

GOG.com shut down - psadauskas
http://www.gog.com/

======
psadauskas
GOG.com was a site where you could purchase and download old games. They fixed
them to work on modern Windows, and were DRM-free.

The front page is loading slowly, here's all thats up there now:

 _Dear GOG users,

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep
GOG.com the way it is. We've debated on it for quite some time and,
unfortunately, we've decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current
form.

We're very grateful for all support we've received from all of you in the past
two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an
unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of
PC gaming.

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.

On a technical note, this week we'll put in place a solution to allow everyone
to re-download their games. Stay tuned to this page and follow us on Twitter
and Facebook for updates.

All the best, GOG.com Team_

And their latest Twitter update:
<http://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/24772660481>

~~~
reitzensteinm
Their Twitter feed is an interesting read. Lots of updates, new games added in
the last week, a sale announced yesterday, the complaint you linked to, then
the site is pulled _13 minutes later_. Whatever happened, it happened quickly.

~~~
rquirk
Coincidence that they were distributing Codemaster games and then shutdown? As
avid <http://www.worldofspectrum.org/> fans know, Codemaster have always been
very careful about protecting their copyrights. None of the Dizzy games are
available, for example, despite being 20+ years old and without a new release
in almost as long.

------
kmfrk
The owners, CD Projekt, may have been bought out[1][2]. Supposedly, it's
likely to be announced around September 22.

In general, I encourage people to check out the relevant Quarter to Three
thread, as that's where all the game developers tend to hang out (GOG.com's
Tom Ohle just to mention one):

[http://www.quartertothree.com/game-
talk/showthread.php?t=613...](http://www.quartertothree.com/game-
talk/showthread.php?t=61339).

On another note, this is so friggin' weird and impetuous.

[1]: [http://www.quartertothree.com/game-
talk/showpost.php?p=23853...](http://www.quartertothree.com/game-
talk/showpost.php?p=2385354&postcount=130)

[2]: [http://www.quartertothree.com/game-
talk/showpost.php?p=23853...](http://www.quartertothree.com/game-
talk/showpost.php?p=2385359&postcount=132)

~~~
eswat
Reading the Qt3 forums, this seems more like an abrupt PR stunt.

“I think GoG.com marketing just rolled a critical fumble.” - Tom Ohle

~~~
adambyrtek
This would be the most stupid PR move ever. "Hey guys, let's bring the entire
site down to get some buzz." No, I don't think I'm buying that.

~~~
blasdel
The Julian Assange maneuver does unfortunately appear to work.

------
johkra
What the heck?

I've bought more than 25 games on GOG and I was just thinking about buying a
new one (Still life) today - were there really so few people buying the games?
Were the prices too low?

I hope I can still buy some of the games on my wish list - I would have
already bought even more if only I had the time to actually play all these
games. (I've played about half of them to date.)

I'm sorely disappointed by their sudden decision and complete removal of all
access to the page. This could have been handled more professionally - why not
announce closure a month in advance so people actually had the time to
download everything and buy games they still would have wanted to buy?

Well, felt good to vent about it. Now to find an internet connection faster
than 80kb/s to download some gigabytes of games. :-(

------
reitzensteinm
This surprises me. Although it may not have been doing as well as they hoped,
I'd be stunned if it couldn't be profitable on a skeleton crew - probably one
part time guy doing support, and someone doing the accounting once a month.
It's a reasonably well known portal, after all. There's probably something
else going on, legal trouble or founder dispute or the like.

This reminds me of when iVideoSongs stopped updating. They had very high
quality tutorial videos, and I've basically learned to play guitar from them.
Having purchased 6 or 8 of the videos after the site was abandoned, I'm pretty
happy they didn't just pull the plug like this. How anyone prefers to spend
hours of their life learning a song to a crappy youtube video to save a few
bucks is beyond me.

~~~
psadauskas
From the tweet, it sounds like they were fighting with publishers to keep
things DRM-free. Still doesn't explain why the entire site was shut down,
though.

~~~
caseysoftware
A Cease & Desist would be a pretty good explanation. Part of that process is
showing that you respected the owners' rights, etc. Taking down the _whole_
site if just one publisher went after them is unlikely.. seems like there's
something much bigger here.

Maybe a few publishers all attacking at the same time? Getting buried in legal
isn't fun.. Or maybe not enough revenue? Or maybe a buyout or...? No inside
info here.

~~~
wtallis
I don't see how a C&D could possibly achieve this unless GOG was too broke to
afford any legal representation at all. Even the scariest C&D letter from a
single publisher shouldn't be enough to suspend GOG's agreements with other
publishers, and for all the publishers to collude to shut down GOG wouldn't
make much sense (why did they make agreements with GOG in the first place?),
and ought to run afoul of antitrust laws anyways.

------
msy
Oohf, I've bought quite a lot of stuff from them, thankfully I have everything
mirrored locally. Really nice site, really well packaged games, excellent
support, I really liked them.

I was wondering however whether they were going to be sustainable with Steam
increasingly offering a back-catalogue of games that were increasingly similar
in age and there being only so many really old games worth buying.

They genuinely seemed to try and fight the good fight but I got the impression
they had a hell of a time with studios. I contacted them a while back about
offering packaged versions of older games they were offering via Dosbox on
Linux & Mac as well and it seemed they couldn't due to licensing issues which
seems insane given those platforms didn't even exist when those games were
made!

------
jcromartie
That's really amazing. I don't understand why they would do this, since by all
counts it was hugely popular and respected among gamers.

------
vladk
So, does DRM translate to more sales?

Here's the thing - if all publishers cared about was their bottom line, then
DRM _must_ absolutely translate to more sales, in this context and in big
triple A title games.

Or is it that publishing execs aren't willing to take a risk on trying a DRM
free model, even though their revenues would hold/increase?

~~~
adambyrtek
The funny thing is that nobody will benefit from that. The site is down, so
honest people who were willing to spend a few bucks on their favorite games
will now have to look for them on The Pirate Bay.

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
...Or buy them used on Amazon or Ebay, just to name two places. I've never
bought this false dichotomy for justifying piracy.

~~~
gscott
Game publishers consider used sales the same as piracy.

~~~
hugh3
Really? And they haven't sued Gamestop yet?

~~~
gscott
Used games chaps the industries hide [http://www.neowin.net/news/used-games-
worse-than-piracy-says...](http://www.neowin.net/news/used-games-worse-than-
piracy-says-developer)

Also developers are now including 1 time activiation codes where you say end
up reselling it the new user will have to reactivate it for some all of all of
the features, for a fee.

<http://360.kombo.com/article.php?artid=18941>

------
Sukotto
I wish sites that are going down would give a little more detail as to _why_
instead of hand-waving about how things didn't work out but we all had a great
experience and learned a lot.

------
zalew
According to Polish news

[http://polygamia.pl/Polygamia/1,107162,8397342,GOG_sie_zamyk...](http://polygamia.pl/Polygamia/1,107162,8397342,GOG_sie_zamyka__Raczej_nie.html?bo=1)

[http://www.bankier.pl/forum/temat_re-info-od-cdp-male-
podsum...](http://www.bankier.pl/forum/temat_re-info-od-cdp-male-podsumowanie-
z-mojej-strony,8841141.html)

Michał Kiciński (one of the owners of CD Projekt) suggests: don't panic after
info we publish on gog.com

------
Tichy
Really sad :-( One of the few internet sites I spent money on.

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JabavuAdams
Oh foo! I kept putting off buying some of my favourites because I was too busy
and didn't want to get distracted.

Wow.

