CD Projekt - GOG Early Access

CD Projekt's Good Old Games is going to open the doors early to those who have signed on, and a bonus Interplay game is on offer to anyone who buys a game during this Early Access Beta period:

Early Access to GOG.com Causes Widespread Riots
Old-School Gamers Erupt in Joy as DRM-Free Classic Games Site Opens the Door to Thousands

Warsaw, Poland – September 3, 2008. GOG.com or Good Old Games, the new games-on-demand platform offering all-time PC classics, is turning a new leaf, entering a new chapter, going where no site has gone before, doing… something newsworthy. From Monday, September 8, onward, the closed press beta will come to an end and the Early Access Beta will begin. Anyone who has signed up at www.gog.com will receive an access key during the next week, granting them access to the ever-growing catalogue of tantalizing classic games at GOG.com.

While a closed beta was planned for August, the incredible reaction from gaming media and gamers themselves to the GOG.com announcement exceeded the wildest expectations of the team. Instead of offering just a small group of gamers access, the team decided to open the doors to everyone who signed up. “We want to reward everyone who showed us support, and thus decided to give everyone access to the beta site. Of course this meant we had to add all sorts of finishing touches to the site and test the new payment system, which caused a small delay. We used that extra time well and now we can provide players with the best GOG.com experience possible… until, you know, we make it even better,” said Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director of GOG.com.

During the Early Access Beta stage GOG.com will offer all the main features of the site, including buying DRM-free good old games. “We have prepared about 30 acclaimed titles from Interplay and Codemasters at this stage, but we'll add more every week. Aside from buying games, all users will be able to join the community, add comments, write reviews and download additional materials for the games they bought. It’s a beta that works just like the final site will,” said Oldakowski.

To further reward early adopters, the GOG.com Team has created a special limited-time promotion for anyone granted early access. Everyone who buys a game during the Early Access Beta period will receive a bonus code they can redeem to get any game from GOG.com’s illustrious Interplay product catalogue! Aww, poor little gamer didn’t sign up for info at GOG.com? Don’t cry, little buddy – the GOG.com Team is accepting new signups till Sunday, September 7, at Midnight (EDT). Anyone dying to get into the action should visit www.gog.com to sign up, and they’ll soon be on their way to gaming like it's 1995.

More information.

Oh??? Interplay? Interplay means Shiny. Shiny means…. (clicks link)

SACRIFICE! W000t!!! Oh wait, gotta get with the times… Totally gnarly!!

I just signed up.

I signed up a few weeks ago after I read about it over at gameguru.com


An interview I read mentioned they were going to have Redneck Rampage as one of their first games available. I'm hoping they re-release all those Build engine classics.

Please God, have them re-release Blood!!

Looks pretty cool. Maybe I'll finally be able to get Ps:T!

So what is the deal with this site? Is it fully legit (IE they are paying royalties for the games they are selling)?

It is totally legit. They've basically bought the right to modify and redistribute these games; they have the source code, and have a team of programmers tweaking it to make them run on modern OS's and hardware. It's the same company that brought us The Witcher.

Sounds like a real win-win deal to me -- companies who own the rights to these old gems gets some revenue as royalties, we the gamers get to play them without having to worry about getting them to work, or finding legal copies in the first place, and they get paid for bringing them to us. The only thing that surprises me is that the publishers were ready to come on board -- they've done such a splendid job of shooting themselves in the foot about just about everything lately.

Awesome!

I guess with what you said though, we won't be seeing Ultima VII on it anytime soon!

I'm not convinced. That stuff seems to be mostly (if not exclusively) from the mid-90's and up - in other words stuff that is still quite easily available and runnable in a modern 32-bit windows system with some minor tweaking. And also, seems like it's the well known stuff only, no underdogs or hidden gems.

So.. nothing I can't get from huuto.net in physical form.

And to me, someone other than the original developer messing around with the code is a bad thing, and that makes me a saaaaaaaad panda.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
… They've basically bought the right to modify and redistribute these games; they have the source code, and have a team of programmers tweaking it to make them run on modern OS's and hardware. …

I figured as much since they said XP and Vista but do you have a link where it actually says they have the source code?

No, I don't. I sort of assumed that as a matter of course. It's very labor-intensive to reverse-engineer code from binaries, so I figured that in order to be cost-effective, they would have to have the source code.

Hmm, if they have the code, maybe they can recompile some of those old 16-bit programs and make them 32-bit so folks on 64-bit OS's can run them.

I hope they'll do System Shock 2, that's about the only game I just can't get running on my rig, no matter how hard I try. And I actually like their selection of mid-90's up; earlier games are pretty easy to get running in Dosbox (at least the ones I've tried), and if they go for CD-ROM versions of games they should get an edge over abandonware-sites. With the kind of internet connections people have these days 16,7 meg rips of Blood aren't really that hot… Hope they'll do Thief 1 and 2 as well, they don't go very well with newer vidcard drivers, and the compression of the in-game movies could use a do-over.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
No, I don't. I sort of assumed that as a matter of course. It's very labor-intensive to reverse-engineer code from binaries, so I figured that in order to be cost-effective, they would have to have the source code.

Not to mention a lot of guess work. Look at Exult. Great as it is, there is still info in some of the data files that they have no idea what it is supposed to do.

Originally Posted by Zloth
Hmm, if they have the code, maybe they can recompile some of those old 16-bit programs and make them 32-bit so folks on 64-bit OS's can run them.

just about anything that is DOS runs good in DosBox, so I hope you just mean older windows games!

BTW, right now they just have Interplay games, and a handful from Codemasters.

Source: http://gamecorner.pl/gamecorner/1,86…Old_Games.html

It includes screens of the service.

Here's an interview where they talk more about it.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/goodoldgames1.php

Tom: I'll mention some of my favorites that aren't on the teaser site… Jagged Alliance 2, MDK 2, Redneck Rampage, Kingpin, Lionheart, Descent 1-3, Shogo… ah the list goes on and on.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
Looks pretty cool. Maybe I'll finally be able to get Ps:T!

So what is the deal with this site? Is it fully legit (IE they are paying royalties for the games they are selling)?

Hi. I think PS:T is available on Gametap.