You were both great Steam competitors, taken from us too early by corporations.
Also, your Christmas sales were shit this year so good riddance.
But at least you didn't have to resort to stupid coupon gimmicks that don't actually do anything.

Gamefly bought Direct2Drive.

You're on your own now, Gamersgate.

Corporations, evil corporations

No, they wanted D2D's PC renting service.

GamersGate, Steam, GOG and Greenman Gaming are the only worthwhile D2Ds any more (aside from Indievania). It's sad. :(

Yeah, which means the site will be wiped out in six months.

I don't trust Gamefly.

I own about a dozen games on Impulse, and to be honest I'm pretty sick of having to adjust to some other company or service every couple of years. When I got the games, they were distributed via "Stardock Central". Then the service transformed itself to "TotalGaming.Net". Then it turned to "Impulse", and the old Stardock client wouldn't work anymore, I had to install the new Impulse client, which changed considerably over the years and required several reinstalls. Now Gamestop is running the show and will change things again. I can't even count how much the terms of service have changed over the years that I own these games.

During all this time, _every_ company responsible for the service kept downplaying the requirement of its specific client. They said there was no danger of the company going out of business ("We are doing great" - yep, that's why Stardock sold you to Gamestop, right?), that they would never abuse their grip on the customers ("Hey, we're the good guys, remember?" - right, and now you good guys sold the whole service to someone with a pretty shady record), that they would "probably" remove the client requirement from their games if the service should become unavailable (which was a non-binding statement that Gamestop is entirely free to ignore), that the client provided a great "service" to the gamers (which I neither need nor want, I just want the games I bought, and without having to beg to someone else every other year to allow me to play them, please).

If this whole story shows anything, then it's that: Don't trust companies for anything they say that's not stated in their terms of service. It's mostly lip service. And never, never, make yourself dependent on a service provider who requires you to use his client in order to access your games. The trouble simply isn't worth it.

That's why I shop at GOG and GamersGate, where I can archive my games in a form that leaves me independent.

The question is, will the takeover of D2D and Impulse be a white elephant for Gamefly and Gamestop respectively?

I haven't bought anything on d2d and impulse. I felt it in the guts they won't last long :P

I have 4 games on Impulse. They used to have some decent deals, and at least for me, their downloader wasnt as terrible as everyone say. But when Gamestop bought it everything changed. Now i cant even BUY ANYTHING anymore, i simply cant check out any game. Oh cmin, i can even buy from D2D which has that lame region lock on some games. And i guess theyre doing me favor for not letting me buy anything. I wont miss them much.

I have a few games on D2D too, good thing is that most of these are steamworks, which means i dont need D2D anymore to play or download them. And i have to agree. They simply cant compete with Steam. They used to have some nice deals, but lately their deals are terrible. ANd to make matter worse, they have that lame region lock on a lot of games. Steam doesnt have it, i can buy any game i want from Steam. Even GTA 4 which was region locked for South America on Steam for some unknown reason is unlocked now. I just cant buy Bully, because it was banned here in Brazil, lol.

A lot of people hate Steam because of their regional pricing. I cant complain about that, since here we get the same US pricing except for EA games (so they can control the price on brazilian Origin). I love Steam, they have the best deals and some nice features such as achievements and community. And Steam game overlay is quite usefull. I dont care about Steams DRM. It would be better if there was no DRM, of course, but i wont die because of it.

But the one i like the most is Gamersgate due to their hugeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee catalog (im pretty sure they have the biggest catalog out there), great deals, no DRM, and the rewards system, which is pretty nice (i got quite a few games using blue coins). Oh, and i love having user reviews on the games main page, makes it much easier to check if a game is good or not (much better than reasing those "is it worth it" threads on Steam forums). Of course they cant beat Steams deals, but they do have a few good deals every now and then. I have a lot of games there.

Amazon is also getting pretty good. Theyve started selling digital games just some time ago, so they still dont have as many games as Steam, GG or D2D. However, Amazon seems to be the only one able to compete with Steams deals and pricing. I managed to get some amazing deals from Amazon, better than Steam sometimes. I dont like their downloader client too much, but at least it works. Amazon seems to have the best deals on EA games, such us Bulletstorm for 6 dollars, Crysis 2 for 10 dollars, and a few others. They also got the lowest price ive ever seen for Deus Ex 3 at 10 dollars.

I had a few games from direct 2 drive and downloaded them all before today. They will be stuffed onto a backup drive.

Sad to see another service go although not the best it did its job and i did get a few good bargins from them.

I just had a look, and I only have purchased 3 games from D2D over the years, all of which I have bought again from different sources as some point (probably very cheap in sales). I suppose I can always download them and give them to my young brother-in-law.

I'm not terribly sad about the news as I mainly buy from the gaming trinity of GOG, Gamersgate and Steam these days. D2D was neither competitive enough nor did it offer DRM free titles that other retailers do.

According to "statistics" posted before on RPS, Gamersgate has never made it to the list of Top 10 digital retailers, while D2D has. It was, I think, #2 or 3 on the list. That must mean they must have been making some good money, aye? I'm really quite surprised they sold out to Gamefly.