GOG apologizes for marketing ploy, relaunching tomorrow

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Rest easy folks, Good Old Games isn't going anywhere. On Sunday, the digital distributor scared gamers by taking down its service and leaving a (purposefully) misleading note about its closure. "GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form," the site said. The respected game dealer's demise upset loyal customers and many criticized it for its abrupt end. Some speculated the service was purchased by a larger distributor (such as Steam), while others thought it was marketing ploy. The latter group was right, it seems.

The company apologized today for deceiving its users, but said it couldn't miss the opportunity to attract attention for an upcoming site overhaul. "As a small company we don't have a huge marketing budget and this is why we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz around an event as big as launching a brand new version of our website and even more important, bringing back Baldur's Gate to life!" GOG said.

It was done in the spirit of fun, apparently. "Our aim at GOG is to promote the greatest DRM-free PC classics ever in a creative way and allow people to escape from the usual boring mainstream marketing." Everyone's entitled to a mistake and GOG's unique collection of DRM-free old school games should make it easy to forgive and forget. The service will relaunch tomorrow at 8AM EDT with "new, huge releases."

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/40369-gog-apologizes-for-marketing-ploy-relaunching-tomorrow.html

 

[Cueto_99]

I really hope Steam never makes that sort of jokes... might provoke some heart-attacks...

 

[Julio Franco]

I'm sorry to say this because I like GoG and the concept behind it but this was LAME, enough that we shouldn't even have run this story.

 

[JMMD]

Seems like a weird way to get customers. If people think you're closing they certainly won't want to buy anything. They better hope they get as much press about being open now.

 

[PanicX]

Same thing worked well for tshirthell.com
They sold over 100,000 shirts in 3 weeks after mentioning the demise of the site.
http://www.tshirthell.com/goodbye.php

 

[Guest]

Not a GoG user myself, but if you're providing a service like this, don't you want customers/potential-customers to have faith in you being around a few years from now so they can still access their games as and when they want to? Pulling stunts like this is obviously gonna detract from that faith in their long term reliability, especially since there's probably going to be less coverage of the fact it's a stunt than there was for them potentially shutting up shop.

 

[Guest]

@ The previous guest; I'd never heard of GoG before this, and am soon to head off to their Website to take a look. So I'd say 'No news is bad news'!

 

[isamuelson]

Not sure if I liked what they did, but they apparently DID leave some hints in the various videos they posted. In the end, glad to see they're coming back!

 

[ET3D]

This might have brought in some new customers, but as an existing one I must say that it hurt. That's because I cared about the site and its concept and was sad when I thought it was going away. When I understood it was a marketing ploy it felt like they're mocking my feelings, and I'm certainly less inclined to buy anything there now.