps. I've never bough anything from them. Looks like I never will. Oh well.
from http://twitter.com/gogcom/:
The official statement from GOG's management about the situation will be announced soon. We'll have more details about this tomorrow.
As stated on www.gog.com everyone who bought their games will be able to redownload them.This option will be available in the upcoming week.
The official statement from the owners of GOG.com (CD Projekt) is:
"Attention! We scheduled a press conference on 22nd of September, early evening. Information about this event should be soon available at GOG.com (please, don't spread panic after reading what will be posted there:). Please keep in mind, that it's going to be an on-line conference and it's going to be a very first time for us to try such thing:).
We basically closed all our schedules and we are going to send information about this event on Monday or Tuesday.
MK
CDP"
It was suggested on a forum connected to the company, that this is some kind of mislead publicity stunt... Well we'll see on 22nd.
From someone close to the CEO, supposedly he went to a number of financial organizations and told them to ignore what was on the front page in the following days. Sounds like a sh*tty marketing stunt. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=23418875&postcount=240
But the cool thing is, this doesn't affect their customers' ability to play games in any way.
If Steam shut down, though...
This makes me sick to my stomach. I loved GOG. I plugged them often on my own blog. They have a permanent link there. I purchased many, many games from them and don't regret it at all. GOG had integrity, great prices, no DRM, great games, great community, great throw-ins, great sales. Argh! Why! It makes me wonder if the "good guys" can make it. My faith in humanity has again been dimmed a little bit.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
The stunt is in shutting down suddenly, without warning, and, apparently, in the middle of a sale. If this was planned, it's a stunt. They could have announced ahead of time, even just a day or a week ahead of time, that they'd be shutting down for a period before reopening. Hell, they could have announced ahead of time that they were shutting down permanently, and probably gotten some kind of fire-sale/goodbye-sale revenue.
Doing this suddenly produces shock and probably some panic from long-time customers, and that's why, if it was planned, it's a stunt.
Hell, they could have announced ahead of time that they were shutting down permanently, and probably gotten some kind of fire-sale/goodbye-sale revenue.
Indeed, that's what makes this particularly weird: if they'd said 'we're shutting down, buy all you can this weekend', I'd have picked up about $100 worth of games from my wishlist.
So this doesn't make sense unless either they're just revamping the site and thought it would create a buzz around the Internet, or it's been forced on them suddenly by outside forces (e.g. a sudden change of management policy).
No, I'd call it a stunt. You don't do the traditional suddenly-wipe-the-website-and-replace-it-with-the-scary-closing-notice trick unless it's for real or it's a stunt.
On the upside, it appears that it is a stunt and, while there's no accounting for taste, I'm glad that there's still the possibility GOG will continue. Perhaps the name, domain name and theme just weren't jiving with the Steamers, etc.
I like Steam as much as the next guy, but it has DRM and does not have the old games. That's where GOG comes in. Prince of Persia Sands of Time was/is available on Steam and GOG: Guess where I purchased it? It's a no brainer when GOG is one of the two options for buying the same thing.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
I wonder if they are gonna switch to a BT style downloader to lower costs? After all they have their Adobe AIR based download app, I bet it wouldn't be hard to add BT style capability, and I wouldn't mind that at all if it means I can still keep buying great games DRM free and x64 compatible.
As long as they give us choice along with something like "Please help GoG by using our app to lower costs to help us out" I would have NO problem with it. The ones I hate are the sorry ones you get no choice on, like the LOTRO installer I downloaded for my oldest boy. But GoG has always gave us the choice of using their app or not, so if they are switching as long as we have choice I'd be happy to help them out and buy some more games while I'm at it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I was initially really excited by the service, and hoped it would fill the void from when GameTap dumped the good client and went with the atrocious web-based infrastructure. Unfortunately, GOG had a terible bait-and-switch policy that kept me from using them (after the first bad purchase). While they specifically claimed to be porting games to modern systems, all they did in many cases was bundle the games with DOSBox and call it a day (without mentioning this in the FAQ). At one point the site FAQ read:
"4. All games are Vista and XP compatible. Thanks to our handsome programming team, the classics are now Windows Vista and Windows XP compatible. Now you can use your lightning-fast PC to unleash the full potential of those games you just couldn’t play properly on that busted old 386."
