Here's something I posted to their forums, archived here for posterity:
I remember, very vividly, when I signed up for GameTap. It was a cold, rainy night in April (how's that for atmosphere) and I'd just gotten home from a disappointing movie and realized that I'd lost my bank card. I called and went through the whole awkward cancellation process and was feeling pretty down. Then I switched my PC out of powersave mode and bammo, there was an excited instant message from an old friend. WING COMMANDER IS ON GAMETAP!
That was all I needed - the frustration with the day melted away, I fumbled for my surviving credit card and signed up as quickly as I could. We in the Wing Commander community had been waiting for this. Almost a year earlier, GameTap had advertised Privateer as coming soon (still MIA!)... and now the series was finally starting to show up, in an unexpected fashion.
Why was this important? I own Wing Commander I already -- in fact, I own me *lots* of Wing Commander I.
I probably have fifty copies, including duplicates, international versions, repackages and ports. I have half a dozen game systems that I bought expressly to play versions of Wing Commander I - everything from an Amiga CD32 to a Japanese FM Towns computer, purchased and made operational to play different versions of the original Wing Commander. Heck, less than a year earlier I had bought a PSP to play the version of Wing Commander I included in the 'EA Replay' shovelware SNES emulator package.
So, I wasn't excited because I could play Wing Commander I again. I was excited because of what the release meant. For years and years and years we hardcore gamers with the slightest moral bent would tell people exactly what you're telling them here - buy the old game, buy the old game.
That's great - contrary to popular opinion, there are lots of copies of the original Wing Commander out there and they can be had for a few dollars each. I've even sent out extras to people who need them and can't get them some other way. But those small facts are a drop of rain in the super-bucket of software piracy... people invented the concept of "abandonware" in order to feel okay about stealing and it's been an uphill battle ever since.
GameTap solved that problem - no, look!, we could shout, Wing Commander is available again! You can legally buy it - it isn't abandoned at all! That was great.
There's the tech issue, too... not everyone (almost no one, actually) wants to configure a computer to run classic games correctly. I know we're the cream of the crop when it comes to intelligent internet characters and we can all figure out DOSBox or build our own classic gaming rigs - but the vast majority of people just want to quickly play their favorite game from years past. For over a decade I've run a website that helps people run the old games, and it's a frustrating process, however important.
GameTap was the perfect solution.
Here was a cool answer to all of our problems - it ran the games easily and timelessly, it was a great value, it had a free demo we could point people to... and the people running the thing seemed to respect us a lot. Whenever there was a new game coming out, we got an unofficial note letting us know. It was very kind. When they screwed up the copy protection on the first game, we were there to help. While we aren't credited, some of the manuals are taken right from our site - imagine my horror when I found that the GameTap PDF of Claw Marks has all the embarassing typos I made when I did an online version.
The point of that is that GameTap realizes that we (the Wing Commander community) existed. It catered to us in a nice way... and now this. No 'boy, we're sorry, we just couldn't work it out' or 'we're doing the best we can' or any kind of notice whatsoever - I had to find out at the message board.
I did everything I could to promote GameTap - urged my community to sign up, showed it to my friends, told everyone, everywhere that this was a great little enterprise and a fine idea that needed our support.
I know GameTap is many things to many people, but this is a fundamental betrayal of what it was to me - a way to play old games permanently. GameTap was the reason *not* to have to track down old boxes and computers, not a warning that you should need to do that if you actually enjoy your fun.
I didn't *need* Wing Commander I from GameTap, but I subscribed to show my support for a wonderful service... and now I have to cancel to show my abject displeasure.
It just sucks, y'know?
