I think I'll need to save this for my future business courses.  It's likely going to be a great case example of how not to do something.

This whole mess has just passed the line from strange to strange, if you get my drift.....

Definitely passed into the wtf category awhile ago. Bizarre does not even begin to cover it.

What if they announce on Wednesday that they're dropping games and now becoming "Good Old Gucci" and start selling 10 year old Gucci shoes, handbags, and more?

I waited too long... Now there will be no place to get Panzer General 2 legally (except Amazon, where I found it for $90).

I'm pretty sure this is all just a stunt.  Check out the recent video at 13 seconds:

It looks like they are rolling out Baldur's Gate after the site comes back.

Very possible. But isn't subliminal messaging illegal in most developed countries?

I wont be buying from them again when they relaunch. I'll just get the games i already bought and go somewhere else.

alot of GOG fans have this attitude.

I for one im no fan of GOG after what they did.

Better be a huge apology in the form of a big discount.

From what I understand Gog.com had a management hostile takeover and the management shut it down until they could figure out what to do.

I will continue buying from GoG.  I don't think people should go off and get their panties in a bunch over a PR mistake.  GoG is still the best digitial distribution company out there because what they offer.  I'm not going to start supporting DRM companies like Steam and Impulse who want to remove the freedom from the player.

I'll keep buying too, hard to pass on cheap and truly DRM free games. Just back it up and your good.

Meh.

http://www.gog.com/

First of all we would like to apologize everyone who felt deceived or harmed in any way by us closing down GOG.com without any warning and without giving access to your games. We apologize for that from the bottom of our hearts!

Now it's time we put an end to all the speculations once and for all. It’s true that we decided that we couldn't keep GOG.com the way it was… so we won’t. As you probably know by now, GOG.com is entering its new era with an end of the two-years beta stage and we're launching a brand new GOG.com with new, huge releases.

The new GOG.com will launch at 8.00 a.m. EDT (2 p.m. CET). Later today we'll provide you here 4 videos where you'll find all needed information on current events, as well as news on the new GOG.com, the upcoming big releases and the summary of the last two years.

Thats good news. Now I can buy the games I was planning to get from there.... I only found out about the site 2 days before this happened.

Unbelievable. What crazy person thought this would be a good PR stunt?!

Well it certainly has drawn a lot of attention to them hasn't it?  I wont be surprised if they end up with more potential customers than before.

I've  seen more than a few posts something like "I never heard of these guys before.  How cool was that?!?  I wish they were still open.  I'd buy a ton of games from them."

Current users couldn't get to their games for a few days.  They'll be back.

I'd call that a cheap marketing win.

man their European. Man im always hoping for more independent American developers to succeed

I think I was the only one who claimed to learn about them from this on the thread..... and I'm so incredibly cheap I won't be buying anything for a long time..... but GoG looks like a good value for my hard-earned bucks.

Yes they gain awareness, but for all the wrong reasons - it helps raise one of their biggest weaknesses, that is, if they go under you lose all the games you purchased (the fact that they're DRM free helps alleviate this somewhat, but not fully). It associates them with failure, and makes people reluctant to trust them. When you're a tiny company in comparison to something like steam that's a very dangerous route to take.

It's conceivable the number of people who find out about it as a result of this and are able to overcome those worries outweighs the number of existing customers (and future customers had no stunt been done) who decide not to use them as a result, but I'd be surprised if that was the case.

I only read about what was happening when I checked the site late last night. Having looked recently today, it now says that the site will be relaunched in about 14 hours...

They certainly picked a bad publicity stunt to do. I would have rathered they said something like "We're experiencing technical difficulties. Check back on us in about a week.".

Meh... I can probably see myself forgiving them for this... eventually.

What a cheap ass stunt.

Agreed.  Maybe they got some publicity out of it... but still...