Blodskur posted:

It seems you have to pay $20 to join that site. I'd rather spend that on GOG directly.

quote:

No hints about the new deals. We don\'t tease like that. One coming tomorrow!

quote:

@Banzaiaap We've announced Empire last week, TopWare this week and someone else next week.

BOOM! DOCTA WATSON posted:

I hope it's The Adventure Company. I'd buy Syberia again if I could.

The Kins posted:

Surprise announcement time! Postal: Classic And Uncut for $5.99, Postal 2 Complete coming "in the coming weeks" soon for $9.99

EDIT: Baah, beaten by mere seconds

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We're proud to announce yet another publisher that will dust off its back-catalogue games for a new generation of gamers. Microïds, the famed producer, will bring MegaRace 1+2, Haegemonia: Legion of Iron with the Solon Heritage expansion and Obscure to the site. Abrial da Costa, VP Marketing and Sales Microïds, said: “Good Old Games is a perfect and natural partner for the digital distribution of our classic titles. We are thrilled to add our premium catalogue to the GOG.com community”. The first title – a bundle of MegaRace 1 and 2 – is available now for $5.99.

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POSTAL 2 Complete includes the original POSTAL 2, POSTAL 2 Share the Pain multiplayer expansion and POSTAL 2 Apocalypse Weekend expansion pack with new weapons, characters, dismemberment and 20 new maps!

Bovineicide posted:

Well, time to shoot Gary Coleman in the face. Again. I never got the expansions, so this is perfect.

Anyone recommend some good mods?

Georg LeBoui posted:

I assume the 3D Realms store doesn't do anything to make the old games work in XP/Vista?

Charles Martel posted:

2) The CD-Audio is missing from Shadow Warrior because they deemed uploading an image of the DOS CD-ROM with the audio "too difficult for customers to deal with".

SwissCM posted:

Jesus christ Joe is loving lazy. I'm pretty sure DOSBox supports MP3-encoded CD Audio tracks.

Joe Seigler posted:

The game only understands CDA tracks. It doesn't play midi or mp3 or anything like that. It would have to be mounted as CDA stuff, and it would be a few hundred meg to download - the decision was to offer it this way. You could put your own CD in there if you wanted.

*somebody tell him to upload MP3s*

The game wouldn't understand any of that. It only understands CDA.

---------------

Shadow Warrior won't have music - the cda tracks are not included, as it would make the download like 500Mb. There won't be any music, but as I saw, you can use DOSBox to mount a CD and play your own music. The game doesn't understand mp3's at all, so that's not an option.

SwissCM posted:

gently caress you I enjoyed playing it.

FLX posted:

glug posted:

Blizzard still sells diablo and the link on their site and manages your ownership/downloads much in the way that GOG does. EA might like the $5-10 market because it seems like they have to do nothing, and GOG makes the enhancements/etc to make the games playable. It's just profit at that point.

FLX posted:

I think getting ID Software on board would also kind of warrant the whole timer hype.

Weedle posted:

I can't believe people still think it's anything other than Troika. Was "rhymes with smarcanum" not an obvious enough clue for you?

Pipboy 3000 posted:

The timer has said 0:00:00 for me since like 5AM, when is the announcement?

MonkeyforaHead posted:

Don't you just love it when other sites jump the gun?

Sporadic posted:

Wasn't Arcanum published by Sierra? Which is now owned by Activision?

Activision coming on board would be massive news especially if they opened the floodgates on old Sierra games.

Sporadic posted:

I still think it's Activision Blizzard (which also owns Sierra and a ton of other poo poo)

Rabhadh posted:

I gave the activision wiki a quick run though for old games, not too many stand out.

MY FANTASYS.zip posted:

Here hoping Actvision doesn't put their greedy hands on the pricing and make them higher then the normal $6 or $10.

Dissapointed Owl posted:

Edit: "The Month Of Activision"? Cool.

quote:

Okay, so first, how did you pull this one off? Codemasters, Ubisoft...these were quite big, rather unexpected deals. But Activision are surely the last frontier, really -- the last publisher anyone expected to sign on. They're known for charging more on PC games, using DRM, and going the very corporate approach in general. What happened? How long have you been trying to get this deal going? What was Activision's first response? Did you have to get after them after first proposing the signing?


