I'm sure they can be removed from our accounts. I'm positive of that actually. All it takes is a letter from a lawyer from the rights holder. GOG doesn't own the products it's selling, if they're told to purge the data they hold they would have to comply or go to court.

GOGs terms and conditions to us can't override the terms and conditions of the product they are selling, and those terms say we are purchasing a license to use the product, not ownership of it.

A publisher choosing to not use a middle-man distributor and withdrawing something from future sale does not mean they get any legal right to "unsell" it to everyone who previously bought it via that distributor. First of all, GOG (and Steam's) contracts that publishers sign specifically state this, not just out of self-interest but adherance with various national laws. GOG don't own the IP (as in "they can't distribute new copies without permission") but ZO already agreed via their contract that GOG can leave content up for existing customers if ZO ever removes products in order for GOG to comply with the law. And EULA's / private contracts don't supercede national laws.

Eg, regardless of what "escape clauses" a contract contained, advertising then selling a product as an unrestricted "sale" or "purchase" without any expiry date, then later on retroactively adding an expiry date that wasn't mentioned or agreed to during the point of sale, (effectively turning it into a glorified rental that was mis-sold as a full priced non-rental video) would be regarded as fraud / mis-selling in many countries and any contractual clause that required GOG to "agree" to that would be thrown out as invalid / unfair contract. It's no different to say 21st Century Fox falling out with Walmart - they can pull their new movies from sale, but they cannot demand Walmart staff "steal back" every 21st Century Fox DVD sold via Walmart without compensation simply by writing it in their contract.

More likely this is what Bookwyrm627 described above - it remains in your GOG account and Zombie Orpheus already know that full well because that's what they legally agreed to in advance, but it's an incredibly childish and petty attempt to publicly "get back" at GOG via baseless fear-mongering / attention-seeking, which quite honestly is a "partner" GOG could well do without regardless of the circumstances surrounding the fallout.

Edit: Just read Bookwyrm627's confirmation above - it's already been removed from the store but still in purchaser's accounts. The "providing replacement copies" is pure theatrics as they never disappeared in the first place. (Which was the whole point of selling them here DRM-Free in the first place...)

Fairly sure that quote is meant to encourage fans of the movies to use other platforms and is not saying the movies will be forcibly removed from the libraries of GOG users. It would be an act of insanity to say "we cannot do business with a company that doesn't take human rights seriously" and then follow it up by violating your rights.

Its knee jerk reactionism at its finest, but movies never have been the central focus to gog anyways, so it matters little.

Saying a letter from a lawyer would be enough may have been a touch hyperbolic.

The only problem with that is if you read GOG's terms of service, we aren't classed as product owners. It says specifically that we are granted license to the product (i.e. we don't own it) and that they reserve the right to remove access to some or all content at their discretion.

It also says that their agreement with us doesn't overrule any third party agreement required for use of the software.

GOG likes to simplify their legalese into easy to read anti-drm snippets, but the actual user agreement doesn't exactly match up with that. Nowhere in their end user agreement does it say we are the owners of anything we buy here. They are licensed products only, the exact same wording Steam uses.

I find it surprising how optimistic you are that a case going to court over end user ownership rights would get thrown out seeing as how you're from the states. The courts there don't have a great track record of holding up consumer rights.

Granted. It was a useful reference for taking legal action, though.

We might be running into definitional differences here, based on what it means to "own" a product.

If I own a product, I...
1) ...have an individual version of the product, and I may (within reason) do with it as I like. Some restrictions may apply (such as not copying and reselling a digital product).

2) ...have a product with I am allowed to manufacture and/or otherwise distribute, and which no one else may manufacture or distribute.

When I'm talking about us owning games, I'm referring to scenario 1. We 'own' our copy of the game, though we don't have distribution or resale rights. Similar to owning a book, where I can do as I like (more or less) with my copy, but I'm not allowed to start printing the book and selling the printouts.

