GameFly is Going to Try its Hand at Digital Distribution

Subscription based rental service GameFly is releasing its own digital client and has announced a new “unlimited play” service for PC gamers.

The digital distribution Thunderdome is looking pretty crowded as of late. There’s a glut of companies, including the recently branded Origin, fighting over the meager 30% market share that doesn’t already belong to Steam. Now GameFly is looking to get in on that action.

Though it already has one digital distribution network already in the form of Direct2Drive which it bought from IGN back in May, mail-out rental company GameFly has announced a new digital client and digital distribution service which will be open to all current GameFly subscribers. According to GameFly co-founder Sean Spector, the service will work in a similar manner to Napster (the new, legal, incarnation of Napster that is), providing users with unlimited access to an “ever-growing” collection of games and revoking that access should they ever cancel their subscription.

Spector made it clear that although GameFly is largely targeted at men aged 18-34, the new service is more inclusive, offering content for the whole family. “So this client will be filled with PC games for kids, with casual games and indie games,” he said, but upon hearing the sharpening of core-gamers’ knives he added ” It will run the gamut of content. We want to be accessible to all gamers, whether you are a 14-year-old boy or a 17-year-old girl or a 35-year-old gamer.”

The new client also offers a straight forward store, where even non-subscribers can buy new and pre-owned titles. It will also host a number of social networking features, something current market leader Steam sorely lacks.

The service will begin a closed beta on September 8th, the codes for which are sadly only being handed out to the GameFly faithful who attend an event in Los Angeles.

Though it’s clear at this point that, thanks to Steam, Valve runs Bartertown, I was a huge fan of GameTap before Metaboli bought it out and essentially broke everything. If GameFly can offer a similar service that actually works on a pc running a 64bit operating system then sign me up.

Source: Shacknews