Let me come clean: I didn't have high hopes for GOG when they first announced it. After all, buying games from ten years ago? How much pot were they on? But I still signed up for the beta and tried it out. After that, I was awed. Sure, there weren't a lot of games at the start, but I bought Fallout and I loved it, loved it, and loved it some more. Then I realized that GOG wasn't such a bad idea after all.
So other private beta people, what were your impressions of GOG when they first came out? Were you psyched, or were you one of those "we'll see when it comes out for real" people? I'm not being elitist or anything by saying only the people who were in the private beta, but I'd like to hear the opinions of the people who joined up in the few months after September as well.

I'd been waiting for something like this for quite a while, so I was, and still am, very happy that GoG exists!

As a true retogaming enthusiast, I have been interested in GOG.com since the start. I've signed up for the private beta and as soon as I have been able to register I have been impressed by the UI and the general structure of the store w/forum. One of my concerns was, and continues to be too, the game catalogue. Things are getting better from this standpoint, but I expect more....

I've been aware of gog for longer than I've been a member, saw it from a link off bluesnews I think and decided to keep an eye on it and since it didn't fold after a while I thought I'd give them a go and buy fallout and I've been buying stuff periodically ever since.
I'd have bought more but most of the games in the catalogue are the kind I don't like...

I signed up to be told to join the beta when word first went out that you could. Disenchantment with other services and outlets only pushing new (and usually overpriced) stuff. I knew it would be slow in terms of releases, and releases I like and did not have, as I have hunted down quite a number of the stuff here over the years (with difficulty!). A happy emoticon finishes this paragraph regardless.
The staff vs. community aspect they appeared to of had has proven true as well after joining.

As soon as I heard about it I signed up because of the No DRM and the the Good-Old games that I could think of that were a blast to play.
I have wanted gog to not just do well, but succeed beyond what the guys ever envisioned.
I am very happy with gog.
I am almost happy with all the games I bought. For me some fall out of the "good" category.
The one thing that I never thought about was the resistance that the gog team might face when trying to get publishers to buy off o this concept. It seems that some are too entrenched in the DRM way of thinking.
The gog team is doing a great job and whoever is the front man for getting more Publishers is well worth what he/she is getting paid. :o)
Here's hoping that gog ends 2009 with so many publishers they have to hire more people to work on games getting to play nice with XP and Vista!

I signed up as soon as i heard about it. Thought fantastic idea there ae a lot of fanastic games from the past which i would love to replay that my current rig wouldnt run.
I am glad to see GoG doing so well. It is great to see a team so dedicated to their goals the GoG team have been fantastic in what they have acheved and one of the few companies that work with the community rather than ignore them.
Also the community as a whole has really shapped this website into what it is.

I heard about it on Kotaku over the summer, thought the whole DRM-free idea was awesome, and applied for a beta position. I got in, bought a game or two, and it was AWESOME! I enjoy getting old games to work on my current rig, so I absolutely love the idea of a company not only selling Vista-compatible versions, but also charging $5.99 or $9.99 instead of $79.99 for those rare, hard-to-find games.

I have never been in the beta, but like Alias, I've heard of it before it entered beta. At that time, people were looking all over ebay for Freespace and Fallout, so imagine my delight when I've heard of this service that offers these games for sale!

Reeses, For BREAKFAST?!?!?

I'm actually very surprised that GoG has attracted so many publishers already. To be honest when I came here after reading an article about it on heise, I didn't expect too much. I made my first purchase mostly because I wanted to support this non-DRM project, and to do my share to give them more time to find more publishers. I didn't know about CDProject back then. But now, it seems that GoG's chances of survival are actually pretty good and I actually have high hopes that they will soon be able to afford switching from their current model of only going after medium/big publishers, to also going after individual developers and maybe even adding recent titles. Maybe GoG.com wouldn't be fitting anymore. Can we have GaG.com, please: "Good alltime Games"

If nothing else, I think everyone should support GOG for one reason:
their wide selection of genders

you mean they're transgendered?

While I wasn't part of the private beta, I'd heard about GOG and had been keeping an eye on it for several months before it went into public beta. I'll freely admit that being the cynical bastard that I am I was quite skeptical, as while I thought the idea was great I was expecting the execution to manage to screw something up enough that it would be mediocre at best. I'm quite glad that I was so incredibly wrong in my skepticism.

I loved the idea. I loved the execution. This was the first forum that I've started to view/post regularly since The Wheel of Time (pc game) forums were opened by Legend Entertainment. And that was LONG time ago.
I've naturally had a few niggles about it (the forums themselves annoy me a bit) but such minor issues do not detract from the overall execellence of idea, design and release.
Karl