GOG's big announcement
 

Good old games had a big announcement today, which was expected to be Activision.

Their website is difficult (impossible perhaps) to access, due I expect to volume of traffic.

There was a certain amount of revelation to be found at this website:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10441275-1.html

It mentions Arcanum and Gabriel Knight as the first two games released ($5.99 each), with more to follow.

Hopefully this will lead to other major publishers!

:brain: Awesome. :D
Arcanum was horribly expensive to get on Amazon and pretty much unfindable anywhere else (far as legit sources go).

This may mean we have a lot of games to remove download links for... AFAIK these two games that they released were published by Sierra, which indicates we could see all the "Quest" series (amongst others) at GOG in the coming weeks.

It's been an interesting time over at GOG, I've seen it go from a closed beta all the way through 180+ games available, with many more to come.

Well, that also means we did achieve our goal. :thumbs:
The whole point of Abandonware was making the games available when the copyright owners can't be arsed to re-release them anymore.

Aye, so long as those folks only interested in free stuff don't whinge too much!

I would love it if all games were available through places like GOG, even if that does remove our downloads.

I also feel it's good that such things are in the hands of a team where they can make sure everything works simply for those with new operating systems. In some cases I have heard that they have access to the source code in order to make sure things work correctly. Makes a huge difference compared to just saying "purchase at your own risk", like many PC games distributors do these days.

I had never thought it would be as big a publisher as Activision/Vivendi, blows the mind really. Apparently they are trying to convince Blizzard to join up, which should be easier when they see sales figures I would imagine. Next stop EA, Lucasarts, and the rest...

We all knew how popular old games were, but who knew they could actually still be so profitable as to warrant an entire business devoted to them?

/rambling...

Im guessing were gonna see some Vampires in the future.

it's not like we ever had arcanum and this stuff uploaded

Hello.

Arcanum has bad combat, too many bugs, poor balancing, and really poor city and dungeon design.

Goodbye.

To put this thread back on track again... :notrust:

I'm really happy to see these games on GOG. The Gabriel Knight series is unique with its mature and complex storylines and the first part is my favorite. None of these games are perfect, of course. The first has some annoying pixelhunting and not really logically obvious puzzles, but otherwise it's well made.

Arcanum is also awesome, but indeed very buggy. You may need to install one of those fan patches to maximize the enjoyment. Many quests are too broken otherwise. Also, realtime combat is too hectic while turn-based is barely a challenge after the first town. Still, the depth, the atmosphere, the setting, they all make up for it. Very enjoyable, sometimes hair-pullingly frustrating, sure. Oh, and don't forget to spread your saves over multiple slots. Sometimes the save files become corrupted...

On Arcanum, I only agree with combat. While rest of the game was pretty awesome, combat felt like...well, in worse case it felt like a coin toss. When fighting against stronger enemies you just click them and hope the best. Even patched the combat stays very broken.