Good Old Games hits it big with Activision - PAGE 2

Okay, so first, how did you pull this one off? Codemasters, Ubisoft...these were quite big, rather unexpected deals. But Activision are surely the last frontier, really -- the last publisher anyone expected to sign on. They're known for charging more on PC games, using DRM, and going the very corporate approach in general. What happened? How long have you been trying to get this deal going? What was Activision's first response? Did you have to get after them after first proposing the signing?

It wasn't easy, but no one said it [would] be. It took us more than a year to finalize the deal with Activision. We [had] first approached Vivendi; it was just before their fusion with Activision, so the timing wasn't exactly perfect for us. We presented them our offer and the whole concept of the service, which appealed to them, especially in the case of Sierra titles. Then after the merge we started talking to Activision about possible cooperation and [though] they liked the concept of selling older titles via digital distribution, there was still the DRM issue. That's the problem we come across many times while discussing with publishers. Thanks to our inborn charm and good arguments we've managed to convince Activision that selling DRM-free games is a good point, not a flaw.

Signing new deals always takes a lot of time, but if we're talking about Activision, one of the biggest publishers in the world, it's taking even more time and work. We're sure it was worth working so hard to finally offer such great classics to our customers. We're really happy about this deal and we can assure you it's just the beginning.

The deal it seems will bring a lot of more niche classics as well as quality "mainstream" titles to the mix. How are you imagining the reception from the GOG community and (as of yet) non-GOG members at this stage?

Looking at the thread about the countdown on our forum, I'm sure our community will be excited about the announcement. The games that will come with this deal in the next couple weeks are definitely all time classics that every gamer should play or at least [has already] heard about them. Of course I can only talk about the two already announced games, Arcanum and Gabriel Knight, but there will be more great games from Activision's back catalogue that will definitely put a smile on many gamers' faces.

As for more mainstream gamers, we believe that announcing such a big and famous publisher joining GOG.com should direct many people to our service. To this point we've gathered more than 180 classic PC games, so we're sure that everyone can find something that will fit their needs even if it's not from Activision's catalogue. Also the deal with Activision should open new doors for us in [the] case of new publishers joining the service.

Do you anticipate a continuing relationship with Activision and the other publishers as the years go on? What has the response been like from the various publishers? How do they feel about the sales figures and also the approach you take to digital distribution?

With every deal we sign we're counting for a long term cooperation and we believe that publishers share the same opinion. As you can see with some of our publishers, after releasing all titles announced with the deal, we're getting back to them to discuss about other titles from their back catalogue. Thanks to nice sales results of the first batch of Ubisoft titles we've managed to get the Heroes of Might & Magic series as well as the Might and Magic 6-pack. So if we manage to sign a new publisher you can be sure we'll do whatever we can to get all Good Old Games from their catalogue as it's profitable to everyone: gamers, publishers and us.

The holiday sale, I'm presuming, was in part an effort to bring in as many new members as possible before the big announcement. Has it been a success, do you think, at this point?

The holiday sale was a huge event that included all publishers on GOG and it took us a lot of effort to make this happen. Of course we did it to say "thank you" to all our existing users and to attract as many new customers with [the] crazy deals. The whole action was a big success for us; many people got to know about GOG and our userbase increased significantly. We hope that adding to the offer such a popular publisher as Activision will assure our new users that it was worth creating an account on our service and even more new gamers will discover GOG.com and take a trip down the memory lane.

On the topic of sales and promos in general, I've noticed you guys seem to give away games like candy at times. When I'd first signed up myself, I didn't think you could get any cheaper than $6 or $10, but then the sales began...I take it this approach works very well in the end, and draws in a lot of new members.

The two price points we've chosen at the beginning of GOG.com were a result of compromise between gamers and publishers expectations. In our opinion these are reasonable prices for older games and I'm sure gamers will agree with that. But with the growing competition among digital distribution services we had to give gamers even more incentives to buy games on our service. This brought us to promos. I have to admit that weekend sales and other promos drive lots of traffic to GOG.com.