For those with EA games on Direct2Drive remember that you can activate their keys on Origin to give you another way of downloading them if something happens with Direct2Drive. This works with most (all?) EA games that have keys listed.

Similarly, any games you've bought through Direct2Drive that use Steamworks as DRM can be activated through Steam, so if you have any you haven't activated yet you might as well do so now.

No one mentioned the second part of the notice:

2. Download all of your non-game files (like Prima Guides). These will not be available on GameFly after the transition.

So if you, like me, have any of the non-game stuff you won't be seeing it after the move. Guess it's a good thing I decided not to grab all the digital versions of comics I wanted to read when they had them on sale mid-year. The onerous PDF DRM made it just a bit too obnoxious, so I guess thank you DRM? :P

The same problem if e.g. GOG made a similar announcement due to a buy out, or closing its doors. That's why I'm hoping GOG would make its downloader more efficient, e.g. one button downloads for all the material of the game (not just the executables).

It is a bit unclear to me though, do the D2D games you download require connection to D2D servers (which will become offline in the near future, while most of the games can still be accessed through GameFly?) when you want to install or play the games? Or do they have only 3rd party DRM, or in some cases no DRM at all?

Either way, they should have provided people at least a few months to download backups, maybe even more.

Anyway, this could make another good precedent to what the customers are entitled to in the DRM delivery sites when something like this happens. Does D2D really legally owe anything to its (former) customers, other than what they show with their goodwill?

It is not only related to buyouts or closing doors, but also deciding to make a change to a content delivery system, e.g. transforming from a download service into a streaming service (maybe after a certain grace period). You'd still have an access to "your" games after that, but not quite the same way you used to and paid for.

But of course, none of this could ever possibly happen, and even if it did, it wouldn't really matter because normal people don't care to keep their older games anyway. /sarcasm

Either you wait for that, or you use one of the several community-created downloaders. JGoGDownloader is quite good in my opinion.

Ok thanks, I'll have to try that, hopefully it also supports queuing downloads.

I don't know about the GUI version, but for the command-line version (which I use) you can tell it to download all your games, or one single game (both cases including all extras as well as the community-created cover image, one file at a time rather than several files simultaneously), but not a few specific games.

Everything I own there that I care even a little bit about, I can buy or already own at least three other places, so I say to you, D2D - good riddance! You were an annoying and useless service, I always hated your website, and your sales were mediocre and often difficult to find.

You are wrong about Valve/Steam, because its not public company and Gabe own majority stake in Valve. So as long as he is not willing to sell, MS and Apple cannot buy it. He already turned down several offers.

PDF isn't DRM....you can use a free PDF reader for any pdf file if you want to.

Actually no, PDFs can have DRM attached in such a way that you can only read them when opened through the official launching method (if you try extracting them from the launcher they still can't be opened--at least not by Adobe Reader). The PDF eGuides from Prima and the like typically use this implementation.

What about Foxit reader? Not even that can run them?

I don't know, I haven't tried third-party readers.

If you're curious you can download one of Prima's free guides; last time I checked them out they used the same DRM system as the paid ones (because people are totally going to try to bypass paying for something they don't have to pay for... er, wait...)

Hahahahahaha. Okay man, sure.

What you mean to say is a hostile takeover is not possible (I assure you a massive legal judgement would make that untrue, but that's what you're trying to say). Yeah, if that reassures you great, but you're naive.

To be fair, Gabe wouldn't sell the company. Mostly because he could probably make whatever amount they offer him in a year. Or during a Steam sale.