Yes, Good Old Games is open for business! While they’re calling this an “open beta”, it’s close to (if not actually) “the real thing”. No special access keys required. Just create an account and start buying ;).
Oh yeah, they’ve added two new publishers to the list: Strategy First and Piranha Bytes. Check out the front page of the site for more details.
I wonder who will get involved in this. Perhaps Bethesda since Fallout 3 is ‘Coming Soon’, but there are plenty of possibilities. EA/Origin could gain more money to continue their plans of monopolization in the market. Ultima and Wing Commander had several releases to name two long-lasting series.
As long as the game doesn’t have to phone home to let me play I think this is a good thing.
Vag, no phoning home, no online activation, no limited installs. You buy the game, it’s yours. Period.
I have bought a couple and everything went smoothly. One was more for curiosity, Redneck Rampage. Build Engine games have always been one of the most difficult to get working at an acceptable level of performance in DOSBox. DOSBox is used for the DOS games that they sell. I would still guess that you need a fast computer. I had to adjust the graphics output but besides that one minor fix it worked right out of the virtual box.
The only problem lies in the size of the games. People on dialup would probably not be able to use the service unless they want to leave it downloading all night. Descent Freespace 2 which weighs in at over 1 gig.
Dial up? I thought that went extinct when the Visigoths sacked Rome along with land line phones. :P