Good Old Games Interview
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GM: You already have deals with some of the biggest publishers including Activision and Ubisoft to name but just a few; are you currently planning on bringing any publishers on board to add to the variety?
We're in touch with most if not all publishers/developers/rights owners of the significant classic PC games, so it's just a matter of time when we'll have those titles on GOG. Our goal is to make one big announcement each quarter of the year, this way slowly but gradually we'll grow our catalogue of Good Old Games. At the moment we're probably after 200-300 games to add to the catalogue and it will be pretty well packed with classics.
Of course that doesn't mean there won't be any games left to release via GOG. We're working on getting newer classics into our catalog games a year to three years old and adding them to our catalog while continuing to work on classic games will make sure that we keep expanding on what made us successful in the first place while giving us plenty of room to grow in the future.
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GM: What are your thoughts on piracy? Obviously you have a no-DRM system in place but what's your view towards piracy affecting PC games industry these days?
By focusing on piracy as the evil enemy of PC gaming, the industry loses sight of two things: first of all, pirates are better at distributing games than many companies are. Why else would someone risk getting malware or a virus on their computer from a torrent, except that they've made it simpler to get a game through pirates than it is through traditional digital distribution? There are definitely things that we can learn from how simple it is to pirate a game compared to purchasing it, installing the client, patching the game, patching the client, activating it, activating the online component, and then finally! being able to play.
Secondly, people pirate. They do, and you can't stop that. What you can do what survey after survey shows is create enough value in the offer of your game that people buy it anyway. Some of the largest sources of traffic on GOG.com are from torrent trackers and abandonware sites. And you know what? The traffic from these websites converts to purchasers at a better percentage than straight search traffic from Google does. The first exposure these people had to GOG.com came through illegal free copies of the games we sell, and they found our offer so compelling that they sign up and buy from us.
