Good Old Games Closes Shop

Last summer, I took a look at a unique gaming service that seemed to have the opposite goal of most others. Unlike Valve, which uses its Steam service to sell the newest games that come to market, Good Old Games focused only on the classics, hence its name. Unfortunately, due to various non-disclosed reasons, the service is no more, with the once colorful webpage being replaced with a simple logo and some text.

The official reason for the closing should be made known later this week, but whatever that reason, it’s clear that the service as we knew it couldn’t continue on, and it’s hugely unfortunate. GOG.com was a service I fell in love with at first sight, because it offered the games that I’m most drawn to… the classics… the games I grew up with.

Since the service launched, I purchased about 25 games through it and looked forward to purchasing more. The site wasn’t some shoddy thrown-together piece of Web space used to shill off ancient games, but it was clear the the operators and community alike had a true passion for old games, and that became even more obvious when rarer games were featured on the front page.

Whether this is the absolute end for the service, it’s hard to say. But generally speaking, if things don’t work out once, they’re not likely to work out again. Was it competition that killed GOG.com? The lack of sales? Hard to say, but we should gain more info soon to at least put minds at ease.

For those who purchased games through the service but didn’t download them, or simply don’t have local backups of all the games, the management promises a solution soon, and by the sounds of things, being able to download the goods isn’t going to be a limited-time thing, but will last indefinitely. I’m happy to hear it, since I have a couple of games I forgot to back up.

It’s not often that a website I actually use shutters, and of them all, this is one I hoped would last forever.

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.