It wasn't easy, but no one said it [would] be. It took us more than a year to finalize the deal with Activision. We [had] first approached Vivendi; it was just before their fusion with Activision, so the timing wasn't exactly perfect for us. We presented them our offer and the whole concept of the service, which appealed to them, especially in the case of Sierra titles. Then after the merge we started talking to Activision about possible cooperation and [though] they liked the concept of selling older titles via digital distribution, there was still the DRM issue. That's the problem we come across many times while discussing with publishers. Thanks to our inborn charm and good arguments we've managed to convince Activision that selling DRM-free games is a good point, not a flaw.
Signing new deals always takes a lot of time, but if we're talking about Activision, one of the biggest publishers in the world, it's taking even more time and work. We're sure it was worth working so hard to finally offer such great classics to our customers. We're really happy about this deal and we can assure you it's just the beginning.



The deal it seems will bring a lot of more niche classics as well as quality "mainstream" titles to the mix. How are you imagining the reception from the GOG community and (as of yet) non-GOG members at this stage?


Looking at the thread about the countdown on our forum, I'm sure our community will be excited about the announcement. The games that will come with this deal in the next couple weeks are definitely all time classics that every gamer should play or at least [has already] heard about them. Of course I can only talk about the two already announced games, Arcanum and Gabriel Knight, but there will be more great games from Activision's back catalogue that will definitely put a smile on many gamers' faces.

As for more mainstream gamers, we believe that announcing such a big and famous publisher joining GOG.com should direct many people to our service. To this point we've gathered more than 180 classic PC games, so we're sure that everyone can find something that will fit their needs even if it's not from Activision's catalogue. Also the deal with Activision should open new doors for us in [the] case of new publishers joining the service.


Do you anticipate a continuing relationship with Activision and the other publishers as the years go on? What has the response been like from the various publishers? How do they feel about the sales figures and also the approach you take to digital distribution?


With every deal we sign we're counting for a long term cooperation and we believe that publishers share the same opinion. As you can see with some of our publishers, after releasing all titles announced with the deal, we're getting back to them to discuss about other titles from their back catalogue. Thanks to nice sales results of the first batch of Ubisoft titles we've managed to get the Heroes of Might & Magic series as well as the Might and Magic 6-pack. So if we manage to sign a new publisher you can be sure we'll do whatever we can to get all Good Old Games from their catalogue as it's profitable to everyone: gamers, publishers and us.


The holiday sale, I'm presuming, was in part an effort to bring in as many new members as possible before the big announcement. Has it been a success, do you think, at this point?

The holiday sale was a huge event that included all publishers on GOG and it took us a lot of effort to make this happen. Of course we did it to say "thank you" to all our existing users and to attract as many new customers with [the] crazy deals. The whole action was a big success for us; many people got to know about GOG and our userbase increased significantly. We hope that adding to the offer such a popular publisher as Activision will assure our new users that it was worth creating an account on our service and even more new gamers will discover GOG.com and take a trip down the memory lane.



On the topic of sales and promos in general, I've noticed you guys seem to give away games like candy at times. When I'd first signed up myself, I didn't think you could get any cheaper than $6 or $10, but then the sales began...I take it this approach works very well in the end, and draws in a lot of new members.


The two price points we've chosen at the beginning of GOG.com were a result of compromise between gamers and publishers expectations. In our opinion these are reasonable prices for older games and I'm sure gamers will agree with that. But with the growing competition among digital distribution services we had to give gamers even more incentives to buy games on our service. This brought us to promos. I have to admit that weekend sales and other promos drive lots of traffic to GOG.com.

It's been said 2010 will be the beginning "hot period" for GOG thanks to this deal and others. Are you anticipating signing other big names will be much easier now? Anything else you can hint at? What else, games and otherwise, can we expect this year? A few sports titles, perhaps?


Our goal is to offer all time PC classics from every publisher that owns such games. I believe that in the near future we'll have games from every significant publisher in our catalogue. We're launching into 2010 with Activision which is a huge thing for us and I believe for digital distribution in general as well. That's not all, as we've already planned another big announcement for this year. Unfortunately I can't reveal anything about it just yet.

Also, aside [from] new publisher deals and more games in the catalogue, we're getting ready for something special that has been prepared for a couple months now and will improve the GOG.com experience even more. I shouldn't say more, [so as] not to spoil the surprise.





