SargonAelther: And that's the whole reason why I'm here and not on Steam. Hoarding 18-something terabytes of offline installers has finally paid off lol. Kudos to GOGRepoC.
Mr.Caine: Hilariously sad post. How many of those games did you played even once? 2%? 1%? How many of those precious games do you plan to play in this lifetime? Less than 1%? Meanwhile people on Steam play and enjoy video games right now as opposed to making backups. Backups for versions of games that are more often than not missing features/patches present on Steam versions. That's not even mentioning thousands of games that were never available on GOG and never will be. And GoG will go bankrupt before Steam does,because regulars here know-this site is mismanaged to hell and back. So keep worrying about outdated backups instead of playing and enjoying video games. They're gonna have to rely on CDPR to keep making Geraldo just to stay above water.
As if people don't buy games they will never play on Steam either. There are probably far more Steam users with thousands of games than there are GOG users.
I've played a little over 2% directly. Indirectly I have played many more on Steam, but then I rebought them whenever they appeared on GOG for preservation. A lot of these completely unplayed games are like a retirement fund for me. I will play them when I retire, assuming I don't lose my eyesight.
Also it's not just about what I play.
It's about supporting a DRM-Free platform, as well as publishers who choose to publish games here, as much as I can as an individual. I have games on Steam, but I see no reason to excessively throw money at Valve. I do see a reason to throw money at GOG. Platforms like Steam are only good while they work. They do not protect your library, nor care about it. You own nothing on Steam, you lease everything for an unspecified amount of time. When Steam yanked Agony Unrated from my library, it was the final validation that making GOG my default platform was the right choice. I literally had the game installed, but the play button got replaced by a purchase button. Launching the executable directly would take me to the store. Steam support were completely indifferent and unhelpful. They've done nothing to fix it since. Developers did provide a workaround, despite this issue being caused by Valve.
This would not have been an issue at GOG. Whenever something disappears from GOG, support always sort it out. Even if they didn't, it would not make a difference, because the games are DRM-Free and I have my installers saved.
That's the whole point. with Steam, you rely entirely on Valve to maintain your access to your games, which they can revoke at any point and for whatever reason. While Steam has been more reliable than various digital movie, music and e-book stores, it is clearly not without a fault either. GOG allows us manage our own access, as long as we have the storage space required. I trust my own hardware far more than I trust any digital provider.
If GOG goes bust, it will be a very sad day, but my library will be safe. If Valve go bust or I lose my account my account, I will lose EVERYTHING.
Also maintaining my offline installers is nowhere near as difficult as it may seem, thanks to community scripts. Abandoning my archiving practice would hardly give me any extra time for gaming.
While there there are indeed many outdated games, this issue is still nowhere near as widespread as you make it out to be.