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Come later this month, GOG will stop selling the first two entries in Blizzard’s seminal Warcraft real-time strategy game series. On December 13, the marketplace will delist Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, which packages together the original game, Tides of Darkness, and its Beyond the Dark Portal expansion. In a blog post published Monday, the CD Projekt-owned storefront said it was removing the games “at the publisher’s request.”
If you want to grab them before they leave GOG, CD Projekt is offering a modest discount on its Warcraft I & II bundle until December 13. If you pay for the game using US dollars, you can save $2 off the package. Similar discounts are available for customers paying in Euros, Pound sterling and Polish złoty. To take advantage of the discount, use the code “MakeWarcraftLiveForever” at checkout.
Blizzard did not immediately respond to Tech Reader’s comment request, asking the studio to explain the reason for its request. In 2019, Blizzard worked with GOG to bring Warcraft and Warcraft II to the storefront. Prior to that, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans had effectively become abandonware, which made the game difficult to obtain and get running on modern operating systems. If I had to guess, the fact Blizzard now offers remasters of both Warcraft and Warcraft II likely played a major role in the decision.
As a fan of these games, I wish Blizzard would allow GOG to continue selling them. I wrote about the remasters last month, but, in short, I would argue the GOG versions do a better job of preserving Warcraft and Warcraft II as they were. If there’s a silver lining to the situation, it’s that GOG has pledged to continue supporting both games through its recently announced Preservation Program.
“Once a game joins the Program, we pledge to maintain its compatibility even if it gets delisted from the store,” GOG said. “This means that owners of those titles can still expect a seamless experience and tech support for those titles. This also considers potential changes in Windows OS that may impact games’ playability.”
We’ll update this article if we hear back from Blizzard.
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