I have to ask: you've commented previously on getting titles like Planescape and System Shock on board, saying you're trying your best despite the major legal hurdles. Any updates on the situation for the most wanted titles? Is it a "when not if" or "if not when" situation?



Like I said before, we're aiming to offer games from every publisher that owns such games, so it's definitely a matter of time when the most wanted titles are going to be offered on GOG.com. As you probably know, some games are really hard to get as the rights are spread over two or more companies. If one of the companies isn't interested in making business with us, we reach an impasse and there's nothing we can do. Nevertheless such situations are very rare and we're doing everything we can to bring back all the desirable games. The deal with Activision is just [more] proof [of] that.



What's GOG's take on the state of PC gaming today, and how do you feel your service affects it?



PC is still the most popular gaming platform around the world and it won't change in the next couple years. Many people say that PC gaming is in decline, while in my opinion it's still standing strong. Almost everyone has a PC at home or at work, so basically everyone can be a potential gamer. If you think about action games, racing games, sport games, etc., I agree that consoles are a better system to play those [on], but you can't beat playing shooters and strategy games on a PC with mouse and keyboard configuration, am I right? The same goes with RPG titles as they seem to be more complex and have more options on PC than on consoles.





I think GOG.com plays a big part in moving forward with PC gaming. First of all we're taking part of the development of [the] digital distribution market on [the] PC platform, which most probably is the future of games distribution. Secondly, our focus on older titles makes our service a place which preserves games that were significant in PC gaming history -- music and movies industries do it, so why shouldn't we do it? And aside [from] all that, we're giving our users a nice and easy to use service with good games.

How do you see yourselves in the long run as a competitor to other digital distribution services? Are you aiming to be a "household name"?



It's hard to predict right now what will happen in the next couple years. At the moment we're focusing on [offering] more classic games, signing more deals with publishers like Activision and improving the service. GOG.com is a very important project for us and if it keeps on developing the way it has developed the last year and a half, I think we might become a big player on the market -- that's what we wish to ourselves and GOG users.

CD Projekt's co-founder Marcin Iwinski posted:

Activision is the biggest publisher participating in GoG.com and has a huge array of older games it can offer. First, can you give us and idea of what titles we can expect to show up in the weeks and months to come? Will we see titles like Pitfall, Interstate 76, Dark Reign, Soldier of Fortune..maybe even the first Call of Duty game? Will we see any other older games from Activision's merger with Vivendi Games?

Heheheheh ... I can't spill the beans here, as we have a whole plan lined up and a lot of surprises coming. Let me just say that we have a few of the games you mentioned and plenty others. We are starting with the ones that, in our opinion, are most wanted by gamers (OK – and us, as well . There will be both games from Activision and Vivendi – that's a big advantage of the merger that I was talking about earlier. Many great titles coming to GOG.com, so check us out through January at least a couple of times.

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How many games in total did GOG.com acquire in the Activision deal?

We have started with the first batch, which is around 20 games in total, which will translate to something around 15+ SKUs, as we are putting some games into packs to offer really good value for money.

This is just a small taste to kick things off, as our goal was to have it up and running as soon as possible. Quite often it's not that easy with older games - especially when companies merge. Although it might look really simple from the outside to add more titles, each game has to be checked from the legal side, and with the older ones it can get really complicated and time consuming.

We have focused on what we thought were the most wanted and most awaited games, but we will surely be adding more. Our goal with GOG.com is to have all good old games in one place, and yes, Activision is a major step forward in our mission

quote:

In March, we plan to announce another big publisher thanks to whom GOG will get HUUUGE hits. By the way, it's not the only surprise we have planned for March.

Overwined posted:

Gotta link for that? Also, if they were to add another price tier I wouldn't mind. $15 would be the likely slot. If it was $6, $10, and $15 their service would still be cheaper than all the others who generally dip down to $15 as their absolute bottom.

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What we are not ruling out is to look at more diversified price points, as currently with $5.99 and $9.99 (these are the only two price points on GOG.com as of today) we do not feel we are doing all the titles justice. What we would like to introduce at some point are lower price points for the really old titles, as even an impulse price of $5.99 might be perceived as a bit too high for a 10+ year-old game. At the same time, $9.99 might be a bit too low for a 3-year-old major blockbuster… a word of explanation here: $9.99 is perfectly fine for us, but sometimes it is not for the publisher. Still, our full focus is on good old games.