I expect the contract above refers more to case 2. GOG can't sell us the rights (ownership) to any game in their catalogue. I'd have to read the actual section to be sure, but I expect that when they say they reserve the right to remove access, they are giving themselves room to 1) Stop selling it, and 2) Remove it from a user's library if that user has violated some other term of service (like reselling it or making it available for torrenting).

A problem with catch-alls: the company needs them to help against unscrupulous people who inevitably try to find some way to cheat the system, but unscrupulous companies want them around to use as loop holes.

I believe it. I'm just saying that those third party agreements don't necessarily include a clause that allows Product Owners to demand that GOG remove paid-for products from the libraries of GOG users. GOG has an interest in preventing such an event, and they have some leverage in getting Product Owners to agree by saying "We can't do anything about their downloaded copies, so removing it from the user's library isn't particularly helpful anyway".

Sure, we don't own the product line (or IP, or whatever you want to call it), but we generally DO own an individual copy of the product. GOG technologically unable to just remove a user's access to the user's copy of the product (once it is downloaded, anyway) is a huge part of what has drawn me here to make purchases, and I'm not the only one.

By contrast, Steam, Amazon Kindle, iTunes, etc. can remove your access to any product tied into their framework.

You missed my meaning. I'm saying that IF the GOG-Product Owner contract specifically allows GOG to leave user libraries untouched, then going to court isn't (or at least shouldn't be) particularly helpful for a Product Owner to force GOG to remove something from a user's library. By my definition, how such behavior should work would be specified in the contract.

If such terms are NOT specified in the GOG-Product Owner contract(s) (and I believe this is what you are pre-supposing), then my specific case does not hold.

Now, whether such terms are, in our current reality, specified in the general GOG contract is something that you and I are just speculating on. If you have actual evidence about the details of GOG's contracts, I'm listening. :)

The problem is in the fact that they use the term license, that does hold a legal meaning in some countries, which implies non-permanent ownership. I agree GOG does not have the capacity to force me to delete all my downloads. That's why I buy games here, they provide unlocked offline installers and therefore the user agreement does not worry me.

Unfortunately I don't have any inside information about their partner agreements or contracts. I am presupposing what may be in there. But it is an educated guess based on relevant experience with these things in a similar industry.

I'm not very familiar with all the legal vagaries around the term license, so I have no particular comment on that beyond what I've already said.

I'm repeating myself, I suppose, but I'm right there with you on one of the big reasons I've been buying on this platform.

Were it not for the specific circumstances surrounding GOG's business model, I'd be right there with you. There have been more than enough reports from various DRM'd platforms that I'm generally not willing to spend any money on them.

No, they're offering the replacement for people who wouldn't want to sully themselves dealing with GOG over this horrendous scandal. Or something like that.

Colin McRae Rally 2005 was removed from users' accounts when it was removed from GOG. TOCA 3 too, I believe. So that has happened before.

Edit: I don't think it's likely that it will happen here, just pointing it out.

I'm reasonably sure that that's not true; I know that at least the Colin McRae game was going to be, but there seems to have been some sort of 11th-hour agreement made which allowed for it remaining in owners' libraries. Downloads for both games are listed in (and, therefore, were detected by) GOGdb, which didn't even exist a couple years ago--long after the games left the store. I've also seen users who bought the McCrae game mention still being able to download it.
EDIT: Fixed a wrong word.

Good riddance and it's not like i would have cared even if i had movies in my library but it's good to know these fuckers will go away.

If it was good games that i haven't had time to copy to an external harddrive however then all hell would have broken loose because pulling stuff from libraries that have been bought legally is a dick move regardless if it is within their rights.

Nope, Both Colin and Toca are still there in my account, both offline installers and in Galaxy.

Ok, I see. I just remembered the criticism when it became known that they would remove those games from the users' accounts (after first heavily promoting them in a sale). Good that it was not done, then.