As an advertisement for a sequel?!?

Blizzard never let other digital retailers sell their games, not even Steam. So a GOG release would be out of the question. Still, it's a nice surprise that they are giving away Blackthorne for free, especially since they usually charge a lot for their older titles ($20 each for Diablo II, Warcraft III and Starcraft).

Nice gesture by Blizzard. I haven't played this game before so I'm curious to give it a try.

Geez, I haven't played Blackthorne since it came out for the 32X (the crappy Sega Genesis attachment). That game inspired a lot of my early internet handles. I guess this also gives me the excuse to redownload Diablo II and start playing that again :P Thanks, amok.

Oh, you were goofylookingdudewithrifle0456? I remember you!

Nah, I was bikerdude18.

Blizzard long ago made a conscious decision to stop selling games that never used serial keys. It's been over a decade since you could get any of their classic games in a stand-alone format, and since Diablo 1 was pulled from the battlechest combo none of them have been available in any format whatsoever. Warcraft 2 got a re-release (battle.net edition) with a serial key, but even it is gone now.

Exactly why they're releasing them for free now is hard to say. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say they're planning something for their battle.net platform and are using the old titles to get attention leading up to the announcement.

This is awesome news! That said, as unlikely as it is, I would be happy to see Blizzard's older games on GOG. Especially WarCraft II and Diablo which are unlikely to be released as freeware.

Only when it's used for gunning down romance.

Blizzcon is only a week away, I'm guessing there'll be some kind of related announcement there. I saw posted elsewhere that maybe their new moba game will feature a hero based on Blackthorne, which would make sense if they're doing this to generate some recognition beforehand among the generations which have never played.

Hmm..yes, very likely.

Still if Blizzard would jump on GOG.com they would generate A LOT of buzz & make some money in the same time.

But I wholeheartedly agree - it is a very nice gesture from them.

Side Note, a few years ago Rockstar released GTA 1 and 2 free as a promo; I got them but that was for an older computer which is probably in a landfill now. Was that a temp think or are there still options for that?

Still available: http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/

Someone told me privately the downloads are no longer avail on that page, sorry. I just copied the URL from my bookmark without testing it.

Thanks for the effort anyway, that was still a nice gesture of you. I think I'll live without them. :D

The files (with MD5SUMS) I downloaded from Rockstar when they put them up are:

4bf0b5f995d659090b681dd7b410499e GTA2INSTALLER.ZIP (361,544,078 bytes)
def8d7c8635e66f9fc2dd585aa5761ab GTAINSTALLER.exe (344,338,033 bytes)

They might be archived somewhere on the Internet such as the Wayback Machine or similar perhaps if you search there for the rockstar URL, or perhaps the filenames. I wouldn't be surprised if they repackage them and throw them up on Steam or somewhere though too as a retro game to regenerate more money from them sometime, or even here on GOG. Lots of people would probably pay $2-7 or so for them for nostalgia. They were good games so it'd be worth picking up should they show up for sale again sometime.