GOG.com shut down
 

I'm very surprised ... I own many dozens of games on GOG.com and always supported them when I could. Great company who made an effort to get their games working on modern systems so we could enjoy all those timeless classics. I didn't think they'd ever shut down ...

And they finally added a game that I really wanted, Age of Wonders :\ Well, it was also added to Impulse, so not all is lost.

In my book this is great news, now we can host bunch of games that were available before the GOG, and people can have them for FREE like it should be. :2thumbs:

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OO

:crybaby:


How \ Where did you hear about this, Red?


I always supported them as well. I had loads of games with them. Their games always worked in Vista, when I couldn't get them working otherwise.


This is a sad day. :(


EDIT: The GOG page finally loaded, and I saw the message. :(
At least they will allow everyone to re-download their games. Hope that comes soon.

Except GOG FIXED games. Good luck fixing those yourself ... Not to mention that they got hold of lots of cool extras that you wouldn't find anywhere as well.

Frodo: on their Twitter they posted a weird message a few days ago, and there was a long message on their site before it buckled under the pressure of visitors. Their facebook page is also covered in people being surprised.

This is a very sad day.

I had high hopes for that little company, and had bought a hell of a lot of games.

Guess I'll be downloading them as quick as I can before their servers are shut for good.

Absolutely gutted.

It was supposed to be the big stand against DRM, and it's failed. What hope now?

What? They didn't even send an e-mail notice about this. Luckily I only bought two games from them, but I'd like to re-download them none the less.

http://www.gog.com/
Either
a) It's a marketing ploy
b) They're going to change their business model or
c) GOG is really shutting down.

Someone I know read a suggestion that this might be the end of the beta phase, considering GOG seemed to always been in Beta, and they're now moving to "Real phase". He and I say its very unlikely, however.

EDIT: ...and it turns out we're both incorrect. Apparently, things will go on and this might be a worse case of publicity/marketing stunts.

http://kotaku.com/5642141/what-happe...good-old-games

This is something worth looking at:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=240

Seems as TheChosen said, it's a stunt. A particularly poor one at that.

As much as I'd be glad if it's still alive, this sort of thing isn't good for PR at all (although it surely will get a lot of press... is all publicity good publicity?)

If that's just a marketing stunt, then it's not cool at all.

Such a pity - Never bought any games from them and I regret it now, nothing last forever folks!
It was an indeed good contribution to our beloved old game scene!
Hope they can come back somehow with another formula, like stated on their twitter...

EDIT: indeed, reading all the posts (as I should before posting! hehe) - is all bad publicity, good publicity? Hope they don't sell out, the games and their week-end discount were pretty awesome and cheap... Oh well...

I never heard of GOG.com before...

For the benefit of anyone in my position, here's what I've gathered about them: this was a Polish company that would tweak old games to make them run on modern systems, sometimes with the help of emulators like DosBox or Scummvm. They didn't use DRM (ie. restrictions on how many copies you could make of the games).

Couldn't find a copy of their catalog though. Out of curiosity, someone please list a few games they delivered and that you couldn't be run otherwise. Also, what "modern systems" did they support: not Ubuntu I suppose? :-(

Windows. Here's a listing of their catalogue from circa 4 months ago:

If this *is* a publicity stunt, it's hardly likely to get them any new customers. :no:

Back when the forum was still up, I noticed quite a few threads mentioning this game or that game runs well with Wine under Ubuntu.

Oh, and although it has nothing to do with the games, they provide downloader application that is developed in Adobe Air, which while is not open source still runs in Linux.

If it is them just changing to a final Gog.com rather than the beta this is a pretty bad way of doing it. A simple note saying "Hey Gog.com customers we are down while we change over to our final non-beta form, please be patient."

I am of the feeling this doesn't mean the site is down for good, rather just changing to something else done in a very silly and stupid way.

It's very well possible the "no-DRM" part will drop then :whops: which is what made GOG so appealing to me because even IF GOG went down, all their games still remain playable. If they DO come back and add DRM, surely people will go "but you almost died once already! If we buy games NOW, we may lose them for real!"

Darn... rarely I see a Polish game-related project being internatonally successful, so it would be a shame to lose it.

New news:
Got this on twitter from @GOGcom: "Please check http://www.gog.com/ for a small update"
On the website they have an update:
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.
Two days to wait until we get answers...

And some more, from NeoGAF.

Future of the GOG is not looking very bright.

He's not calculating something right, or misunderstood the page after putting it through Google Translate.
That's their market worth:
As per http://www.pkobp.pl/index.php/id=waluty/section=ogol, 1 USD = 3,0079 PLN
212 100 000 PLN = 70 514 345 USD

Damn! I was just to buy several games :(
I was exited 'cause those games worked in windows vista without problem and DRM-free... and very cheap.
What will happen to all the extra material that they offered with a game? We can get them from any other site?

Who can save us now? http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/standart/cray2.gif

We should know in 48 hours what is going on. Press conference is scheduled for tommorow.

