I just buy external HD and upgrade when I run out of space. Right now I have 3 8TB HD with each one having all my GOG games.

If one of my HD move on to the afterlife, I have another with everything on it.

It took years for me to run out 6TB, pretty sure 8TB will last me for awhile.

If you still have ANY seperate installer of Spear of Destiny archived you are "safe". In your library you will only find the Wolfenstein entry with SoD installer merged which does not have the mission pack anymore.
I know that you are right. I guess I was just a bit too naive and idealistic seeing GOG as a platform from gamers for gamers that really understands their customers and will protect their libraries as well to make sure that they stay satisfied. Guess I was wrong here and in the end GOG is just a shop like every other ... my mistake. Won't make it again and won't continue to see GOG as anything else than a store and everything else they say is - as proven multiple times - simply PR talk. Sometimes it is nice to dream but sometimes you really need to wake up.

Probably the same reason why they did not even reply here. They love Bethesda so much that they can't afford to get in any discussion that would make Bethesda look bad or even get angry ... so they simply wait until people have forgotten about the issue. GOGs speciality, the silent treatment, will always work as long as the media isn't interested. This has been proven time and again.

This is a great post.

My sympathies with this removal, really. Something similar happened with a patch applying censored assets and cutting out a bit of content in 2 old games here 2 years ago. I've asked gog support to allow rollback via galaxy, since at the time of my purchase the game was in its original state. They don't care, it's a non-issue apparently.

Gog:publisher relationship is more important than gog:customer one. Learned my lesson then, but this is a new low though.

Imo, you have a proof of purchase, you might as well look for alternative downloads and archives with the now-removed version, original version and/or version that works on your system. It sucks, because you should never have to do that in the case of purchase from a drm-free, pro-customer/gamer (apparently) site like gog.

I remember reading a long time ago about some court case within eu about downloading some game from the warez scene, because the original had some drm that stopped working for the dude. He got reported/backstabbed by his ISP, got fined, refused to bend over, brought it to the court which ruled in his favour in accordance with consumer rights within his country since the drm'd copy became unplayable/unusable.

A similar case occurred last year.

The game Re-Volt disappeared behind the store a few years ago because the new owner of the rights to the brand used the fan-made patch 1.2 without the authors permission, the authors of the patch contacted gog support, and gog removed the game from the store until the matter was cleared up. Those who already had it purchased could continue to download it and play.
The thread can be found here: https://www.gog.com/forum/revolt/revolt_12a_download_discussion/post3

Last year the game returned to the store, but already with another patch 1.1 with a new loading screen. That is, I bought a different version than the one I have access to now.

These may not be as big changes as discussed earlier in this topic, but the fact of the change offline installer version.

You have my support and you need to fight to restore the previous version of Wolfenstein. GOG should not forget its rules and must stand up for drm free!

Hi MarkoH01,

thank you for starting this thread. I am also one of the customers, who have lost access to their original ‘Spear of Destiny’ copy bought some 7 years ago, finding about it only by accident. I have also contacted the GOG Support about this issue and got a quite fast, yet unhelpful response, which completely ignored my questions and just explained that ‘due to the publishers suggestion, Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny have been merged into one release’, with a suggestion to contact Bethesda directly. This didn't make much sense to me, so I restated the fact that my issue lies with the conduct of GOG and requested to get in touch with somebody, who might know the details about the decision to remove an already bought content from my library. I have also declared, that this occurence did erode my trust in the GOG Store significantly, because it made me wonder about another instances of the same thing happening somewhere in my library before without me noticing. The continuation of my exchange with support was simply a pointless and frustrating experience, mainly because of the contrast between their usage of hyperpolite language and declarations of willingness to ‘help as much as they can’, yet at the same time their repeated ignoration or baffling misrepresentation of the issue at hand.

I don't plan to conduct any other action, as I don't find it worth spending more effort than I have done already. For me it's not even mainly about this one game, it's more about the fact that GOG has chosen to go this route of not being fully transparent about their updates. Having to do unpopular decisions and changes — probably not of GOG's own will, but because of some top secret contracts, blah blah, etc. — is a one thing. Doing such things silently and in hope that nobody would notice or complain loudly enough is a completely different, extremely shady and a genuinely dystopian thing. Also, I can't even start to comprehend, how my order receipt could have been retroactively changed to not show the exact name of the product I have bought at the time.

As others have pointed out, it's surely naive to consider GOG.com to be more than a store, and if nothing else, this whole situation has been a proper wake up call for me. Not saying that I haven't noticed some smaller cracks over the years and that I haven't already experienced some unpleasant changes before, and I certainly find it to be everyone's personal duty to backup their games (and other files), at least the ones that are most dear to them (if limited by HDD space). But still to this day I have kept this internal image of GOG.com as being at least somewhat more ‘noble’ or ‘principled’ than its competitors. Now I know for sure that in the digital distribution industry the only principles worth relying on are ‘always backup’ and ‘first buy external hard drives, then games’ :)

Thank you again for this thread, as it helped me find at least some consolation in the fact, that in facing this quite small, yet still blatant injustice from a corporation, which has grown so confident in itself, that it doesn't feel the need to communicate and justify its actions anymore, I am not alone.

