Someone asked me to post about the outcome of an issue where a game I purchased was removed from my GOG shelf, even though it was already bought and paid for weeks earlier. So here I am. This seems worth doing not only because I feel like venting but the advice here to backup your games comes with some good reason I will outline below.

The game I am talking about is "Imperial Glory" and it was the Mac version (a native port done by Feral Interactive) that was removed. I discovered this recently when the game went on sale and I thought it odd there was only a Windows and not an Apple logo next to it in the list. I checked the store page and there was no more reference to OS X even though this was one of the first 50 releases put out when GOG announced support for Macintosh computers. I bought the game at that time specifically because it was available for OS X natively.

Anyway, I went on to check my shelf and while the game was still there for Windows, the Mac version was gone. I contacted support and got their reply tonight:

Hello,

I apologize for the inconvenience, unfortunately we had to pull the Mac version off our site due to licensing issues. We're unable to automatically determine whether someone purchased a game with the intention of playing it on a Mac or PC, so we don't have an automated solution in place, however a full refund for this game, or a replacement game of equal or lesser value, are both available to you, of course.

While this is a completely unique case, it proves that there is a remote chance that we might one day remove some other game's Mac version. Should this happen, we will issue refunds or give store credit as required.

Regards,
Firek

GOG.com Support

While I appreciate GOG's offer to refund or exchange, I do still have a couple substantial issues with this reply. First of all, there should have been some announcement on the site if a game is being pulled from people's shelves. Unfortunately, I never did download and install the thing yet and now it is gone. I believed that anything on my shelf was sacred so to speak and would never be pulled. This case proves I was wrong about that and that in fact it is possible for "licensing issues" or who knows what other issues for a game one has paid for to be removed from the shelf.

So, lesson learned I guess. I will now download everything I own on GOG while the getting is good so I can't lose it in the future and I would recommend others consider doing the same. Of course, in fairness this is a rare occurrence and GOG is trying to make it up to me but I still find it unsettling that I could potentially lose access to purchased games I thought could be safely stored on my shelf. I would be very, very upset if this had been something more important to me.

So take that as you will but the precedent has now been set for the first time as far as I know with a game being removed from users shelves. While the reply specifically mentions it could happen again in the future to Mac titles, there is no reason to be assured it cannot happen to PC titles as well and I own plenty of both here.

I always considered online storage of my games here and also on Steam to be a major convenience that I could depend upon. I think I was deluding myself now.

Good advice. Anything someone cares about should be downloaded and backed up.

I generally go through previous purchases of games and bundles once a month or so and download anything I didn't to copy to an external drive. Then take any keys from them and put into a text file on the same drive.

Is just downloading the installers good enough? I haven't gotten around to putting anything on disc yet.

Plus any extras you want, of course...

This seems very strange since the license was already activated. Yes, licensing issues would prevent sales, but that is not being discussed.

I know they're saying it's a licensing issue, but it also sounds more like a bug in the site.
ie: We had to remove it from the game card for games being sold, but since the game shelf is built from the same table as the game card, the Mac version disappeared from there as well.

This has happened for sound tracks and other extras even though it should not have.

Still good advice to make backups.

(Bear in mind, I'm not wanting to open long-winded discussions and debates about licensing, etc.)

Yes, once the full game is downloaded somewhere you can install from it no matter what, provided the download went ok of course.

As far as I know, yes. I've never heard of a game being removed from the shelf before but maybe somebody else may have another example of this happening to share?

I actually download every game I buy here and when I've gathered enough stuff I burn it onto a DVD.

I remember GOG selling a strategy game quite cheap just before it's license expired and they explicitly told you to download it quickly because they would have to take it off of your shelf once the license had expired. And that's exactly what I did.

So Mac licences are different to the PC licences. That's going to be strange. It's unfortunate, but is there a way of running the PC version through "Wine" on the Mac?

Another question. If a game is pulled from our gameshelf, does that mean that our licence for that game would also become invalid?

Oh crap, thank you for the warning. Even if I am more of a windows user than a mac user, I would still like to keep what I have on principle. I am now downloading all the mac installs I have. I got my windows games backed up, but not the mac installs. +1

This might be a strange thing to say, but the OP bought it. 'Owned it' and it still got pulled off the shelf. Is that actually legal and within the rules on gog.com ?. Even if its the Mac version i thought the usual rules apply - you buy, you keep it and can download it when even if the game is pulled off sale for the future/removed off the site, existing owners still got to keep it etc. Or am i wrong?

I think the refund statement brought back up my opinion of GOG a bit, but pulling off the shelf does feel wrong to me. Were people even notified about the refund?

I guess we should occasionally bump this shit, too, to let others know that this can happen.

The whole point of having a games library (on GOG or on Steam or anywhere) is so you don't have to download your games and save them somewhere all the time, though.

"Sorry you don't own that game anymore here's a refund" doesn't seem like a good response to me.

This is troubling.

Yes, but it's a good idea to write it to a DVD and keep a back up as well. I tend to use Quick par to make sure that I don't have to download the files again in general just because of a bit of bitrot.

DVDs are nice because you can't accidentally delete them. If you use something like DVDisaster on your burns, you can recover if they start to go bad.
Spoken like somebody who has a really good internet connection. Even back in the US, it would take me hours sometimes, or longer, to download something again.

But, anyways, there's always the possibility that GOG will go out of business, or Steam for that matter, anybody who isn't backing up those files is pretty much asking for something to happen.

Doesn't excuse it, but there's no reason to leave oneself vulnerable.