ShinyLoot Is Shutting Down
According to yesterday’s announcement, which was also sent by e-mail to users, ShinyLoot will be “going dormant” soon, the last date when purchases will be allowed being January 31, downloads and support remaining available until March 17. After that, they say they’ll maintain the rights to the domain and, if they will remain active at all, are considering switching into only a game discovery service, without the retail aspect.
Of course, considering the lack of activity over the past year and the wording of the message sent after the last sale, this is hardly surprising. Doesn’t make it any less sad, however, not only because reducing competition is always bad for users or because they had a few interesting games I didn’t find elsewhere, but also because, from all I know and in spite of the number of titles with DRM added in recent years, they kept trying to be nice and do things more or less the right way, not giving in too much to market pressures. And, of course, this brought them to this situation, but I do believe them when they say that any offer which would have allowed them to continue would have carried unacceptable conditions, so better die with your head held high than live on your knees.
The one reason why I see this as more notable than simply a small distribution service shutting down is that they still held on to the flat pricing principle, and I’d sure like it if somebody’d correct me on this but, as far as I know, they were the only ones to still do so. Couldn’t make any purchases from there myself since they didn’t accept any payment method that I could use, but I did keep an eye on them, not only in case that changed but also simply because they seemed to be the last ones holding their position in this battle, which now seems completely lost even though, for several years, GOG.com led it with apparent success, before suddenly waving the white flag close to two years ago.
In short, the future of the digital distribution of games looks ever bleaker, with the publishers and major retailers, and likely also those who provide financial services for independent developers, pushing the few who had, at one point, tried to change things into either submission or defeat, while the vast majority of users, of consumers if you will, willingly allow themselves to be herded instead of fighting back. But the same goes for the future of the Internet or, well, for the future in general. So, once again, nothing surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less sad.
