It goes without saying that you keep proof of purchase - in the case of hard copy that might be the paper receipt and later the box and disks - for a digital purchase a record of the transaction (emails!).

It's not that hard - just setup an "orders" folder in your email account and manually move all order confirmations and details into that folder as and when you make transactions. Then periodically copy the contents into notpad/word documents and store them locally on your computer (in an ideal world you'd keep a print copy or backups on an external drive).

GOG has their receipts mailed to you. There is no need to delete them. Just keep them and you'll be fine. I'm doing that.

And that should be true for every digital distributor.

That does make sense mg1979, but Lexor is right. All software is done that way, and has been for at least 15 years. Im sure its actually been way longer than that, but 15 years ago is when I actually read one of the licence agreements for the first time. I really don't know for sure, but I think its because the disc isn't the game. Its just a storage medium. It makes it different from when you buy a basketball or, a RC car, or something physical like that.

True filters will let you sort most regular shop emails into folds automatically - I just like doing it manually so I know what is where and when (plus its handy to have the latest transactions appear in the current list just to help keep an eye on them incase an error/problem email is sent out.


As for licences, when you look around you find that you don't actually "own" what you think you do when you buy things. Most books you buy you've only bought a licence to (and limited too with regard to thinks like copies); most photos are, again, only licensed to you.

It is no problem at all for me. In my app folders with new, unread mails are marked (bolded and colored) so they can easily gain my notice if it's needed. Also I can decide if mails are ordered to go to proper folder at the moment of their reception or after read.

Fixed that for you.

Once you bought a game here, you download it and then you have your DRM-free copy.

Even if politicians later decided to change the law and make your copy legally invalid, good luck enforcing it (I know I wouldn't delete my copy even if I was told to legally do it, there is legal and then there is fair).

However, more insidiously, your copy will decay if GOG is no longer there to support it as GOG's games run on Windows (out of the box without tweaks anyways) and Windows releases a new version every couple of years and eventually stop supporting the older versions, forcing you to change (yes, you could run your older version on old hardware, but eventually that hardware will go caput and then good luck running drivers for the latest hardware on an ancient OS).

That was my point, a boxed game is something that you physically own, just like a car. The same can't be said for a DRM-Free package you download from somewhere, unless you keep the receipt you can't demonstrate you acquired it legally.

Right?? what. And after 7 years? All these DRM-free games would be legal to own even if you didn't pay for them (e.g. if you get a copy somewhere) since the receipt wouldn't have a value anymore? Since if after 7 years you can throw away the receipt, you can always say you had the receipt and discarded it.

I really doubt it is so. License is personal, when you buy a boxed game you can borrow it, rent it or sell it. The same you can't do with GOG games (or any other digital distributor I guess)

That's what I'm doing. Because in my own view you really need that receipt to prove you bought the game here on GOG, since a non-bought copy cannot be distinguished from a bought one.

My question was, will the license have still value if GOG runs out of business? I guess so, as long as you have the receipt of the payment. If it wasn't so I'd rather start a war instead of renouncing to something I paid for. But what if, like the other guy said, you're bound to keep the receipt only for a limited period of time? In that case you could say you owned the receipt once and trashed it. Then there wouldn't be any difference between legally purchased games and not. That's what still makes me think there could be problems if GOG runs out of business.

Well you can rent it sell it and borrow it. But that is a breach of the EULA and illegal. Games, even the boxed one, were sold as a license meant for personal use. E.g. "Blockbuster" or other rental services have a different, significantly more expansive license to actually be allowed to rent out a game. "Borrowing" is somewhat of a grey area, usually it's never prosecuted, but that doesn't mean it is something you are allowed to do.

Generally a DRM has nothing to do with the rights you have with a game, it is simply a matter of enforcement. Therefore the only things that changed were ways of the right holder enforcing their rights, nothing more

And you never "own" games. Electronic Arts and Ubisoft "own" games, that is the reason they are allowed to sell you licenses.

That being said, a lot of consumer laws apply to games because of the similarity with goods (especially those sold on a physical medium). But games aren't goods and never have been. You own the disc, but the information is only licensed by the "owner" to you. The fact that you could sell discs has something to do with a legal term called "first sales doctrine" (each country has something like this), which doesn't apply to purely digital "goods" in most cases as they cannot be "traded" and only copied. Depending on the country your in, an EULA prohibiting resale of boxed goods might be binding (Germany) or not (Poland). That is the reason more and more boxed games use Steam as DRM.

To come back to your question. GOG can never (without the consent of the rights owner that is) withdraw your license. If they go out of business you might lose the services they of on top of the license (online storage, support, etc), but the license remains.

This is why I keep and print every receit from GOG and any other digital distribution platform.

Ok, thanks. I guess I'll keep all receipts indefinitely.

Pretty much this.

Just to clarify - you don't "own" the game, but you DO "own" the licence. That means that the publisher is not entitled to withdraw the licence without good cause (in the legal sense of the term). That means that they cannot withdraw it at a whim. You are entitled to exhaust your rights on that particular copy of the game

Contrary to the claims presented by publishers, the transfer of "secondhand" shrink-wrapped software licences CANNOT be forbidden in many countries. Microsoft have found this out the hard way in Germany, and even the oft quoted Half-Life 2 ruling affirms this.

The problem that many people have with this is that they don't understand the difference between a licence and an access key, which are entirely different legal principles. An access key is provided with a licence. You cannot forbid the resale of packaged software in Germany or the UK, but the sale does not oblige the publisher to take any action.

So you can sell your copy of Half Life 2 in a box all you want, and Valve can't do a thing. What you can't do is demand that Valve provide you with a new key, and without that key, a boxed copy of Half Life 2 is pretty much useless. Steam is not compelled to actually transfer the licence from one account to another, and is within their rights to make the online services user account itself non-transferrable.

Seriously, German law is a fucking haven for eBay scammers.

(Of course, it gets hairy when you consider what happens to that guy with the useless Half Life 2 copy. They now have a useless, yet legal copy of Half Life 2, having bought the shrink-wrapped licence, and the seller has a registered, but illegal copy, having transferred it.)

You make it sound like Valve lost the case, quite the contrary, they won on all acounts (or rather, the otherside lost on all accounts).

And to add insult to injury, if you buy a used Steam game and accept their SSA (which you have to, if you install the game), you enter a contract with Steam. They then can sue you for damages and omission on a contractual basis. They can sue the seller and the buyer, because both are now in a contractual agreement with Steam.

If anybody is interested I found an abridget translation of the decision. PM me if you want to read it. A lot of legal mumbo jumbo, you have been warned.

Not at all, but the Valve case affirmed that the resale of boxed software was perfectly legal and could not be forbidden by EULA. The Valve case was not about the resale of software in general, but the sale of digitally distributed software.

It's actually Steam that is subject to the SSA - not the game itself, but yes, the game's EULA will require you to agree to the SSA as a subsidiary agreement.

As I say though, you have the legal predicament that you have a valid licence to use this game when you buy a disc copy, but you have no entitlement to use the Steam service that you need to install it. No SSA or EULA can prevent that licence to the game being valid in Germany.

How do you resolve that? Only time and a lengthy lawsuit will probably tell. There's no telling how the FCJ will react to having a game require the installation and registration with Steam, especially when the Steam client is not an integral part of the overall experience (i.e. single player games)