Earlier in the week, popular digital distribution site Good Old Games abruptly went down. The site, which has worked towards deals with publishers to offer classic PC games in downloadable form without Digital Rights Management, offered little in the way of explanation, but did hint that it would be back up in a different form. So what happened?
[imgclear] Well, it seems Good Old Games played a game on all of us. A clever one, too. By not saying much at all about its reason for downtime, the internet buzzed about why. Questions were raised about the money customers had spent on games there – what happens with a digital distribution service goes down? Are one’s game ownership details, along with the means to obtain the games, lost? Could there be unforeseen trouble with the site’s business model?
But in truth, GOG.com was simply updating their webpage with new functionality, marking an end to their 2 year beta and rewriting 98% of their back end code so their increasing library can be better organised.
In an apology video to all of their fans, the two co-founders appear and act as monks, lamenting the days when humorous stunts were more common in the games industry:
In some additional videos, the new site’s functionality is explained and some new game offers are highlighted. GOG’s front page now displays a countdown to when the new site will arrive, which should be around 10pm (EST) tonight.
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