Lockback posted:

Also,


What does this article even say? Any clues as to whom it may be?

quote:

>Was it hard to get a deal with Activision? How long did it take?

It's an interesting question, since we actually originally started talks with Vivendi over a year ago. We met with them just before the merger of Activision and Vivendi was announced. The moment was not the best one for such talks, since some people in the company were already packing, but our seed started to grow. From the very beginning the idea of selling older games was seen as interesting, as especially in case of Sierra (which, as one of the few publishers, had a dedicated Internet department - Sierra Online) the GOG model fit their business concept.

Of course, in the beginning we were met with a lack of understanding of our no-DRM policy. After several meetings and detailed explanations, we were able to convince both Vivendi and, after the merger, Activision.

The acquisition of most games is a long and tedious process. But acquiring them from Activision-Blizzard, one of the biggest publishers in the world, was especially long. It took us over a year to sign the license agreement! The fact that such a big player is joining GOG, with their vast back-catalogue of games, is a breakthrough event for GOG. I won't hide the fact that we count on it being a boulder (definitely not just a pebble) that will cause a whole avalanche.

> Which games from this publisher will we see on GOG?

With the announcement of the Activision deal, we have started an "Activision Month" at GOG.com. This means that anything happening on GOG in the coming weeks will be related to this publisher, and believe me, a lot will happen. First, we will release the first two games from the Activision range: Arcanum, one of the most interesting and elaborate RPGs, and the first part of the popular Gabriel Knight adventure game series.

Our goal is to have all good games in our offer, and we are consequently, step by step, realizing it. I believe that in near future GOG will offer games from all major publishers! The process begins with Activision games and by the end of Q1 2010 we're planning another major event, so there's much ahead of us! We started with Interplay's games, then there was Codemasters and many bigger and smaller partners, thanks to which we brought many classics back to the players, and now Activision. For now, I cannot disclose which major players will appear on GOG soon, since negotiations are underway, but we plan to bring you a plethora of older hits.

It's worth noting that in case of GOG our portfolio consists not only of games from major publishers. Since we offer the best of the older games, it often happens that after a certain period of time, the rights to the title return from the publisher to the developer. It is good for us, since then we're able to talk directly with the makers of the games and are not only able to publish the games themselves, but talk the developer into an interview, get additional materials and permission to publish them. It is also a reason for the players to buy legal copies of the games, since in many cases the money goes directly to the makers of a given title. It's a great feeling to support the makers of your favorite games from years back.

I'll tell a little anecdote connected with this fact. A while ago we were looking for the owner of the rights to the cult Broken Sword series. At the moment of its premiere (many years ago), the publisher was Virgin, but after a few years the right reverted back to the maker of the series - Charles Cecil. We found his contact info, met with him in London, convinced him that the GOG way is the way to go, and after a dozen days we had a signed deal, we learned how the game was being made and what he's working on now. Charles is a really incredible guy, a great developer and it's been a real pleasure to sell his games on GOG and support his work.

> So far, its' been the hardest to get the rights to release what on GOG?

The deal with Activision definitely took us the longest, but it is the hardest to get the rights to... what isn't on GOG yet? But seriously, there's a pool of titles with legal issues that are often an insolvable Gordian knot. Due to historical changes in the market, bankruptcies, takeovers, etc. it sometimes happens that the rights to the franchise are owned by company A, the code by company B, and the music belongs to some artist. Additionally, 2 of the 3 aforementioned entities are not interested in any kind of business talks. Players often don't realize that information like "Hasbro sues Atari?, which recently appeared on the Internet, is the worst that can happen when it comes to adding e.g. the Baldur's Gate series to GOG. These types of legal conflicts can block the possibility of selling older games for many years, and unfortunately solving such problems is beyond us. Fortunately, such cases are rare and usually we are able to convince most owners of the rights that old master copies are worth dusting off and selling on GOG.


> Who's next? Can you tell me who you're aiming at?

As I mentioned, our goal is to offer all good games from all publishers, so we're talking with... heheheh,... everyone who do have such games. In March, we plan to announce another big publisher thanks to whom GOG will get HUUUGE hits. By the way, it's not the only surprise we have planned for March.

> How big is GOG? Can you share some data?

