I'm guessing the spirit of the question is "what if you didn't?" I feel like adding GOG to the question may have been a bad way to phrase it as it you more or less have to be lazy, very trusting or disconnected from the service to end up in that situation (or not care much about your purchases.) I assume not everyone is as proactive about backups as I am, but the odds that you might erase all your installers and have GOG go down are kinda low. Especially for the people around here.

If the question were, what if you unexpectedly lost the ability to play many of your games for whatever reason, would you rebuy them? Then I think I would have said maybe. Depends on how great the game was, does it have replay value for me, what does it cost, would I really ever play it? More or less do I miss having it? The game would probably need to be pretty good or have nostalgic value.

I tried to ignore this part of the argument by telling people to imagine a good alternative (Imagine Desura would focus on oldies as well for instance). It wasn't really what I was focusing on.

My point with the question, is not to drum up some kind of doom scenario and see what kind of fallout it would have. My question comes from one of the things I see incredibly often (people buying digital versions of games they already have on Disc), combined with my own thoughts on why I purchase games online, and I've found that for me, the main point of it is that I can download them (now and in the future). So even if I had local installers, I'd still look for a replacement, since for me that's no different than a CD really.

That's why i especially mentioned the people who re-buy them digitally even though they have the CD. A fair number of people here said they would possibly resort to pirating them because they already own them, but that was true when you had them on Disc as well. Why then still buy them on Gog? Agogfan gave some insight into that though which was nice to see :)

Maybe this question is a bit more natural to the rest of you since I'm a bit more chaotic and unorganized than the average person though and I really gave up 'backups' half a decade or so ago as by then I had a history of having mountains of discs/CD's/DVD's and I know I barely ever touched most of them again ^^

Yes, he put it quite good.

I normally don't consider pirated versions at least the primary option for anything, because many times they cause the most hassle. Not only do I have to find the latest (official) update for the game, but also yet another crack for it, as cracks seem to be quite often version dependent and the pirate versions probably include crack only for the initial release version (1.00).

Plus, do I really want to trust some repacked pirate version or crack made god knows where? I've always wondered how all those keyloggers and other unwanted software find their way to millions of PCs all over the world...

GOG version, on the other hand, is a superior version even to the original CD because it makes the CD obsolete and usually includes all the needed patches in one pack.

It is quite a different thing to talk about a mountain of game CD boxes and manuals, and one external USB drive with all your (GOG) games in it. You don't have to be that organized to move one USB drive to your new home. :)

Maybe I'm quite unorganized too because I've yet to download most of my GOG games to my personal repository. I've been holding it off until there's an easy way to download them all in one swoop (JGOGDownloader?), instead of clicking a few hundred times different links.

Well, for arguments sake, in this particular case, for any games you would've gotten here there'd be a Gog version you could've pirated instead of purchase it again ^^ (Disclaimer: I am NOT in any way telling people to do this, Don't!)


While true, it is simply yet another thing to keep track of and store. Did I make sure to back up this game? Where's the USB drive? I do agree that in Gog's case it wouldn't be that hard since most games are rather small but if I were to back up my Steam inventory for instance that'd be a massive backup. Assuming we'll keep buying from Gog, our library will just get bigger, especially with the introduction of Indie games. Which also kind of links back to the thing above, in that the indies may need patches and stuff to be back upped as well as they generally are still getting patches. Gog is changing in that sense.

I know it may seem silly but for me, keeping things around, it's just an illusion, it's enough of a mess here, and like I did with my CD's (I owned the BG collection at 2 different occasions) at some point they'll be in the way, or I'll do a massive cleanup, and I'll simply be in a completely different state of mind and not care at all about the stuff that's on there, since I can get it at any moment anyway, and just toss it out, or delete it and use for another purpose in the case of a USB most likely). Eventually I might need a second USB since the first is too small, or maybe a third, or a harddrive, and there we go again ... I know that seems silly now, and it does seem a bit unrealistic, but the point is simply that after having done exactly that for ... over a decade... I just didn't see the value in it anymore. And with digital downloads, I don't have to. So I gave it up.

Heck, by the time the scenario might happen, most I'll have will be ancient anyway and the stuff I'll still want, I'll gladly pay the small sum it will have on a sale to have it available at the push of a button again, same as I did for the other games. Heck, maybe 'support' whatever portal I'm using then as a result. That always seems to be a good excuse :)

I'm not so sure about the pirating thing. I can see how someone can get there if something got taken out of their own control, but it doesn't quite wash with other notions of mine. I've argued the property angle as to why DRM and certain strategies companies are using are something I don't appreciate. It would be hard for me to draw a parallel between a DVD game and a lamp saying I should get unrestricted access or the right to resale, then turn around loose it and say, Well I guess I can just pirate the thing because I bought the game. There is an ability there to replace something lost at no cost that doesn't exist with chairs and such, but I don't know. I guess I wouldn't judge, but I probably wouldn't do it.

