227: They've always removed patches. You can't even download early versions of The Witcher 2 anymore; the download is for the EE. It's always been one of those things that's felt like a missed opportunity to me. Wouldn't leaving patches and vanilla versions of games up (thus giving the consumer a great deal of control) be a selling point that differentiates GOG from Steam and highlights the benefits of DRM-free?
But yeah. This is the way they do it, for some reason.
Consumers still have any measure of control.
Consumers just have become lazy by relying on the "benefits" of handing over control to Steam and now (in a milder form) Galaxy.
The lures - we handle your (game-) file management for you, including updates, we give you achievements (what for??), we offer you some "social" functions (that may work, or not), etc.
It is a marketing thing: try to bind customers to the company.
Still, nothing keeps you from saving each downloaded piece of game, update, bugfix, whatever on your HDD.
It just needs a bit of initiative, a bit of additional work and space, nothing more.