Im new to GoG and I hear that I can actually archive my games as individual exe`s and install them when I want and play them as long as I want.
Is this true? If so, what are the restrictions or hurdles to do this? Any help from the community is appreciated and if all that Ive been told is on the up and up, I have friends getting ready to ditch Steam and Epic for GoG and they arent the only ones. A lot of people are getting tired of not owning what they paid for... Any other additional info is also much appreciated. Im not here to debate, Im here for answers and ways to get what I paid for... Thank you.

Yes. And no restrictions. To be on GOG a game MUST be 100% DRM-free.

Wait, registered in 2017 and "new" to GOG? I just got trolled lol.

You "own" the copy of the game that you download and store away on your HDD.
Nobody can take that away from you.
But downloading and storing is a necessary step, which you must do yourself - else you don't "own" your games here any more than you "own" them on Steam or Epic. Yet, only owns one game...so, "new" in some sense.

Once downloaded, you have indeed full ownership over the offline installers that come with every game released on GOG.

I regged a long time ago bit never really explored this site. I thought it was sort of fishy if you will...I was surprised to see my old login worked, etc...sorry for the mislead. I will be new to buying here though if that counts?

That’s sadly not true, as GOG is more than OK with DRMed multiplayer or even single-player content gated behind some DRM.

Yeah, key disclaimer.

@OP, What we "own" is an offline installer, this is our "owned" copy of the game: an exe without Internet requirements or launchers. However, games with online features need to connect to a service for obvious reasons. This just means GOG is best used for collecting single player games.

You "own" them as in GOG can't remotely remove or deactivate a downloaded installer or an installed game - that's what DRM-free is about. But GOG sell licenses for digital products and in that regard it's exactly the same as any other store, with DRM or without.

I mean, the lack of DRM in itself still shifts the perspective on ownership. Download a game from here and from anywhere else, and you can be sure that the former won't connect to servers to check if you "own" it or whatever. Once downloaded, even if you're doing it right now because you didn't bother to store your library, there's no way you can be blocked from using it, no chance of any extra steps that could turn the software you've just downloaded into a bunch of worthless files because of its DRM.

Seriously?

Did you ignore the parts of my post, where I basically wrote the same as you (but two hours earlier) deliberately?

Part of it is even included in the (non-bolded) part of the quote you used:
"But downloading and storing is a necessary step, which you must do yourself..."

The rest of my post was:
"You "own" the copy of the game that you download and store away on your HDD.
Nobody can take that away from you."

It's true. Well with some exceptions, like: a few titles with semi-broken offline installers where the only fix is "just use galaxy" to roll back to a working older version, playing multiplayer, etc. Gog games with various issues

- Maybe they joined, bought one game, and then got bored/distracted/IRL intervened and they didn't come back until now? Dunno if it's the case with this OP, but I know i've done it on a few websites here and there.

Did we really say the same thing? I didn’t get you, then.
I was highlighting the DRM-free aspect of GOG, which seems to contradict the part I put in bold. Saying that the games have to be stored by the user, because otherwise you get the same 'ownership' from anywhere else, seems to downplay the importance of DRM. It makes it sound like there’s no difference between GOG and other stores if you just download the game whenever you want to play it.

Ditto with most respondents here; the only way to own your games on GOG is to download them.

This is the same across all stores. And the event of this happening is very unlikely unless you're doing something deliberately/maliciously bad like hacking their servers or distributing their games.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1/