Witcher Studio to Sell DRM-Free Classic PC Games

Warsaw, Poland-based CD Projekt, the studio behind RPG The Witcher, is entering the digital distribution business with the launch of GOG.com (Good Old Games). The project is described as "a new games-on-demand platform that allows old fogies (and young fogies) to buy some of the best PC games of all time – many of which just can't be found in stores anymore – and play them on modern hardware, completely free of intrusive DRM."

GOG.com will also feature forums, user reviews and ratings, and commentary from "some of the industry's most beloved writers." A closed beta launch has been scheduled for August 1. Pricing for most games will be either $5.99 or $9.99 and GOG.com said it's secured agreements with several publishers, such as Interplay and Codemasters, to make their games available on the site. GOG.com will begin by offering classic games like Fallout, Freespace 2, Operation Flashpoint: Game of the Year Edition and TOCA Race Driver 3. Moreover, the site is currently negotiating with a number of other publishers, so that GOG.com can ultimately bring gamers "a comprehensive collection of classic PC games from the 80s, 90s and 2000s."

"Our main goal is to create a user-friendly site with the best classic PC games for a price that might be considered impossible to achieve," said Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director of GOG.com. "The people behind GOG.com are gamers and we all know how difficult it is to find a lot of classic games. So we've started building a great games catalogue, gotten rid of the copy protection that gamers hate so much, optimized the games to work on modern operating systems, and made them cheap enough that piracy seems like a rip-off. It's so easy to buy, download and install a game and then get deeply involved in the community; we're very confident that gamers will absolutely love the site."