Good Old Games Interview: CD Projekt on Reissuing Classic PC Games for Cheap

[CalvinHobbes]

When it launches in September, CD Projekt's Good Old Games will offer cheap, DRM-free digital downloads of long-lost old-school PC titles like Fallout, Fallout 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Sacrifice, Descent 1-3 and Kingpin: Life of Crime, among others.


http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=914

 

[Raduque]

Excellent! I have a feeling CD Projekt is gonna end up with a whole mess of my money once this launches.

 

[CPA]

I wonder how Gametap will react.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Man, that must have been tough to convince the owners of those titles to allow them to resell them with no DRM.

 

[Frodolives]

Those are some good old games. In my view though, they aren't risking much by such a release (even if distribution were abused, imo). The content of those games are in a state of diminishing returns, while the intellectual property holders only stand to gain by nurturing a larger fan base.

For instance, Kingpin: Life of Crime is still a pretty playable old game, but without much conceivable future value except for the possibility of enhancing the notoriety of the franchise for future use.

 

[PingSpike]

I often wonder why publishers don't do this. Its not uncommon for an older game to no longer be available for sale, leaving some one that wants to play it with the choice of digging around for an overpriced used version or pirating the game. Neither of these result in any more revenue for the IP holders. DRM should be a non-issue here...these games are old, cracked versions are in the wild. If some one wants to steal them at this point, there's pretty much nothing stopping them. Then again, DRM should be largely a non-issue for any game IMO.

 

[Bateluer]

Cool

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I'm hoping Epic Games will see the light and just release the original Unreal Tournament (1999) as a free download.