GOG Shut Down a “Hoax”; Baldur’s Gate, Site Relaunch Announced

After days of concern, speculation and growing anger over the closure of GOG.com, the merry pranksters at Good Old Games are saying, “Gotcha!”

During a press conference on Wednesday, GOG’s managing director and its co-founder, dressed as monks, asked for forgiveness for the ruse. GOG.com isn’t dead, they say. It’s healthier than ever and will relaunch on Thursday with a brand new design. Having rewritten 98 percent of the site’s code, GOG claims that the new version will be 10 times faster and will be able to handle six times the traffic. They have bold ambitions for the site and say that their objective is to become the alternative to Steam.

“We don’t want to do things the way people are doing. We want to be different. We want to be special. We want to be the number one alternative for Steam,” said the “monks.”

A host of new features are being implemented, including a smoother registration process, better community features, a download calculator, and a Facebook “Like” button. The team is also working on Windows 7 compatibility. Over 150 titles in the GOG catalog are fully playable on the operating system at this time, and they promise that more are on the way.

The site’s new key feature, however, is what is being called “GOGMixes.” GOGMixes will give people the chance to share their knowledge of games through playlists, which will then be rated and ranked by other users on the site, and sound similar to Amazon’s List feature.

Good Old Games is celebrating its second anniversary next month, and the monks decided to surprise their fanbase with the announcement that RPG classic Baldur’s Gate, along with its expansion, will be available for download for $9.99 when the site relaunches. As usual, the game will be DRM-free and will include bonus materials such as the soundtrack, avatars and wallpapers.

Good Old Games is backed by The Witcher developer/publisher CD Projekt RED.