14 DAY TRIAL // Just over a month ago, GameTap was gladly offering their 1000th downloadable title, Civilization 4, just after releasing Clive Barker's Jericho, Sam & Max Season Two (premiere) and the season finale of Myst Online: Uru Live. More recent news however say that December 11th will see major publishers such as Electronic Arts, Interplay and Atari pulling out from the service. A total of 70 games will be lost in the process, making room for another 1000th game milestone to be reached.
Something tells us they're not going to make such a big fuss about it anymore, since getting back on their feet, so to speak, is not a reason to celebrate. Here's what GameTap's forums revealed, when users tried accessing the titles soon to be removed:
"IMPORTANT: This game is currently slated for removal from the GameTap service on December 11, 2007. Occasionally, GameTap will rotate titles out of our catalog based on the status of publisher agreements and feedback from our members. We're sorry for any inconvenience. Keep coming back to GameTap as we're adding new titles all the time"
And that's not all. A more official statement this time, coming from GameTap's editorial director Douglass Perry, or "douginsano," (his user name), confirms such events: "As many astute posters have noticed, GameTap signs deals that have a beginning and an end. None of the games in GameTap are permanently in the service. For those who have been paying attention over the last two years, several games in the not-so-recent past have been discontinued from the service. It has happened before, just not in such a large swath."
He also assures fans of the service that this is more of "a business decision" rather than a marketing decision, so things won't be changing much for video game fanatics. 70 titles going out the window just like that is a lot, no doubt about it, and there's more to this story that Perry and other GameTap officials aren't sharing for the moment, but since they've managed to produce an explanation on such a short notice, I think it's fair to say that it's not going to shake the video games industry too much... NOT!
Come on, it's EA and Atari, only the biggest publishers ever, that are pulling their titles! This is bound to have some repercussions.