That sucks. I just bought HOMM 3 there last week.

Really disappointed to hear about this. Also means I'll probably lean more towards steam for digital purchases as it does underline a really big risk with a digital purchase, that the company you buy from fails (and at least steam is in a monopoly position making it unlikely it would fail in the near future).

On the plus side I'm assuming that due to their lack of DRM I'll be able to copy the install files (which I kept as a backup) to a new machine, but still means no more 'new' old games.

It might seem that gog.com is about to disappear, but I suggest that you calm down. It's a downright ridiculous PR stunt, I honestly do not know whose bright idea it was... It's a secret de Polichinelle that an online press conference will be held on Wednesday/Thursday - gog has gone out of beta phase.

So on wednesday they will either announce that they are bankrupt or that they are retarded idiots.....

Great

It's a marketing stunt. There was a post on the forums telling investors or backers days before to disregard what happens to the site in the next few days.

I better get a free game out of this. A good free game. Not that crap Tex Murphy they gave out before.

- Othello

Seems like a pretty inconsiderate marketing stunt if it means that customers don't have access to things they have purchased. Many might just never come back not realizing it came back on later.

Well, I learned about the site from this, so it wouldn't be a total wash...... but still, this seems like an inordinate amount of suffering to force on people.....

Certainly seems plausable that it's going down. The problem with selling old games is that they're old. The volume isn't there compared to new games, and the price per unit (and thus revenue per unit) also isn't there. You don't make a lot of money selling $5.99 games.

If that's a part of your business along with new games, it's certainly a good thing to have. But as the *only* thing you do? Servers aren't free.

This is either a PR thing and it will all come back new and improved. Or something legal or financial blindsided them. Or they ate a bad batch of 'schrooms!

For sure something is very fishy here. If it was legal or financial, I would expect them to at least say "circumstances beyond our control."

This news hit me like a thunderclap. It is really scary.

Sounds like the parent company was going belly up and has been bought out. New investor = new changes.

http://tw1.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=30244.0

http://www.bankier.pl/inwestowanie/profile/quote.html?symbol=OPTIMUS&format=detailed

If you sell fifty thousand copies for fifty bucks after a two million dollar development cycle, you just busted your balls big time at retail.  When you sell fifty thousand copies at 6 bucks for a game that already made it's money 15 years ago, that's a solid three hundred grand and little to no costs to get it ready, with the cost of putting it out for dissemination being a small fraction of the return.

If you sell 50,000 copies for $50 and your cut as an online store is 30% (which seems to be the norm), you made quite a lot of money as an online store ($750,000). If you sell 50,000 copies at $6 with the same cut, you made a much smaller amount of money ($90,000).

When the game made it's money isn't relevant since we're talking about the online store and not the developer/publisher.

Very sorry to see this happen.  I loved GoG!  Glad I backed up all the games I purchased.  I do not have to worry about downloading them again. 

Hopefully some form of GoG makes its way back or another company picks up the 250+ titles they had DRM-free.

Such a shame

I've been enjoying with GoG since they opened, and this is a real surprise.  They are known for making all kinds of pranks, and cryptic stunts, but and right now they arent saying anything more.  I do want to say it's a PR stunt, a very ill-conceived one, but a stunt nonetheless.

This is interesting.

Maintaining this website and traffic surely cant be too expensive. And i think that they only paid these run down developing companies commission from gog sales. And I know that a lot of people did spend a good amount of money buying games. Basically revenue was good and costs were low. So something is weird.Most likely they made enough money but they sold out to someone else.

But sometimes you do see Pirate Bay have the GOG version. So I guess DRM for sure. If they make a cool fun service with videos and reviews and previews. Kind of like impulse does, but with more updates and its about old school games.

Either way its coming back 100%

GOG.com is no more?

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Yeah, it is.  It's all in the margins, and your margin on a 200 meg game from the 90's looks real damn good at 6 bucks a pop with no risk to the publisher.  They need to expend a lot less work and have a lot less bandwidth than they would if they were selling new games with ten times the space and publishers fighting tooth and nail for as big a cut as they can get because they have to make pay dirt on their million plus investment.

Speculation on Kotaku is that it's a marketing ploy.

What's Happening With Good Old Games?
http://kotaku.com/5642141/what-happened-to-good-old-games

I think the pertinent point is "cannot remain in its current form".  That Kotaku article seemed quite plausible.

Best regards,
Steven.

"Good Old Games' owner is Warsaw-based CD Projekt"

Is there any evidence at all to support the idea that publishers are giving GOG a larger cut then they give anybody else? Particularly when some of the same games are also available on Steam/Impulse/etc? If Steam takes a 30% cut, why give GOG a 50% cut on the same game?

Most publishers don't see it as "oh we made back our money, lets give the retailers a bigger slice now!" There's money to be made, and they'll make it if they can. And extra bandwidth is made up for pretty easily when you're making 30% of $50 as compared to 30% of $6.

The owner deserves a severe kick in the nuts if this is true.

It's amazing the level of greed on these publishers, if GoG was indeed shutdown by their new publisher owner, who wanted DRM and regional pricing on their store. Why slap DRM and other locks on and charge more for old games the current xbox 360 military arcadey halo reach FPS gaming crowd wouldnt stare at for more than 30 seconds. 

Update posted on their website (from google cache since the website itself is down atm):

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.

Their 'clarification' update only serves to confuse me even more!