yes, if they want to, they can do so. i don't think that will happen, a foum ban will come first, and then most likely disable an accounts abiltiy to buy games, before a complete removal of an account. For this reason, I do not think this happened here, thouhg, but then there may be a larger backstory?

But all DD stores have, and must have this ability, so they can remove troll accounts, spam accounts and so on. Same as a physical store can chuck out and refuse to serve a customer who stands and shouts profanities in their stores, digital stores must reserve their rights to protect themselves as well.

I guess gog will have to shutdown because they've broken those themselves including recent events. :(

I have to say I am shocked that people don’t realise this? If you do not have it locally and it runs locally, you have no control over it. Doesn’t matter if it’s this store, another store, telly, videos, streamed services, your money (is internet banking), anything even remotely relying on the internet or external services is not under your control. This is the point of drm free, it’s the point of offline installers, it’s the point of not being reliant on a system which you cannot control?!?
Internet outtage, you lose access, isp removes your acces you lose access, wire breaks you lose access, store blocks you lose access. Local wholly user controlled is the only way to prevent this.

Well, gog? Is it a bug or is it a feature?

If somebody asks gog to delete their account, probably results into this. Like tinyE, who changed many usernames (at least 10 lately) and support ultimately removed (or renamed/relocated more effectively to keep it hidden from other users) its account.

Excellent! Take my rep points!

Their account was not removed, what a surprise. ;)

I'd be very much in favor of this at this point. I've seen the insanity of this forum linked to as an example of GOG's "toxic user base" and it would probably benefit them to remove it.

How embarrassing. Not only was the thread that they thought got them banned cringey in the first place, they weren't even banned.

You made a thread announcing you were going to pirate everything and the only consequence was it getting locked, it wasn't even deleted. Yeah, that's a pretty light sentence. Doesn't exactly fit the "GOG are evil" narrative.

I see that Southern and fronzelneekburm's only exercises they've been doing was jumping to conclusions.

Well I know what to get them for Christmas:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91EDI7zrnHL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

I'm sure the truth to is toxic to some people especially thee that goes reeeee!

No, they cannot, unless they want to be sued in a court for really big bucks, and lose.

What you are saying they "can do" would be theft on GOG's part, which is quite illegal.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogstaff_what_happened_to_southerns_account/post11

edit: to make it clear, when you buy a game on gOg (or Steam, or EGS, or Humble, ot Itch etc), you buy two products. You buy a game license, and you buy a license to use the stores services. the store cannot rewoke your game licenses (only the game license holders can do that), but they are allowed to stop the their services - which includes maintaining your library, access to the library, access to updates etc. the games themself, if you have downloaded them, are yours. so just makes sure you have your games downloaded if you want to talk thrash :)

edit 2: the same principles apply if gOg foldes, you are still legaly owning the game license, but you can off course no longer use gOg services. by the way, the email you get when you buy a game, is the proof of game license ownership, so do not delete them.

edit 3: i do not see a situation where gOg will actually delete and account which have got paied for games on it. they have many other milder sanctions before this last drastic step. however, they need to have this ability so thay can for example legaly delte spam accounts (what do you do if a spam account has a game they bought for $1 in a sale?) and they have legally the power to delete any account they want. doing so would be very bad PR, but not illegal.