It should also be noted that the origin's of Gabe's "promise" are so long in the past that he may have been only referring to Valve's own games, they might not even have started to sell games from other publishers back then.

So they don't give a guarantee ... they will try ...
Like they "tried" to make a better website ...

It's funny that the OP trusts an ancient hypothetical frankly-bulls**t statement (that Valve will care spending money to remove DRM in case of trouble) more than an existing factual truth (that downloaded Gog single-player games work offline and don't need the store to fuction).

What sort of guarantee would you like them to give you, considering this is the end of the commercial life of Gog?

Life doesn't come with guarantees. The only "rights" you have are those you can defend. Rather than expecting others to vouchsafe your endeavours, it behoves you to take a self-reliant approach and ensure that you have your own expectations covered. As Bookwyrm627 just noted, if you use the offline installers, you already have a local copy of the self-extracting executables. Make additional copies at your leisure, to decrease risk to infinitesimal negligibility. Job done!

Unfortunately, since a few years, wie live in the age of "lost media". Every streaming media and media with complicated DRM or permanent online connection will eventually be lost forever and it won't be possible to make it available through "special websites" once the publishing platform has vanished.

I consider most games I buy today as only being rented.

Don’t think it shuts down and you can bring all your games to an external harddrive so you can play them forever.If steam would shut down it would be f*

Backing up the games isn't cost-intensive or rocket science. If you are unable to download an installer file and place it on a storage medium of your choice, you probably shouldn't be left unattended in front of a PC. It's not a matter of believing him. It's a matter of realising that Steam is designed from the ground up to prevent effective backups of games being made. You don't get installers - you download directly from the servers and Steam's own installation scripts handle dependencies directly. An offline "patch" is all well and good but it only helps currently installed games. You will not be able to install any new games, nor will you be able to recover those games if your hard disk dies. There are certain workarounds for some games (creating ZIP archives of games that happen to be able to run independently of Steam, something which is actually in violation of the SSA), but until Steam allows legitimate DRM-free downloads of entire games, the reigning consensus is that Gabe Newell is full of shit on this matter.

*forever being possibly less than 10 years due to OS/hardware compatibility issues. A lot of these games had to be heavily worked on by GOG to even work on modern systems. Already there are games that are only officially supported for discontinued OSs.

Pretty sure the community would fix this so im not scared

The tautological redundancy here is staggering...

BTW/apropos redundancy; remember kids - never ever use RAID as backup :P

Sorry, but your computers and your data are fully your responsibility. If you don't keep backups (like you should if you value your data), then any consequences which arise from your negligence are solely your fault.

It doesn't take a "techy" to know that they need to make regular backups of their data any more than it takes a mechanic to know that they need to get regular oil changes in their car. That is a flimsy and disingenuous excuse.

Onyx said the same!

Hahahano.

Even if they patched out CEG on the games you already had installed, how would you download the rest of your Steam games if the service had shut down? Would they be running it on those magical self-powering maintenance free servers?
Even if you believe Lord Gaben, I would only take it to refer to games you had installed or backed up. It's a massive stretch (ridiculous and unbelievable even) to assume that he was saying they'd keep the servers running. GOG has given those people the option to download and back up their games, if those certain people chose not to take that opportunity then it isn't GOG's fault or problem.
You learn skills relevant to your interests, if they couldn't be bothered to learn how to back up their games then it is because it wasn't important to them.

I’ve heard of the term “digital dementia” (digitale Demenz in German) to describe this phenomenon. The problem isn’t only that DRM and proprietary platforms exist but also the fact that digital storage solutions have a very low life expectancy, compared to certain analog storage media. And there’s a second problem: The technology/hardware interfaces become obsolete at a rapidly accelerating rate.

Talk about someone who values the money he spends...

I don't understand how GOG can be in the red, or even close to, when people like him exist.