Well, this simply wasn't true. I had my original copy of Redneck Rampage, but was never happy with it under DOSBox. So, I bought the GOG version, expecting to get a real port. I was surprised to see that not only was the GOG product was just a DOSBox wrapper over the original game, it was LESS functional than the version I had with my tweaked settings.
They were profiting by selling games which rightfully belong to the public domain.
The geek's sense of entitlement can be wonderful to behold.
Syberia 2 is six years old.
Many games in the Gog.com catalog were less than ten years old, less than fifteen years old.
iD open sources aging game engines. It does not open source IP that remains commercially viable and makes their games and corporate identity unique.
I'll put my money on this being a PR stunt.
We've debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we've decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.
Sounds more like melodrama for they are going out of beta or introducing a Steam like client.
It's wrong to do this kind of poor bloody marketing stunts. Very angry at GOG now, probably having a stroke soon.
I would expect a "big announcement" like GOG Beta Closed / GOG Release 1 Opened. Anticipated by the fact that their sale closed down at 11:59 AM on Sunday (from memory). I was a bit surprised because usually sales close down on Monday.
All I can say is that I'm glad they were DRM-free, so my ability to buy the games I got from them is unaffected. That's one of the main reasons I bought more games from GOG than from anywhere else.
That being said, I think that this is a bad publicity stunt.
Like others have already said, this is most likely a marketing stunt for getting out of beta. Yes, they have been in beta for the last 2 years and like the message in the site says, "we've decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form". At no point do they really say that GoG is gone. They mention change and that you will be able to re-download the games you have bought. They also had a promo running and this "announcement" happened on Sunday, which would be highly unlikely if this was a real site closing situation. A real closing announcement wouldn't come suddenly out of the blue without any previous indications of internal or external problems that caused it, nor would they do it on Sunday when most of the workers (and boss staff) are not working.
Some of their games simply could not be found anywhere else. Not even on TPB. They had a version of Arx Fatalis that was integrated with the latest patch that played nice with modern graphics cards. A sort of hacked patch that tries to accomplish the same thing is available, but it is hard to find and the developers claim it is buggy and unsupported. I guess it needed to be integrated into the source code directly in order to function properly. My understanding is that they worked with some of the developers directly to get their old games working on modern hardware and OSes. They made a big mistake IMO in not having a separate category for truly custom binaries that are more than just a dosbox install with tested-as-working settings. I never knew whether they were just selling a DRM free version that could be found on TPB/Emule or whether they had actually worked with a developer to modify source code or produce a custom patch. Does anyone know of a comprehensive list of all of their games that were sold with custom binaries which can't be found anywhere else? Was Arx Fatalis the only one?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Maybe I'm biased because I've been using Dosbox for years, but I think it's really simple to use. You launch the executable and it gives you a very compatible DOS system. The only difference to a real computer running DOS is that to set up the hardware you don't need to open the machine physically and set jumpers but instead you edit a text file (dosbox's config file), so it's much more convenient than a real DOS machine. If you think Dosbox is complicated then you probably should first learn how to use DOS. DOS isn't plug-and-play like NES so the emulator is also more complicated.
The only problem with Dosbox is that it isn't fast enough for some games. For example, Terminator: SKYnet is unplayably slow on 640x480. Fortunately there are only a few game out of thousands that dosbox is too slow for. Besides, since it's open source, you could write a faster cpu core for Dosbox yourself ;-)
Stopping me, the paying customer, from downloading the games i bought, IS a bad publicity stunt. CHanging the damn layout of the site is NO reason to turn the site off for 4 days.
There was a lot of buzz about this yesterday, but in fact this is just a very stupid marketing stunt.
