So a US law is used against a Polish company by - seemingly - a German Publisher?
I am sure if you look at it in detail, it will make sense, but right now, I am somewhat puzzled by this.

Edit: Ah, I think I see the problem now. The german version was localized by TopWare Interactive and they probably hold the copyright for the german manual. They also didn't greenlight it to be released with the current version.

As I mentioned elsewhere that this is being discussed, my assumption is that is removed because gog never actually had the right to sell it. In the case of something like a manual, which gog frequently adds to games as a bonus when provided by a site user rather than the publisher, they may not have had the right to sell it in the first place.

The error is still on gogs part for not seeking permission from the rights holder, but I assume this is what happened given the content that was removed.

A DMCA takedown request by who exactly? Who would be so unfathomably petty to have a MANUAL removed from people's libraries - after the thing has been on sale for 12 years?

OK, you may not have been able to notify users in advance but how about notifying the general forum after the fact to let people know instead of hoping no-one notices missing items from their game library? It's a shame that threads like this have to be started before you then choose to clarify the situation.

Yes. GOG are the best friends we've got in our quest to try and own our software as much as possible, but they are still shackled by the license terms and realities of business in 2020. Best thing to do is backup everything you really care about from GOG and then own it forever, something very few other stores offer and no store with such a wide catalog.

No one would ever say GOG isn't flawed, but in a desert where only one dude out of dozens is offering you water, you don't criticize the flavor.

auf wiedersehen

I'm sure I've read that this story that we don't own the games we buy is a misunderstanding promulgated and endorsed by the corporations, but in fact we do own the copy of the game, what we don't own is the game code and the possibility of reselling it massively of course. As we own the book we buy, but we can't obviously reprint it and sell it with our name on the cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hkSmE7JGRQ :D

This would mean that you never had the rights to sell it in the first place? What would you do if customers would take legal actions against removing something from their account they paid for? This is such a lame explanation and I am not pleased or satisfied at all. With this policy everything I ever bought on GOG is unsafe ... Make sure you have the rights to sell something and you won't get any DMCA complaint.
That is true but how can people use their product now that GOG has removed it? GOG broke contract - simple as that. You don't own anything (evenb GOG falsly keep telling us) but you bought the rights to use it and it is not that easy to remove those rights. (He asked how I even noticed that something was missing)
It was mentioned in the "what did just update thread" - I personally don't even own the game in question.

If you buy a stolen car, you don't get to keep it. sure you can get your money back. But what money is there to get back in a non-advertised freebie offered as a condition of purchase? They didn't tell you explicitly that it was offered, nor did they charge you extra for it once it was added (after the game released here). So what value will you place on that? In this case they didn't break any contract, unless you can show me in that contract where it stated that GOG grants you a perpetual license that they have no right to revoke (it will always state that the licensor has a right to revoke the license in a game store license). Simply put, you are upset that a freebie that GOG had no right to offer was removed, and are raising a stink.. to what purpose? because your free manual was taken back? The product you actually paid for is still there.

God, you guys would make a mountain out of an ant pile.

Pretty sure if you asked for a refund for this particular issue you would get your money back. There's not much GoG can do about DMCA, it's a craptacular outdated law that needs to change but GoG can't do anything about that either. There's no certainty about rights either - the DMCA might not even be valid if the original localization contract states that translations belong to the original IP holder as they often do - but GoG wouldn't have access to those contracts and it would be up to the original IP holder and translator to resolve that dispute. GoG doesn't want to get involved especially with how the law works.

Download everything (including goodies) as soon as you buy a game and back up your collection regularly in another hard drive. Voilà, everything's safe.

Still lame, GOG...

I can understand that you're not blame in this. And a "bonus" is just a bonus. The game's german manual doesn't make part of the original game package.

Still it'd be good courtesy if you officially announced these kind of changes in a visible way. I know that it'd be bad policy to post them on the main page, in the "News" section.
But you could at least (as so many good folks here have requested for a long time) create a "sticky" thread where users could read announcements regarding game removals and other issues affecting your products.

Please, consider this option. It'd strengthen the ties between GOG and its customers.

I was thinking recently about getting rid of my HDD because I can download everything anyway, but I need to rethink it now :/

No, everything you bought on GOG isn't unsafe, because with most of the stuff you bought on GOG, then GOG does have the legal right to sell it, and thus it is in no danger of being removed in the way this manual was.

Not sure how it's a lame explanation.

If GOG did not comply with the DMCA request and remove the manuals that they never had the legal right to sell in the first place, then they would have been in a world of legal trouble that would have cost them a fortune.

And after legal action started, if they had doubled-down on leaving the unlicensed copyrighted materials on their site, then it might/probably would have have eventually resulted in the entire GOG site closing down.

But having said that, I do agree with your point that GOG should have done their due diligence and figured out what they had the legal right to put on their site before putting the manual on the site in the first place.

Then again, mistakes happen and nobody's perfect. It's not like this stuff happens all the time. One mistake like this in over 11 years of operation is not that much in the grand of scheme things.