Apparently Direct2Drive, digital PC games distributor, will now officially be merged and operational with GameFly, online subscription based video game rental service, come early January. What exactly could this entail? Along with some things you might be interested in keeping an eye out for so that you can keep the transition smooth for yourself.
Back in May 2011 GF announced that it would be acquiring D2D from IGN. “We’re very excited to bring the D2D team on board at GameFly and expand our ability to deliver games to consumers,” GameFly CEO David Hodess said. “Only GameFly can offer a complete library of physical and digital games for the PC, Mac and consoles in one place.”
The process of buying and downloading games from the GF client couldn’t be any simpler as your login details across the client, site and mobile applications are connected for convenience. After purchasing games you will be using the client to download and install them – the client is available to download for both PC and Mac operating systems.
One question surely most of you wish to know about is, will all of the same games be available once the client is in operating order? They seem to have an answer for this, although it might not be one you wish to hear. They are currently planning on having as many titles from D2D as possible, along with all the latest and greatest indie titles. If a title is not immediately available GF wants you to know that they should become available shortly after migration.
You are recommended to download your purchases along with non-game files from Direct2Drive by the first week of January. This being a precautionary action in case a title isn’t immediately available. Also since GF will not have game-guides or any other non-game files attainable via their client.
Two important things to take note of, the first being, only PC and Mac titles can be downloaded and installed to your computer. Possibly at another time GameFly will add the ability for downloading console games to your Xbox or PS3. Secondly since GF is a game rental service one could assume that they might offer PC rentals but this isn’t the case. They say there will be no renting of individual PC titles on a one-off limited-time basis. Instead you are directed to pre-order or buy the games.
Personally the non-existence of a rental service for PC games is rather bewildering. The reason why most companies stopped offering them for rental in the first place was due to people burning the game to a disk. Then returning it for a refund – yet this only happened in retail stores and is no longer the case. Not to mention there are some out there that can and do burn console games to disks, so what really is the difference? Supposedly this is one reason why GF and D2D are teaming up, to tackle the “PC game rental problem.” GameFly does have a free-trial offer, maybe just maybe this will be worth checking out in the near future.
For more information see: D2Ds Frequently Asked Questions about the GameFly transition
Sources:
- 1up 1
- 1up 2
- afterdawn
