Good Old Games, the
retrogaming enthusiast's pay site of choice, has announced it'll be branching out into new games next
year. Fans of the site will recall its experimenting earlier this
year with the sale of The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings. This went
well enough that the site's now “actively working to sign newer
titles,” says director Guillaume Rambourg. So now what does the “O”
stand for?
Good Old Games is run by
Poland's CD Projekt, which just happens to also be the outfit behind
The Witcher 2. Who can blame the company for giving its game a
shout-out on its own website? Not the 40,000 people who bought the game on GOG.com, which is a pretty respectable number indeed – compared even to the game's 200,000 sales on Steam. Following this success, “more and more
people realize that our values are universal,” says Rambourg. “They
are coming to GOG and asking if we can carry their titles.”
Above: Not old, but good, and also a game. Two out of three, right?
GOG doesn't aim to take down
Steam or Origin anytime soon. Rambourg says the site's aim with the
expansion is to become “the best alternative digital distribution
platform” for computer gamers. He says the site's DRM-freedom and
bundled-in goodies (manuals, wallpapers and the like) embody a “good
old spirit” that's attractive to modern-day indie developers. With
the prevalence of retro-flavored titles offered by modern indies
(think Braid, The Binding of Isaac or Super Meat Boy), it's easy to
see what he means.
Which still doesn't solve
the problem of what GOG.com now stands for. Good Other Games? Get Our
Games? Grabbing Origin's Grosses? Suggestions in the comments,
please: we readily admit we've set the bar pretty damn low.