In 2009 I burrowed through some abandonware sites looking for an English version of Heroes of Might and Magic (1) that included the CD-ROM version's music because the translation of my boxed German version was getting on my nerves. And in my mind I was already cursing a) how hard it was to find and b) the expected hassle (virus scan, tampering with DOSBox settings...) to get it to work.
I was thinking "If there was a ready made installer, I would even pay for it".

I finally found the game on one site, but instead of "download" there was a button "buy on Good Old Games". I followed the link and my eyes became like those of a kid in a tuck shop...

But according to my order history I didn't really buy anything until almost a year later. I can't really remember why that is. Maybe life got the way, or I wasn't sure how legit the site was or I was wondering if it was just a fleeting star.

From you guys here at the forum.

Hey, wait a minute... chicken? Egg? Which came first? Who knows? Who gives a shit?! I don't! XD

So basically, you found it while high.

I found GOG because of The Witcher 3 and jsut stayed here since for me it was a good way to avoid Steam as much as possible.

somewhere on the web i found notice about existing site named good old games, but i came too late. here was only GOG.com already.

I joined Good Old Games over seven years ago, dammit, and had probably known about it for a short while before that, that's far too long for me to now remember how I found out about it. I would assume I had been looking for older DRM-free games.

You don't say? It kinda blows my mind to think how much room it would take if I had all my 1194 GOG games as retail versions, especially with the older big boxes. The would probably fill two bedrooms up to the ceiling.

Now I have them all on one external USB 2.5" hard drive. Much easier to find a game from there too, than searching a big pile of CDs.

Back in 2010 I bought a netbook and curious what kind of games can run on it. After searching on "netbook games" and few sites mentioned GOG. I take a look around the site and decided not to join but added the RSS to follow up if any games I'm interested are added to the catalog. Finally join in during the winter sales and made my first purchase.

Wow. You have quite a collection :D

Was looking for total annihilation kingdoms cause I was craving some old rts and went to the gametrailers forums and someone told me brah go to GOG, And now I can't leave :)

I found it from the Home of the Underdogs.

Oh boy, who even remembers that site...

I was looking for a platform without DRM selling Fallout.

Sometime in 2009 I heard it dropped by YouTuber elbryan42 when talking about these abandonware games being legally available at that point. It wasn't until 2010 when I went to the site since I not only got a new machine at the time (Was rocking an old and cruddy piece of hardware when GOG launched), but wanted to support the place and get much better put together versions of these abandonware titles I downloaded in the past. First purchase was Kingpin: The Life of Crime, it was nice to have a version with the Cypress Hill soundtrack admittedly. :P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuck_shop