GOG has gone

[joeblack1862]

Hi All,


Just went to look on GOG and they have closed down.... temporarily [:D][:D]

[junk2drive]

There is a thread at wargamer. Some speculate a stunt for the announcement next week.

[hadberz]

Hopefully it's just a relaunch. They've been in beta for long time now.

[Jevhaddah]

[:(]

Sad I bought a few games from them.

Ah Well

Cheers

Jev

[joeblack1862]

ORIGINAL: junk2drive

There is a thread at wargamer. Some speculate a stunt for the announcement next week.

Yeah, I am now reading on their facebook that it may be just a break before a new site is up.

Just a shame it was done in such a sudden way. Have to wait an see what happens, supposedly Wednesday.

[Lützow]

See, that is the problem with digital distributors.

I bought the Might & Magic series, Heroes III, Commandos and some else stuff from GoG. Didn't burn in on DVD, as these were cheap and they promised, that one can alway re-download from their site. Now GoG is gone and so are my purchased games. I don't mourn the waste of money but the loss of some remastered classics. [:(]

Fortunately I recently acquired MOO2 from Gamersgate instead of GoG, because I had spare blue points to get it for free. But given this incident I will be even more deliberate with digital purchases for the future.

[doomtrader]

As you might know it's a Polish company who owns the GOG. The same one that made the Witcher and is the biggest game publisher in Poland.

What I've been reading some time ago, they are planning to increase the amount of services they are providing and connect GOG with their retail sales. So if you will buy a decent game published by the CD Projekt, you will get some coupons allowing you to download games from GOG for free.

There is also a gossip they are planning to make an alternative for Steam for eastern Europe (in terms of prices), but I think it's not good trace.

[Lützow]

Well, I enjoyed the Witcher but after this incident I won't buy a product from CD Project ever.

It's fine when they want to expand their service to a Steam clone in order to create larger revenue. However, it's not acceptable, when they shut down GoG all of the sudden - without any warning to loyal customers, so that we at least could redownload our purchased games before. Their last promo mail dated from 09/16 and there was no hint about an imminent close.

This is pretty low and in the US they possibly would face a lawsuit, but I guess in Eastern Europe one can get away with this behaviour.

[doomtrader]

To be honest I don't think that we have lost our games (I bought couple of them too).

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.

But I agree they should warn about that.

[Wolfe1759]

!!!!

Hopefully for my (unfortunately) virtual bookcase of GOG games this is going to turn out to be the rumoured PR stunt.

If it isn't then it does seem that the (ex)GOG service will at least be somehow making the purchases re-downloadable in some so far unspecified way.

If it is a PR stunt then GOG have probably lost at least one (me) previously happy (20+ games) customer [:@]

P.S. on an unrelated side note it seems everybody has now been promoted to the Matrix Legion of Merit with five shiny gold stars [:)]

[doomtrader]

Looks like currently there are some changes at the forum. Whole NEWS section has been vaporized.

[Lützow]

What makes me in particular angry is the fact, that customers get the shaft once again for something what this GoG dude called an "obstacle with DRM free games". I bet every of their titles can be find elsewhere on the internet and when I payed for these games it was due to two points: a) no DRM, b) to acknowledge and support the work of an indie publisher.

Whatever reason GoG motivated for this decision, it was not a smart move to prove untrustworthy toward their niche audiency, and will most certainly not help to get more paying customers, considering they want to continue with retro games.

[Arctic Blast]

I don't think this was the decision of anyone working at GOG. It looks the the parent company was bought out last week.

Last year, CD Projekt 'combined forces' with another Polish company called Optimus in order to go public (Optimus were already traded on the Polish exchange). From reading this article, it sounds like a LOT of senior people sold their controlling interest in the company off to a new majority owner. Someone definitely bought up a lot of shares at the end of the week, with the company's share price shooting through the roof as a result.

With the swiftness with which the site was yanked, it seems likely that some sort of restructuring might be about to happen as a result of a takeover. Apparently, Optimus/CDP had already announced some sort of a stockholders meeting and an announcement to follow this coming Wednesday. The GOG team tweeted earlier today that they will make an announcement some time tomorrow regarding what's happening.

Anyway, if it is a takeover, the actual GOG staff likely had no advance warning of what was coming. If it's a marketing stunt, it's pretty much the douche move of the year.

[V22 Osprey]

There's a whole controversy going on at the Wargamer. [:'(][:D]

[jomni]

Talk about timing.   I just registered and bought MOO last night. [:D]

[Scott_WAR]

If you buy a downloaded game, and neglect to burn it to a CD or DVD,....exactly who is to blame?

[jomni]

You're maybe right there. Actualy GOG's platform encourages you to backup your purchases.

But suddenly closing down is a bad move no matter how you look at it.  To think that they let me register and download every during their last hours of life.  What happens if after payment, they shut it down before letting me download?

[Scott_WAR]

Its always a smart idea to research a little bit at least. If nothing else find out what country a company you are purchasing from is located so you have some idea of how much of a risk you are taking and what legal rights you will have.

In this case its apparent that its not shutting down permanently. Granted its not really cool to close with no notice,..but as was pointed out and ignored by the alarmists, this is not a real surprise, the fact they were going to shut down temporarily was known about, just not exactly when.

Now, the thing I dont like is using twitter and the other social websites as places to post official news, and NOT posting it on the official website. Seems rather backwards to me. But a lot of companies are doing this and to me its really unprofessional.

[NefariousKoel]

ORIGINAL: Scott_WAR


Now, the thing I dont like is using twitter and the other social websites as places to post official news, and NOT posting it on the official website. Seems rather backwards to me. But a lot of companies are doing this and to me its really unprofessional.

Definitely.

Another similar thing is not hosting your own damn game patches, but putting them on free public hosting services.. some of which require a sign-up. [:@]

[ilovestrategy]

And this is reason number 1,237,734 why I love Matrix.