I also download everything right after purchase, or if a game is updated. I store all the stuff on my NAS so I can access it from my different machines.

I am backing them up on an external HDD. I download them after buying them, but am still lacking behind with downloading several language versions.

I download only when I want to play the games. I'm too lazy to keep backups and whatnot :)

I also download everything after purchase (game and extras) and archive on external HDD:) This makes it easier for me to play any of my games without worrying how long it will take to download or I have internet or not:)

Interesting, unlike the apparent majority here, I only download my purchased games once I'd like to start playing them. But I do keep back-ups of everything, once I have the files downloaded.

So far i havent bothered with backups.

But maybe eventually, if i some day get my own homeserver started and have too much free time.

I download them as I buy them. Same for other sites without a client to manage my collection.

I did download hundreds of GOG games like over a year ago, but I haven't tried to actively keep them up to date (maybe I would if there was an easier way to tell if your installers are up to date or not). So if I intend to install and play some GOG game, I might download it again from GOG (even without the downloader client) and install it then.

But as e.g. Daliz suggested, many times it is just easier to run the installer you already have on your HDD without having to log into GOG site etc., even if it isn't necessarily the very latest installer version. But at least I have access to most of my purchased games, in case GOG is (temporarily) out of commission.

I rarely download anything right after purchase though (unless i want to play it right away). I download in bulks, if I download for archiving.

More important to me is to have a local copy of my games from some other sites which I rarely visit, e.g. DotEmu, GamersGate, Strategy First and such. Just so that I don't forget I have games from them as well, and I might not even remember my login details to all of them anymore.

Wait, Is there a GOG monthly quota or is it your provider limit only?

Anyway, I've just downloaded few games, mainly because I'm hoping that GOG will:
- fix its "update" and "new" notifies and add more information.
- separate the original ISO\ZIP from the emulators or launchers.
- allow updates to patch these ISOs without a full game re-download.

Do you think that this will ever happen?
Did anyone manage to extract\join\recreate the original files? (even if I'm not a fan of such manual unsupported process)

I usually download the game at purchase and burn it into DVD.

Ever since I built my home server almost two years ago, I've been downloading each new game I buy. I'm over 300 now (thanks Pot o' Gold Sale), and it's up to ... Oh crap.

I went to check and I have 315 games in my account, and 312 games downloaded. Finding out which games are missing is going to suck.

Anyway, the ones I do have amount to well over 500 GB - I also keep all the extra stuff as well. Also I only keep Windows installers and plan to continue doing so when Linux support rolls around, or if I ever own a Mac.

When the purchase is complete I download the games and add the order confirmation//invoice as PDF to the game directory. Over time I redownloaded all the games to get the v2 installers and check up on added bonus materials. The v2 installers seem to have better compression as I lost way over 1 GB in disk space (400+ games).
On some games the difference is hardly noticable as it's only a few MB. However on the larger games it can be a couple of 100 MB.

Thank you.
What do you think, instead, about the other questions?

- Update notes are provided in the games' respective sub-forum. It's not perfect, but they're there.
- I've successfully unpacked almost every installer with UniExtract. This is particularly useful for DOS games that don't need installation.
-Patches are released separately until a patch milestone or the final patch is released. Then it's integrated into the main installer. I actually quite like the integration.

GOG said Linux wasn't going to happen in the foreseeable future, so I believe anything can happen :D