I'm most likely echoing a bunch of other posts in this thread, but in a situation like this, the more the merrier...

I'm only buying DRM-free games now because I can make my backups and then play the games forever... or for at least as long as compatible hardware survives... or there are emulators of such hardware in the future.

That said, I have bought games with copy protection in the past. At the moment I'm having a great time playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and since it's the retail version with the original soundtrack, as far as I'm concerned I'm playing the best version! I had to install the No-CD crack because the game installed fine from the DVD, but claimed the original media was missing when starting the game. Before everyone starts thinking I was scammed and sold a counterfeit version, the purchase was many years ago from a reputable computer store (physical, not online) and I installed and played the game succesfully at the time of purchase, albeit not for long as I was saving it for the future after I'd finished GTA III and GTA Vice City, which I'd bought at the same time. When I originally played the game though, it was on a different computer and a different operating system, so that may have played a factor too.

So much fun I was having with the GTA III series that I had a look at GTA 4. However, reviews seemed to imply that the retail version of the game had issues which would never be fixed, and the only recommended way to play it now is by buying a version that needs to always be online... a completely insane requirement for a single player game. So I watched a Let's Play video and whilst the game looked good... I'll not be buying or playing it ever!

I also watched a Let's Play video for Skyrim around the same time as the one for GTA 4, but hoping that it would make its way eventually to GOG, I aborted it before getting too far... and I'm glad I did as many of us would regard the biggest event for 2022 being the release of Skyrim on GOG!

So in conclusion, in the main, GOG & Bethesda are doing a lot right, but in the case of this specific thread, I'm also disappointed that neither GOG nor Bethesda have a proper solution. And all I can yell into the echo chamber is... buy and backup... buy and backup... buy and BACKUP!!!!

Ok so I do have this:
Folder: "wolfenstein_spear_of_destiny"
which contains the file:
"setup_spear_of_destiny_1.4_(28045).exe"

So I take it then that is the only old file (for now) that I need to keep safe.

I am not quite sure what this means: "Wolfenstein entry with SoD installer merged which does not have the mission pack anymore". So the current Wolfenstein3D offline installer contains also the Spear of Destiny installer... but not its maps? Mission pack = the maps of SoD? Or what is the "mission pack" that we are talking about here? I thought the issue is that Spear of Destiny is missing altogether.

"Spear of Destiny (which had both of them included) has been removed from the store listings. Instead it's now bundled directly with Wolfenstein 3D -- but without Return to Danger and The Ultimate Challenge." --source

Also, if you still have access to the old installer, be warned that doing an account refresh is known to remove it from your library.

Ah ok, so Spear of Destiny is still there (now merged with the Wolfenstein3D installer), but those two additional map packs to Spear of Destiny are now missing. Ok then.

This is a hard learned lesson but at the least it is positive in outcome in that it alerts gog customers to a few naked truths about gog.

The precedent for me was the total removal from my account/library of the TES games Arena and Daggerfall.

The only reason I discovered this was by community scrutiny. Just to be clear on this: gog removed these games from peoples libraries across the board and without prior warning or consent. This is very similar to what is happening here.

Those particular games could be re-acquired by the user at a different version but that is not the point. Library entries were deleted by gog.

Curiously enough, when I re-acquired Daggerfall and noticed that the version was different to my back up, I asked gog to remove the game from my account. The reply I recieved was that it was not possible to remove a game from my account.

It's OK for gog to do it though, without warning.

Recently, we have seen what has happened to the witcher3, I realise this is not directly connected but it helps to demonstrate an important point that all gog customers need to be aware of:

The day you purchase a game from gog, you are covered by a 30 day refund "guarantee". This guarantee is at gogs discretion.

After that point, you no longer have a leg to stand on. In other words, you can trust gog for 30 days after purchase, assuming they feel like it.

Back up your games at point of purchase independently from gog, preferably on the date of purchase.

Yes, but what they update was the game available, imagine like those game that add an enhanced edition that replace the old version, it's like a new entry on GOG System, a complete different game, the same happened on Steam but they got two separated entries, that is why people who bought Spear of Destiny still have access to the mission packs. Technically speaking, GOG can provide a download like fpr the old version because is not part of the catalogue anymore, Steam neither can because to this point count like piracy.

GOG is able to exchange what's in their catalogue so they could here as well. Fact is that they don't want because they don't want their lord Bethesda to get angry. Please don't believe one second that GOG does not have the technical ability. They are really bad with tech stuff but these are database basics.

Ok so I bought Wolf 3D and Spear of Destiny when they first released on GOG.

They both show as separate entries still in my library. I literally just downloaded Spear of Destiny fresh from my games library from the GOG website (not through Galaxy) and installed it. It has both bonus episodes 2 & 3.