Widescreen Gaming Forum

False alarm. It's coming back with Facebook-like features. Everything below this line is unchanged from the original post.

If you can't access the site, Wikipedia says everything:

On September 19, 2010, at 12:00 PM EDT, GOG.com shut down replacing its home page with the following apology:

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[4]

and on their twitter:

Sometimes it's really hard being DRM-free... hard to keep things the way they are and keep management and publishers happy :( Thanks for the support everyone. Hopefully everything works out for the best!

This is terrible.

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Sometimes it's really hard being DRM-free... hard to keep things the way they are and keep management and publishers happy Thanks for the support everyone. Hopefully everything works out for the best!

Most of their games were already DRM free.

I think this has to do with problems involving multiple publishers. They have had to pull games before and contrary to what has been said they do not have the source code.

RIP, but I can't say I'll be missing GoG really. Great place to get old games, but quite a lot weren't any good :oops: and I already own most of my old favorites, even though some may not be "modern PC-ready".
(Only title I bought off GoG was Arx Fatalis for the "exclusive" patch v1.19... and I still have to find the time to give it a whirl.)

I just love their business model, by which I mean simple executables hosted on a server for you to download DRM-free. Whether this is a real closure or a precursor to a relaunch with a new format I bet either way that business model is dead.

The funny thing is that a digital distributor closing overnight is a great example of WHY I dislike account-based ownership like Steam uses, yet they will likely relaunch with that kind of sceme.

Of course you already own most of your own favorites. That's kind of expected. GOG let you get games you missed out on the first time around, and they offered plenty of all time classics that I'd immediately recommend over pretty much anything released recently. I could easily name 30 examples. In fact, here's 10 (30 would take up too much space here):
Descent: Freespace
Duke Nukem 3D
Fallout
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Master of Magic
Master of Orion
Myst
Out of This World
Unreal Tournament

Also, GOG has been cryptic throughout the day, saying there will be an announcement on the 22nd. Wikipedia has fixed itself to reflect this. Given the circumstances, I somehow doubt that this announcement will be a pleasant one. Rumors are floating that this might be a PR stunt. If this is the case, someone needs a new director of marketing.

I just went to the GOG homepage 30 minutes ago. Still in shock. It does indeed seem like a marketing ploy (certainly nothing new from them), but if that is the case, I am seriously not amused.

Scratch that. I'm livid. I just installed more storage in my system 3 days ago for 2 primary reasons: 1) need it for upcoming video projects, 2) download the few recent purchases from my GOG catalog that I had not downloaded yet. I planned to do that downloading right now, but apparently my schedule doesn't work for them. :evil:

When the promised download access appears, I might be doing a final grab and then sayonara, GOG. It's a good thing the site and forums will be down completely for a couple days, because if I had access right now I would be very tempted to abandon my preference for reasoned argumentation in favor of a barrage of profanity. Geez, it's hard for me to type straight right now.

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

Also, GOG has been cryptic throughout the day, saying there will be an announcement on the 22nd. Wikipedia has fixed itself to reflect this. Given the circumstances, I somehow doubt that this announcement will be a pleasant one. Rumors are floating that this might be a PR stunt. If this is the case, someone needs a new director of marketing.

I really can't imagine they would be stupid enough to do this as a PR stunt. Even if they are launching a "GOG 2.0" or something I can't believe they would just close down the original site with no warning and put up that message. Of course if they are actually closing and gave no warning, that is even worse. Either way a bad decision.

One rumor is they are joining another digital download site, like GamersGate or Steam, and will run a "GOG section" on that service. That would pretty much be the only thing that would make sense of this, as it would make sense to shut down the original site in that instance. Still, as I said already, the site shutting down out of nowhere is an excellent example of why having no DRM is a great thing in the first place, so if they relaunch on Steam or something it will only make their adding DRM to the games a more obvious bad thing.

Still, as I said already, the site shutting down out of nowhere is an excellent example of why having no DRM is a great thing in the first place, so if they relaunch on Steam or something it will only make their adding DRM to the games a more obvious bad thing.

If they re-launch in any form that will include DRM then they might as well rename themselves to "Just Another Download Service". Lose my trust and my business. The renewed download access had certainly better be the DRM-free versions I purchased...

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

And all of the sudden I get a bad feeling about The Witcher 2.