All they're doing is going from BETA to NORMAL activity but they make it look like they're closing shop for the extra attention and "phew" effect afterwards.
How do I know? Well, apparently there were some warnings about this not to be taken seriously by investors in other parts of the interwob.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Lies. Pirates frequently go to a lot of effort to supply a good release e.g. I've seen plenty custom installers written for old games, sometimes bundled with an emulator if needed. And every distribution channel is vulnerable to viruses etc. (pressed CDs shipping with them happens all the time).
I am trolling
That really wouldn't surprise me. I love the service GOG provides, but their PR sucks. I wrote them an email suggesting that they ought to include at least some regular text in their emails so those of us reading it with clients like Pine, or those of us using a web based mail browser at work where the images would be blocked by services like Websense, would have some idea of what their weekly updates were about. The whole point of such emails is to get people interested enough to check out the site, which is rather difficult with just the title of the email.
Their response was something to the effect of: sorry, we're trying to sell old games so we need to use newest and best marketing techniques to advertise them. We can't be bothered with people who read email using antiquated systems.
Both the tone and the attitude bothered me, and every time i visited the site after that i was torn between my interest in the games and my annoyance at the stupidity of the people running the place. If this is just a marketing stunt to announce their coming out of beta that conflict of emotions will only be amplified.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I think Slashdot should implement a feature that allows readers to vote for a 'post of the thread'.
GoG wasn't the only digital distributor with decent titles who could offer DRM and third-party-DLM free downloads. I never knew about them until a few days ago, but PCGamestore.com has a HUGE catalog with decent prices; and if the publisher/developer doesn't give their game a DRM -- PCGamestore doesn't either. It's hard to notice on the details for a game, but I've defiantly downloaded games from them without DRM -- also other games come with Sony SecuROM which isn't perfect but it does let me move my game where ever I want to. Also very cool about pcgamestore is their support staff are real people AND hardcore gamers; they did everything(including giving me a brand new activation key) they could when I had an issue with a game activation. They just came out with a non-required game library app but I haven't tried it. Deffinatly sad to see GoG go, but people like Steam can't keep running the show -- publishers make it REALLY hard for people like GoG to stick to their mantra; there's a few other stores out there but, over-all, PCGS is the only one I've found that doesn't have painful advertising or require DRM and some third-party file manager malarkey. Anyone else know of some download stores that aren't STEAM or D2D??
Back to piracy, I guess.
is that this is a bit of a publicity stunt. Maybe.
NeoGAF has a thread going.
Well if this does turn out to be a stunt, the "no brainer" will switch over to Steam, since Valve at least doesn't pull shit like this. Credibility counts for a lot.
Here's the text:
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 update_media@gog.com if you're a media representative or to update_users@gog.com if you're a user without a GOG account.
I agree, this act was very, very ill conceived. But, I will give GOG the benefit of the doubt. They have proved their integrity over the long term. They delivered so many grade A titles and not once did they renege on their core principles. Depending on what they morph into will determine if their fan base forgives them.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
Depending on where you live, you may be able to find all sorts of free music on offer to go and listen to. Buskers would prefer you threw them a dollar, of course, but other gigs exist solely as advertising and are straight-up free. Religious services can double as free concerts if you find one with a decent choir. Get desperate enough and you can hang out in stores to listen to the music they're piping in, or hog the free listening stations in a music store, like the penniless teenagers.
Small theaters often have pay-what-you-can performances. Many museums are that way all the time. There's these things called libraries where they let people go to read books for free, and some of them even allow you to rent movies, music, and games. Some people also borrow books, movies, and games from friends, or buy cheap used ones, or FIND discarded ones on the street.
There are an uncountable number of ACTUALLY FREE video games on the internet you can download, no stealing required.
Look, I'm not a 100% raving anti-piracy fanatic, but this particular argument does not hold water. "Don't steal my games" is not me cruelly denying you the only tiny drop of joy that could possibly reach into your benighted life.
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!