GOG.com Closes its Digital Doors

Picking up classic PC games has just gotten a little bit trickier, as one of the leading sources of retro games shuts up shop.

Good Old Games, better known as GOG.com, has shut down, after its operators made the decision that it couldn’t continue in its current form. The site, which sold DRM free retro games updated to run on modern computers, was owned and operated by CD Projekt, the Polish videogame company responsible for The Witcher.

In a message on the GOG website, the staff said they were grateful for the support they’d received over the last two years, and said that working on GOG had been a “great adventure” into gaming’s past. They added that despite the closure, the idea behind the site wasn’t necessarily gone forever.

A post on the site’s official Twitter feed seems to suggest that the lack of DRM on GOG products was making it difficult to keep developers and publishers happy, but whether that’s the reason for the closure, or just one part of it, isn’t clear. GOG advises keeping an eye on the site for updates on how users will be able to re-download all their games again before the site is gone for good.

This is actually a really sad day, as along with Steam, GOG was one of the best places to pick up older games without having to shell out a small fortune on eBay, or fiddle around for hours trying to get a game designed for Windows 95 to work on XP. Hopefully GOG 2.0 will come soon, although if it does, it’s likely to be quite different.

You can follow the site’s Twitter or join the official Facebook group for updates.