No.

I'm not out of my mind for keeping offline backups of my games if my ISP was to suddenly forfeit my connection for a long time for an excuse such as 'changing infrastructure'.
I'm not out of my mind for keeping offline backups of my games because I don't want to keep downloading gigabytes of data again and again when I could just have the game's installer in m reach.
And no, nobody's out of their minds because they are afraid of digital collections. Say what you want. But there used to be businesses that thought they were too great to die. Some of these businesses do not exist anymore.

A digital provider may not disappear overnight or very soon, but they're prone to disappearance. And we're uncertain on when they'll disappear. So that's that.

Digital retailers don't die that quickly, and when they do they are often bought and their content remains accessible. My Direct2Drive games are still available even after the original D2D became GameFly Digital and then became D2D again. Desura has been dying for quite a while now and my games are still accessible.

Brick and mortar shops often go bust, the difference is that you're not dependent on them existing to play the games (on the contrary, if you buy boxed PC games you're likely to be tied to Steam or Origin or whatever Ubisoft's client is called).
Well, there are some points like being able to download on one PC and install on another (even one with a different OS), or running on a PC with no internet connection, but yes, backups are definitely a large part of it.

No, I store everything on external drives and on usb.

Yes. Exclusive external HDD for all of my games.

Yep, I keep it on an external drive and transfer it over if I want something.

Then why does silicon valley rent by the hour? As for your second point, yes, I stopped buying boxed games some time back, I still pick up old ones but the new ones are worthless just containing the steam client which is a real shame as that's where the real collecting was.

Do also note, that this isn;t just for games, its for my pictures, documents, music etc. which would be very hard to replace if at all possible.

Very true. I have just considered all your points as an implicit consequence of havng a DRM-free installer backed up somewhere! :)

For reasons completely unrelated to digital distributors, none of which are in Silicon Valley to the best of my knowledge.

Well, I also back up stuff, but it doesn't back my games, because to back games I need to download them first, and I don't do that. Clearly backing data that's already local and data that's in the cloud and needs to be made local in order to back up locally are two different things.
It's a sufficient but not necessary condition. You can get these benefits without keeping backups of all your games.

You'd best phone home and see if it's still there.

Not to me there not. It is part of my digital life, I have purchased those items and I should keep them. It isn't just a nicety to have my items on my hardware, its a responsibility of ownership. Once money has changed hands then its my responsibility, no-one else's to ensure that I look after that item. If GOG was to go down now, it would be your fault you have not downloaded your products, not the company and they have no requirements to provide any other means.

Yes I keep my GOG collection spread among 3 HDD (1 internal and 2 externals of which 1 I don't keep at home)
I usually make a copy once new version of installer/file appears and tend to keep old installers. Once the game is withdrawn from GOG I multiply installers among all my HDDs - if game is on GOG - I usually have just 1 copy.

I won't place blame. It's simply that I don't care that much. I've lost things more valuable to me than my games collection and got over that. Those games that I do played, I've gotten my money's worth; those I don't play, it's just my buying addiction getting the better of me. Either way I got what I paid for.

I know not everyone feels this way, but this, coupled with my belief (based on experience) that games I bought don't just go and disappear one day without warning, contributes to my lack of backing up.

I currently have 1035 games on GOG, and I've downloaded all the English Windows installers + extras directly to an external 2TB HDD (2.5"). I think those GOG files take something like 1.4 TB or so currently, so I still have room also for my DotEmu, GamersGate, Strategy First store and Humble Bundle Android .apk installers on the same hard drive.

BTW, why do you ask? I presume you are referring to the Galaxy backup folder? I don't currently use Galaxy, even for downloading the installers. I use gogrepo.py currently.

The Desura case gives some perspective to this. It seemed to come as a surprise to most if not all, and then each and every had to make up their mind if they want to try to download some or all of their games from Desura as long as the servers are online, or just let them go. Naturally, is someone has most of the games on some other service as well, they probably didn't care much. Fortunately I had no games there at all.

For me the reasons to keep local backups of my digital (DRM-free) games:

- If I suddenly get an urge to try some game, it is easier and faster to me to install it from that external HDD, than downloading even several gigabytes of data over my 10Mbit/s cable modem, and then install that. This depends much also on the size of the game I want to try, e.g. if it is less than 100MB, I might just as well re-download the installer from GOG, at least if I am already logged into the GOG website.

- Since I do my gaming on laptops, sometimes I may be longer periods of time somewhere where I don't have a fast or unlimited internet-connection, and still occasionally might want to try out some new game.

- If the unthinkable happened and GOG would go the way of Desura, or EA would buy out GOG and integrate it with EA Origin :), I wouldn't have to rush to download them at that point with the rest of GOG users.

- I also have DRM-free games from some other stores I don't visit anymore at all, and have probably even forgotten about my login details. Like GamersGate, DotEmu, Frictional Games store, Strategy First store etc. I have the games I've bought from those places on the same external HDD as my GOG games, and I couldn't care less even if those stores ceased to exist.

As a matter of fact, I think I am not even eligible anymore to re-download the games from Strategy First. I think they had some sort of limitation how long, or for how many times, you can download your DRM-free game installers from them. Plus, their download system was a true pain in the ass, and slow too. Oh well, I have their games already in my possession, so...


I personally don't see anything odd in keeping a local repository of my DRM-free games, anymore than keeping my old retail PC and console games, or my DVD movies. In fact, keeping the GOG game installers in an external HDD is much less hassle than all those old retail games on those big storage boxes I have at my home.

With my Android games (from Humble Bundle), I feel even a bigger need to keep the apk installers on some sort of USB thumbstick or something, as I have the tablet quite often in places with no or slow (mobile) internet, and the tablet has relatively small storage so you can't have that many games installed at the same time anyway. So if you want to install some new Android game, you might have to uninstall some other games first to make room on the device, and then later you might want to install them back after all.

I have everything on its own internal drive in my pc, I also have half onto external usb drives but quit doing that as its too annoying to update. I wouldnt mind another place to store the games, perhaps an external drive for portability