LINK

If it's Atari Interactive who's behind buying the shares, I wouldn't be surprised. They've been arses for few years already now, especially after they got their grip on Bioware.
Money is power, and there's no one who is going to say anything against it, mostly because most don't really care. That means unfortunately that such dirty tricks as this one can be used to pursure own goals. Big Corporations ffs.

2,0 will be more a steam type front end with some sort of DRM and maybe higher prices. I just think a negotiation fell apart because a publisher would not go for DRM and GOG saw the writing on the wall, that fewer and fewer titles would be signed as less publishers would allow no DRM.

I was just going to post that fifth.

Interesting addition, really makes it seem like the out-of-beta announcement.

I really hope there's no Steam style program, I don't like Steam myself and would hate to see GOG take that route.

Will have to see what happens in a few hours time...

[edit]

Someone eagle-eyed over at GameBanshee noticed this: http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/9983...durs-gate.html

Steam is okay, but the friends service goes down a bit too much. This was a rather shoddy way of going to GOG 2.0, but hopefully it'll stay up and running with a new coat of paint and Baldurs' Gate.

Darn, it looks just like me playing Railroad Tycoon 2. I lay the tracks optimally, I micromanage my business well, I earn money, but I lose thanks to... stock market.

Fcuk you, corporatism!

Well it's official, they're back with a new website and Baldur's Gate.

Bizarre thing with monk robes and such though...

Wow, now they've officially handeled this opening of new era pretty poorly. Though they did get some free publicity out of it.

They're such colossal arseholes, they prove that God doesn't exist.

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...palm_super.jpg

They deserve this:

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...y-facepalm.jpg

Steam, for the first time in history, all the people on the globe agree that you're not the worst download-based game store on the netsaur. :p I shall not post a link to the monk thing/frontpage they did for fear of desecrating this place and my spiritual beliefs.

Well, if you consider that we are talking about it and that the whole net is following this marketing operation...this is just a big success for them.

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/8919/applausi.gif

Yeah... but in the meantime, they lost half the links from Abandonia's gamepages that were redirecting to them since we feared they were forever broken. So now if you want to play Gobliiins, you'll be nicely redirected to DOTEmu, if you want to play Simon the Sorcerer you'll end up on Gamersgate and so on :p They have similar services, NO DRM, low prices, the main difference may be the "client-only" for some specific stores. It was a big deal before when AB supplied 4% of the traffic to GOG. Now it's not so much, but still, people click those links to buy games, and we couldn't leave them dead. :\

Few cents compared to what they are gaining now :p
Free advertisement, visibility, suspence, traffic...

I don't approve the method but I must admit I'm happy to see the site won't be closed and I suspect that the GOG community will forgive them easily ;)

They say there's no bad or good publicity, just publicity. You know when adverts say, "everyone in the world either loves it or hates it"?



I'm not saying they're stupid, only arseholes. They sure are cheeky, though.

Wat.

Well, they did seem to get LOADS of free publicity from this.

So I can see the appeal.

And given that they announced BG and hinted at the likes of BG2, PST and IWD, I think they'll get more new customers than they'll lose.

Was a stupid stunt though, and I think they've realised that (hence all the apologies).

i was surprised that GOG com went down then came back with new name - its not good idea

Well... now I can start breathing again...
I have mi CC ready ^^

Yeah that was a bad PR stunt, a real bad one. Hopefully they throw something our way to soothe our nerves. And there better not be any DRM.

I wonder, if this were a publicly traded company, what this sort of childish move would do to investor confidence...

How infantile, and pathetic. :(

It is:

Well, they brought in Baldurs Gate and Planescape Torment and fans are pretty much orgasming now, so I guess all has been forgiven. I admit they fumbled a bit there, but now its business as usual.

And live goes on.

On the contrary, I think (like many or most people) that it was a publicity stunt, and it went as planned.

Just got knights and merchants from them. ( :eeee: )
And then i read the news - i was like "wtf they are still here!"
good to hear that many think that it was a (bad) marketing thing,
but is there anything official - like a "we are back in business"?

If they will went out tits up at some point will i still be able to play the games,
or is there some protection?

Well they are back now, and it was a PR stunt which they admited and apologized for.

The only protection you have if they ever go belly up is to have the setup.exes saved to your computer. (No DRM means you can keep on using them.)

Ah ok thanks.
DRM really sucks, i remember buying a piece of music back then,
and i can't listen to it anymore because the company has gone out of business some years ago. :sucks:

As far as marketing goes:
3D Realms been doing that for over a decade.
"Any time now" "We are bankrupt" "No we are not" "Andy time now"
It really was all just marketing, why i do not know, but they made some brilliant games during that time,
like max payne and prey - they can't tell me that a simpleton shooter like duke nukem fornever takes over 10 years. :sucks:

Sort of worked for the duke - it's one of the most discussed games in history,
but i doubt it will work that great for a company.