I actually thought I had lost almost all my PC game discs during a move for over a year. I had stuff as far back as the original CD version of "Master of Orion," and an honest to god official sold in stores linux version of Quake 3. I was quite sick over the whole thing (there were a lot of games), but never did I think, Eh I can just pirate the whole lot. I assumed I would have to rebuy the stuff I really cared about.

GOG's releases of some games (e.g. Thief) have various fixes in them that are pre-applied so that they make the game run on modern OSs. This saves me much hassle against installing any other version.

No Way! I have them all archived locally. Did you really ask this question on World Backup Day? ;)
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/03/31/1543200/ask-slashdot-its-world-backup-day-how-do-you-back-up Hard disk space is cheap. I can't imagine wasting it with targeted backups. Don't you have important files that you want to keep? You can't trust leaving that stuff on the cloud long term (See Mega Upload, Geocities, etc) .

Local files are nothing like boxed games. At my worst, If I wanted to find a particular game in my physical collection, it could take a couple hours and create a huge mess digging through boxes in the process. Normally I just figured it was too much of a PITA and didn't bother. Local files on the other hand, I can find quickly with a search utility even if someone hid them outside of their directory tree.

A functional large boxed game collection is such a PITA and physic drain that I honestly threw away most of mine a couple years ago. They're great for show but not much else. Discs are rarely DRM/ copyprotection-free.

Boxed games suck. 10+ games take up a huge amount of space (particularly early to mid '90s boxes). You'll need to download and archive all the patches and NOCDs/ fixes for every executable you want to preserve. You'll need to make backups. In the USA, the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass access control so aforementioned NOCDs/ fixes/ backups are sketchy. You'll need to maintain a working CD/DVD/ floppy drive and operating systems compatible with the DRM/ copy protection used by the game you want to play in order to stay totally on the straight and narrow. I haven't even gone into testing. PITA

I'd probably give up on buying games entirely and just pirate everything I wanted. I've pretty much given up on mainstream gaming and play GOG's (some for upteenth time) and Indies are pretty much the only "new" games I buy these days.

This +1. **goes off and starts backup up Gog stuff onto spare USB sticks...like duh why did i never think of that** :)

I'm in the same boat as everyone else here seems to be, I've backed up all my games on an external hd, and have some games files stored on random USB drives. This reminds me, I really need to organize those things sometime...

Would I re-buy them on the off chance that gog goes down and my backups get destroyed, maybe. Depends on if I really liked the game and if the service offers the same drm-free deal as gog does.

However, if I have to go through this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
...Pirate

Reading through this thread it seems to me Pheace has simply fully embraced the cloud for storing his media. That's all it is really. It's all there anytime - the cloud IS the backups. The only way to lose the cloud backups is if the associated service such as GOG or Steam, go away somehow. Otherwise, why bother having local copies? Everything IS backed up - to the cloud!

I think many of us are still reluctant to fully embrace and trust the cloud at this point. Thus you have people, myself included, who will download their GOG installers and back them up to an external drive and sometimes also or instead, to DVDs.

I like having a local copy but actually I don't really need it for the same reason Pheace doesn't bother to begin with: it's already available online anytime.

There is one reason I can see someone choosing to backup locally that has nothing to do with the above and that is bandwidth cost and/or speed issues. In some cases it is preferable to get it one time and keep it locally.

For now, I like the peace of mind that comes with having my software stored locally but I am also glad it is available online for the unlikely and highly unfortunate event that my local software storage is stolen or destroyed somehow.

This right here.

Unlike most other games sites if GOG were to shut down the limit of the damage would be redownloading the games and buying new ones.

Anybody with any sense at all keeps their GOG games on hand at all times anyways as HDD are large enough and if you decide you want to play a game again you can save time by not downloading it again.
Yes, but when all is said and done by that time you'd probably be able to run any games from here in a VM with a current version of windows from the present.

Not to mention the numerous games here that run via DOSBOX anyways.

But yeah, I don't rebuy games typically without good reason. I rebought most of the iD back catalog because it was cheaper than paying for the ones I didn't yet have and I probably would consider it for compatibility, but otherwise they've got their money.
That's why I keep a local backup and an online backup. If both backups are destroyed chances are good that I'll be grateful to be able to buy the games as I'll likely be more worried about the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

A service like Crashplan isn't expensive and runs completely on its own without user intervention, the only challenge at all is making sure that you download the games in the first place.

Ye. Same as pretty much everyone else. Double backup (external 1TB drive & DVDs). Not just as backup though, but also to save on bandwidth and because it is so much quicker to just install from media rather than downloading, again, and then installing.

OTOH I do have a cloud drive (through my webhost) that I backup documents and the like to - I do see the advantages of Cloud backup just that - I don't really trust any backup solution 100%. Redundancy is good with data :).

Precisely, that's one of the reasons that I personally use Crashplan, I can back up locally and remotely with the same software.

That being said, any time you keep multiple back ups you're safer, provided they're in geographically diverse locales, in sync and that you verify the integrity from time to time.

Oh yeah, I need to back up my games. Thanks for the reminder. :P