Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and it is a sad coincidence that the DRM-free game site Good Old Games.com decided to shut down today. Their decision to sell classic games without Digital Rights Management left them wide open for software piracy, and their business venture has closed its virtual doors after two years.
Gog.com was a staple of our weekend sales feature here at Player Affinity, and a source of endless low-cost nostalgia for gamers who remember the distant past when a game could fit on a single 750 mb CD, and a 56k modem was “High Speed”. It was only two days ago that I recommended their sale on games by Codemasters, and now they are gone. The official reason hasn’t been released, but there is a strong possibility software piracy is behind it; Their Twitter post on Friday the 17th read:
“Sometimes it's really hard being DRM-free... hard to keep things the way they are and keep management and publishers happy.”
The website was changed to just a homepage stating that they’ve closed down for now, and an assurance that customers will be able to download products already purchased. An update on the future of the organization is expected by the end of the week.
