"Good Old Games"

Games
1

I know Tom Ohle posts here occasionally, but I thought I’d beat him to the punch, since this is pretty cool. Gog.com (“good old games”) is a CD Projekt, uh, project, which will deliver older games, guaranteed to work under Vista and XP, and will be DRM-free.

I can now finally go back and play Freespace 2.

Here’s part of the press release:

"Warsaw, Poland – July 10, 2008. CD Projekt, best known in the Western world for its award-winning PC RPG, The Witcher, is proud to unveil its invention of time travel. The company sent several representatives to the past and they’ve returned with some amazing findings. Quick to capitalize on the incredible treasures of history, the company is pleased to reveal its newest project, GOG.com. The site, whose name is an acronym for Good Old Games, is a new games-on-demand platform that allows old fogies (and young fogies) to buy some of the best PC games of all time – many of which just can’t be found in stores anymore – and play them on modern hardware, completely free of intrusive DRM. GOG.com is poised to become the center of the classic-games universe with a huge community section including forums, user reviews and ratings, as well as insightful commentary and editorials from some of the industry’s most beloved writers. A closed public beta of the site is scheduled for launch on August 1st, and excited old-school gamers can sign up for more info and a chance to enter the beta by visiting GOG.com.

The site makes it tremendously easy for gamers to buy, download and install some of their all-time favorite PC games. The games will be sold for $5.99 or $9.99, are guaranteed to work on Windows Vista and Windows XP systems and are available to download as many times as needed. This is very nice, yes? The DRM-free games, low prices, the site’s ease-of-use and the community are some of the main features that make Good Old Games something more than just another digital distribution outlet.

GOG.com has already lined up agreements with such publishers as Interplay and Codemasters to make their games available on the site. Among the titles those companies are bringing to the site are in-demand classics like Fallout, Freespace 2, Operation Flashpoint: Game of the Year Edition and TOCA Race Driver 3. Negotiations are in progress with several other publishers, with the ultimate goal of GOG.com offering a comprehensive collection of classic PC games from the 80s, 90s and 2000s.

“Our main goal is to create a user-friendly site with the best classic PC games for a price that might be considered impossible to achieve,” said Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director of GOG.com. “The people behind GOG.com are gamers and we all know how difficult it is to find a lot of classic games. So we’ve started building a great games catalogue, gotten rid of the copy protection that gamers hate so much, optimized the games to work on modern operating systems, and made them cheap enough that piracy seems like a rip-off. It’s so easy to buy, download and install a game and then get deeply involved in the community; we’re very confident that gamers will absolutely love the site.” "

2

Beat Tom Ohle? NEVER!

Edit: Fixed to link to Tom Ohle’s post of announcing +1.

3

FAILED. But the topic deserves it’s own thread anyway, because GOG is a fantastic idea.

4

Woot! Yeah, I’m unbeatable. I even scooped my own press release. But I wasn’t cheesy enough to make a thread.

5

How dare you announce this before it’s actually available? I wanted to give you my money NOW!

6

Thanks for the info, case. That looks like it will be very cool…

7

I think it’s a fantastic idea. I’ve got most of the games on the current site image anyway, but it’s about time developers started making proper use of their back catalogues. Even those that do tend to balls it up - Sierra’s most recent adventure re-releases were an abomination - and just being able to click to download for a few quid sounds terrific.

8

I can’t wait, and I bet this is going to kill those Ebay and Amazon auctions for $80+ for classic games.

9

Freespace 2’s source code has been freely available to the public for a while.

And these guys have their work cut out for them … I’d guess most old PC games are, for better or worse, acquired via torrents.

I searched everywhere to buy a legitimate copy of System Shock II a while back, and the only option was overpriced collector’s items on eBay. Whereas it sits instantly and freely available on torrents.

10

This looks pretty awesome. I’m very interested, even though I probably already own the entire Interplay back catalog and many of the other games on the site.

Tom Ohle is an unstoppable force. His cake is no lie.

11

At the moment, sure. I’d totally drop five quid for easy, fast access though. Anything more than that, it’d have to be something I seriously, seriously want to play, and the odds are pretty good that I’ll have played it (not that I’m the target audience).

If there’s one problem for me, it’s that I’d love to have easy access to… er… Not So Good Old Games. The old FMV adventures and really weird games that nobody bought… things like that. No money in it, just amusement. So I doubt it’ll happen.

12

No one pays that much just to play an old PC games, chances are they could find a version to pirate and do so with little guilt as the original developers are often long gone and certainly wouldn’t make any more money off a second hand Ebay or Amazon purchase (not condoning the practice). People paying $80 or more want the original box and the stuff that came with it. I know I’ve nabbed some classics this way with that specific motivation.

Regardless, this seems like a pretty good service, especially the gaurentee to work with Vista, and hopefully 64-bit Vista. I had to cancel my Gametap subscription because it did not.

13

Not sure how brazen we’re allowed to be on this forum, but like I said elsewhere, I’ve had to acquire a few games on torrents that were simply unavailable even on the used market. I had actually never used the system and was surprised how easy it was, and how even the listing sites actually worked (rather than trying to pirate on the web 10 years ago, which was a joke). Still, as someone else brought up on another topic, there are non-monetary costs associated with using any system, including torrents. $10 for DRM-free games guaranteed to work on XP/Vista, with no digital distribution client required, should easily clear the bar for a lot of people.

Just like Baby Boomers spending crazy money on retro crap instead of saving for retirement, as young gamers get older there is going to be a huge market to replay old favorites. Perhaps the adults in that market have enough money to purchase the games now, and little interest in delving into torrent geekery.

14

IANAPRGUY, so it’s not cheesy for me to start a thread ;-)

Hey, any way you can set up beta accounts for Qt3 members?

15

I think the success of Gametap shows that there is a market for reasonably priced, legitimate versions of old games that can be played sans disc and sans setup hassles. GOG actually appeals to me more than Gametap, though, because I prefer the purchase model to Gametap’s subscription model. Also: Vista compatibility.

16

Seriously. I have spare monies right now, and I’m trying to spend them before they scare my boxers off with their greeny freshness. Mmm delicious green. Ahh! Get outta my wallet!

17

I’m sure some of you guys will get them anyway :). I can’t quite do a “anyone who signs up on qt3 is in” though – just email me or whatever and in most cases I can make sure you get a key.

18

One question, do we get a confirmation email saying you got our email address? I sent it in but I’m not sure if you got it or my spam blocker blocked it.

19

You linked to a page number, and my posts-per-page setting is different from yours. If there is actual useful information in the post, link to the post :)

There are many old games I’d like easy access to, but FMV adventures are not among them.

20

I like that kind of thing for the same reason I watch bad movies. But not enough to step back a decade and spend money on them in favour of other real games.