I'm not quite sure how this DRM-free "thing" works. I mean , if GOG ever shuts down , would I be able to download the games I've purchased? Would I still own the games, even if I don't have a Backup? Does DRM-free indicates, that I own the copy of the product permanently, even if I don't have a launcher to download it from, or a Backup? Will the Publisher know, that I own a copy of their game?

(sorry for bad grammar, it just feels bad to think, that something can be lost when I paid for it)

No, unless your friendly pirates & abandonware gangs fill the void. GOG should give you notice and some time to download stuff if they ever go down, but whether that's enough or not really depends. I don't think you own games in EU, ever. If you don't have a copy, you don't have a copy. No. If you don't have a copy, you don't have a copy. No. Iron will rust, wood will decay, your bones will grow weak. Remember that you will die.

GOG *did* shut down in 2010. I was there, definitely saw it. There was just a basic HTML note saying the service could not continue in its current form, and that we would have an opportunity to download our games at some point in the future. They later allowed us to download our games, but did not restore the service.

They later said it was a joke (part of their go-live celebration), but I often wonder if they were making a slightly wider point. If you truly want to "own" your games, download them and store them locally.

The selling point of DRM-free is precisely that you don't have to worry about the story shutting down as long as you have downloaded your backups.

Asking for a Steam Key from the Publisher would actually work?

I have all my games backed up and recommend everyone do so.

However, You don't need a client to download the games, you can do so with your browser. And I really recommend you use something like gogrepo to back up your games. It's somewhat quick, somewhat painless, and there's a lot of good information in that thread, huge though it is.

It depends on the publisher. Some won't, some will ignore you, but I did once ask a developer for one (I think it might have been related to getting a soundtrack that wasn't on GOG) and because I attached a PDF of the receipt, they were kind enough to send one. I certainly wouldn't rely on that as a substitute for backing them up though. I was just answering your question of "will I still (legally) own / have a right to play them and what is proof of purchase" (yes you will and your GOG receipts are proof of that) but that's not practically helpful if you don't have access to the game installers (ie, people buy GOG because they can back them up).

It's entirely up to the publisher. If they even exist at that point in time.

One publisher I contacted recently with a screenshot of GOG receipt offered me a direct download of their title (via mega).

As others suggested, back up your games now. Obviously there wiki be no way to get your games from GOG if they go under. I make it a practice to DL my backup game installers as soon as I purchase a game. I highly recommend you do this as well. There is no other way to be assured you'll have access to all your games in the event of GOG folding.

Oh I remember that, its the reason why I became interested in GOG (AKA "The Great Monkening"). That sort of weirdness certainly made them interesting.

I'm sure that once they shut down (please never) someone over CDP can probably provide servers for people who might want to download the games again.

But yeah, I think its super important in order to keep with the DRM-freeness to either store them on some server or to implore users to save the games they've bought on a seperate device.

I wouldn't be so sure. If they were shutting down, that'd probably mean they're in deep shit. When they're in deep shit, are they really going to be prepared to serve a sudden inrush of people coming to download their terabytes of stuff before it goes dark for good? Experience says that it takes much less than that for gogbears to appear.

I'm not sure you understand what DRM is. It stands for Digital Rights Management, and is a form of copy protection, so that a game is tied to a particular service and will not work without it. If you buy a DRM game on Steam, and Steam goes out of business, or stops supporting the OS you're using, or revokes your license for any arbitrary reason, you lose access to that game. If you buy a DRM-free game on GOG, it's not tied to GOG. Once you've downloaded it, GOG can vanish from the Earth, or make a website update so spectacularly bad that they implode in a black hole of horribleness, or whatever, and it has no effect on your game.

No, but then that goes for any store. GOG, Steam, Epic, it doesn't matter. The difference with the DRM-free bit is that it's possible to make backups that don't care if the store exists any more.

DRM-free doesn't mean GOG will last forever or that there'll be a way to download if they shut down. What it does mean is that you can back the games up in a way where it doesn't matter if the store shuts down. If you make a backup using the Steam client, it needs the Steam servers to use that backup.

It's always possible to lose the games you paid for, DRM-free just makes it easier to avoid losing them.

No, OP, there is no guarantee you will be able to keep your games if GOG shuts down.

The best thing you could possibly do is backup all your games now, not later.

And one backup is not secure either. That could easily be lost or stolen or the media you used to save it on could become corrupted, rendering it useless.

The best possible thing you can do is to make multiple backups, starting right now. And storing them all in the same physical location isn't secure either, because they could all become lost/damaged at once due to theft or natural disaster or fire, etc.

So best to have some backups inside of the Cloud and/or in multiple different physical locations too.

Even doing everything I just said is not 100% secure, but it's the best you could possibly do to have as close to 100% security as possible.