So I surfed over to gog.com today and was greeted with this message:

Dear GOG users,

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We’ve debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we’ve decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.

We’re very grateful for all support we’ve received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming.

This doesn’t mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We’re closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.

On a technical note, this week we’ll put in place a solution to allow everyone to re-download their games. Stay tuned to this page and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

All the best,
GOG.com Team

That’s… pretty much out of the blue.

It might not be completely bad news. One of their guys said on twitter “doesn’t mean GOG is gone! We’ll have some more info soon”. I’ve heard a few hypotheses out there – GoG has been bought out, or will start selling newer games too, or has had to bring in DRM (maybe with a steam-style launcher). Or that this is a huge publicity stunt based around finally coming out of beta.

Anyway we’d be seriously sad to see GoG go; they’ve done some sterling work in making classic PC games available at reasonable prices. Hell, I bought Duke3D from them last week. So here’s hoping they continue in some form.