Rock Paper Shotgun wrote:Good Old Games Gets New, Relaunches
So what is going on at Good Old Games? The press conference is in full flow, and the company has announced… it was a hoax. Quite possibly one of the most ill-advised hoaxes imaginable. The site will continue on, completely rewritten and no longer in beta, with a few new features and some new games. There’s all the details below. More details will be added, so refresh until I say not to.
Speculation has been rife since the site disappeared last Sunday, replaced with simple text statements deliberately implying that the site was closing down. “This doesn’t mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever,” they said. “We’re closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.”
It was all thinly veiled allusions toward their beta phase coming to an end, rather than the site disappearing forever. But it was one that saw users unable to access their games for five days, without knowing if they’d get them back.
Unfortunately GoG chose to deliver the message by dressing as monks and expressing “our humble apologies”, stating that “we have sinned”. Rather than any sense of contrition, they’ve instead chosen to continue their joke.
The site needed to close down for the update, but choosing not to explain this to their audience with any clarity. Boasting “a lot of hints”, they imply that it was the audience’s fault for not having gotten the joke. A joke, they say, was because they feel the industry is too “stiff”. They have not been bought by a larger distribution platform, and will continue to be an independent publisher.
98% of the website code has been rewritten. The site is “ten times faster”, and can now handle six times as many users. And the download client – which was always horrible – has gone.
In demonstrating their new simple login system, unfortunately they managed to screw up their own password, and then complain that it’s running too slowly.
There’s a new recommendation system, which will suggest games to you based on games you’ve bought, and those you’ve rated. The game catalogue will divide games by genre, letting you filter by really specific choices, including single or multiplayer gaming.
Product pages will explain “what’s cool about this game”. These are being written by fans of the games, rather than quoted from marketing speak. They also say they will have been completely tested from “A to Z”, hopefully suggesting they’ll all be guaranteed to work.
They will continue to bundle “goodies” with games. 150 of the games in their catalogue will work in Windows 7, and they intend to patch the rest in the future.
