Good Old Games and the "idiocy" of DRM
Current discussion of DRM in gaming has been dominated by the Spore debacle (as covered extensively here on TeleRead). However, there is a gaming company now starting up that offers another perspective on the issue.
A company called Good Old Games has launched a site, currently in beta, that is selling classic older games with the consent of the games’ publishers. These games are sold inexpensively, for under $10 each. They are DRM-free, and bundled with any DOS emulator or clock-manipulation software necessary to run them properly on modern computers.
Ars Technica has posted a three-page interview with Adam Oldakowski and Michael Kicinski, the people behind Good Old Games (and had previously posted a profile of the service itself). They talk about the philosophy behind their site, and why they feel DRM for computer games is so undesirable.
Lots of people wrote that with the $6-$10 price points [offered by Good Old Games], it’s just not worth searching for pirated editions of those games. You don’t know if they will run properly on your system, and you’ll have a lot of other problems with pirated versions. It’s just easier to buy a game at GOG.com, pay a small amount for it, get lots of cool additional stuff and be a part of a great community of gamers. This is another example of positive motivation which convinced people to give up pirated games.
Though I have not explored the site myself yet (but I have received my beta invitation), I find the idea behind Good Old Games to be an exciting one, and one whose time has definitely come.
Up to this point, older games have been considered "abandonware" because the publishers did not think it worth their time to do anything with them. Hopefully, Good Old Games will prove that the "long tail" applies to computer games as much as everything else, and these games do not have to be "abandoned" anymore.
June 21st, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Fallout 3 is my latest favourite game, total virtual immersion