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

An hour or two ago, that message had done the rounds of the Internet. If you hadn’t seen it yet, I apologise for being the bearer of bad news. If you head on over to Good Old Games right now, that’s all you’ll see. No store. No games. No community. All gone.

For the uninitiated, Good Old Games was the place to go to purchase and download DRM-free copies of old (and not so old) classic games for low, low prices. It was, for a long time, the only place to go to find the classic Sierra adventures, or sci-fi Wolfenstein 3D spinoff Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, or the best puzzle game of all time, The Incredible Machine. I wrote a number of pieces for that site, so yes, I have something of a vested interest in it and actually feel pretty sad about its apparent demise. But even if I didn’t have such a personal stake in it, it was a fantastic place to go to pick up the games of my youth. Even better, they’d been tweaked and optimised to work on current hardware.

The tragic news above comes after a tweet posted by the company a few days ago:

Sometimes it’s really hard being DRM-free… hard to keep things the way they are and keep management and publishers happy 🙁

It didn’t sound good. Someone was obviously putting a bit of pressure on the company, and some cracks were starting to form. Those who had supported the service since the beginning knew that a DRM-free service in an age of rampant piracy was going to have its work cut out for it. But was that really the reason?

No-one knows as yet. No-one except the people at GOG, who are playing their cards close to their chest. The community are assured that this isn’t the end of GOG, however, just the end of this chapter of its existence. Those who have purchased games from the service in the past will be directed to a “solution” to re-download these games in the next few days. And some announcements will hopefully be forthcoming very soon.

Personally speaking, I’m hoping it’s good news. There were a ton of games on the site that I’d love to have had the chance to play again. Games like Gabriel Knight 2, which a friend borrowed some time ago and never gave back, and now I can’t remember which friend it was.

The games of this era represent a time when gameplay was everything and graphics were necessarily limited by the hardware of the time. And it may just be nostalgia talking, but some of my fondest memories of childhood and adolescence come from the games I was playing at the time. It’d be shame if the memories of these games fade. But, as I say, GOG claims that this is not the end, just the end for the service in its current form.

So pour out a stiff drink, take off your hat and, I don’t know, sing a mournful song in honour of GOG or something. Hopefully they’ll be back better than ever sometime soon.

Rest in peace, GOG. For a little while. Then come back as an awesome zombie who wants to sell us old games rather than eat our brains.

WHATAREYABUYIN’?