I will share the numbers I can. We already have over 170 games on GOG and the number is constantly rising. Our ambition is to create the biggest catalogue of classic games, so that everyone can find something for themselves. Although our service is called Good Old Games, we don't really have strict criteria of selecting games. First, everyone has a different taste, and second, different games have sentimental value for different people, memories of whole nights spent on playing. But thanks to our store having a virtual, shelf of unlimited size, the size of our catalogue is not limited, so we think that it's always best to have as wide of a choice as possible. But as for the number of available titles, it is actually higher, since in case of older titles we compile several games into one set and sell as one title - a good example is the Might & Magic 6-pack, in which for $9.99 USD the player gets 6 parts of the cult M&M series, from 1st to 6th. We already have agreements with 30 publishers or developers, and, as I said, it is not our final word yet.

But back to numbers, I will show you the following list that was published in September for our first anniversary. The first year of GOG in numbers looked like this:

135717 forum posts
28 partners (publishers or developers)
207 wallpapers
21 game guides
326 game avatars
1861 artworks
89 sound tracks
7134 hours - we spent this much time testing the games so that they would work well on all systems
110 GB - this is the size of all our games and additional materials

Of course, in the last months these numbers have been growing, but they show, to an extent, how GOG is developing. It is worth noting that GOG is not just games. For each game, we release lots of additional materials, so when buying a game the players can not only play, but also listen to the soundtrack, read a game guide, interviews with the game's creators. It costs us a lot of work (both on the technical and legal side), but I still think that such materials are a huge advantage. Another unique thing that is lacking from other similar services. And stuff like soundtrack from our favorite game really is something!


> GOG hits - which are the most popular?

Of course the most popular games are ones that both us and the users have player for the longest time. To name a few: Duke Nukem, Freespace, all Fallouts, Might & Magic, Heroes of Might & Magic, Painkiller, the Gothic series - the list is long, but it's clear that everyone wants to return to the titles they have fond memories of. There is also a tendency of returning to titles that used to be hot, used to have good reviews, but the players for some reason did not buy them. This also applies to younger players, who did not have a chance of playing some classics because they were too young when the title was originally published or did not have a computer they would run on - now this problem is gone. Additionally, when such a title appears with an attractive price, like $5.99 or 9.99, there are many impulse purchases.

FearOfABlackKnob posted:

Any hints given?

Radnor posted:

You'll have to wait a little longer because they just released Phantasmagoria as well, also at $9.99.

Blodskur posted:

Syberia is now on GOG for $9.99. Syberia 2 and Amerzone: The Explorer's Legacy are coming soon for the same price.

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After uncovering some hidden gems for you during our summer sale, we're back with the Wednesday flash promos, and today only for the next 24 hours we're giving you a whooping 70% discount on UFO: Aftermath. The game is a real-time strategy and tactical game that was a homage to the classic X-COM series. Aftermath is the first title in the trilogy by ALTAR Interactive. After the unforeseen, lightning-fast and unfortunately deadly for most aliens attack, you are the leader of the few remaining people on Earth, and humanity's last hope. The game consists of two parts: with the global view on Earth you expand your organization and research new technologies, while zooming down to certain locations you control a squad of troops and kill aliens in an "active pause" real-time combat. The game is much more than just a dusted-off iteration of the "older sister", and with today's one-day special price of only $1.80 it's a steal!

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It's not like we left to Cologne for GamesCom and forgot about everything, including this month's GOG.com Gem Promo. We're skipping the one day promo this time because we have really (and we mean REALLY) awesome offer coming on Thursday! Yes, we're celebrating the biggest gaming event in Europe with some great discounts, so be sure to check GOG.com in the coming days! And if you're at the expo, and you're lucky enough you can meet some of the GOG crew there

The MSJ posted:

Help GOG get 6 million downloads, and Broken Sword will be free for those with an account! Also the 6 millionth downloader gets the whole catalog for free.
http://www.gog.com/en/news/help_us_achieve_6_million_downloads_milestone

ChikoDemono posted:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1on3na/iama_developer_of_the_carmageddon_franchise_ama/

Free GOG Carmageddon key at reddit. Involves PMing a bot.

Mercury Crusader posted:

Yeah, I don't feel too bad that I missed that one.

Faraday Cage posted:

Eight copies of Rayman Origins, hahaha. Nice one, gog!