Yeah it was RAID 1. One disk blew up, the next one did too during rebuild.
Beware, I have a bunch of USB flash drives that just stopped working properly over time. I can try to write into them and it may seem to succeed but read back corrupt, or it might throw a bunch of I/O errors, as I found recently while trying to transfer the skyrim installers to another PC.

They aren't even all that old..

Ouch

I feel similarly about music and movies too. Cloud services can arbitrarily remove those at any time and for any reason, so physically owning them is smart in the event that they disappear from the cloud.

This is why I buys my music on CDs and movies on Blu-Rays lol.

This should just never happen, and borders on criminal when it does.

When you buy a game, and even if in reality that is just a license, that is the version you paid for.

That said, I am now going to play Devil's Advocate.

It is quite common, in online music stores for instance, to sell you a track or album, which you need to download as soon as possible, because there is no guarantee your download will remain available past a certain time frame, often specified. I personally don't agree with that policy, but as I always download immediately, I've never been impacted.

Now GOG haven't gone down that road, though you could argue, that in the current instance and similar, they are indeed doing that, though you still have access to some form of the game you bought, just not the original. In fact, any game that receives an update where the original files are no longer available is just that.

I am also pretty sure, that in the fine print with every purchase you make at GOG, they cover themselves for such changes to game files we have bought.

It is possible to look at this issue both positively as well as negatively.

Though for my money, I would rather retain access to original files, and even earlier versions provided by GOG before I bought a game.

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Taking a look at what Bethesda have done for an instant, and I don't know if GOG are bound by certain conditions when a game is made available to them, that also means the provider retains full control over what files are provided at any one time to customers.

I have read where those extra mission packs are considered detrimental to the original game, such that they are not a good way to promote it, and despite collector's wanting every single related thing, Bethesda for instance, might consider the game is better off without them, that maybe they should never have been available in the first place, that they lessen the game experience overall.

It is also possible those extra mission packs were wrongly provided in the first place, without the appropriate permissions, though if they are still included at Steam that at very least begs a question on the viability of that notion.

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However, nothing excuses the run-around MarkoH01 got. That is inexcusable, and both GOG and Bethesda should be ashamed.

yeah I have run into that. it happens.

I was just about to ask what exactly are the missing files (so that I can put them aside from my older GOG backups), but do I read you correctly that this is not an issue at the moment anymore, ie. the missing files/mission packs/whatever are available again on GOG servers?

What are the exact files for the offline installers? (I didn't quite get it from the original message, ie. is Spear of Destiny now missing, or some separate extra missions for it, or were they part of the original Wolfenstein 3D...?).

I only have the previous version of the installers because I archived them. GOG didn't restore them to my account or anything. Haven't looked at the installed files to check for differences. The build number for the next most recent version I have is 28045.

What brand are they?
They could be those cheap fake drives that report a capacity, but instead they have less.
They simply overwrite data when they go over.
It's a scam O_o

So what is/are the file(s) that contain they reportedly missing extra missions? Is it "Spear of Destiny" which is this "extra missions"?

In my library, I can only find Wolfenstein 3D: "setup_wolfenstein_3d_1.4_(58806).exe".
No e.g. Spear of Destiny, either in my online library, or in the GOG store. So is that "setup_spear_of_destiny_1.4.exe" the one that has now gone missing from the store, and people's libraries?

If it has disappeared during the last half a year, I should still have it on my hard drive. Better put it to a safe place then. Odd indeed GOG would remove it even from the existing owners, as revoking a license does not mean people who have bought it earlier don't have right to use it anymore, it only means Bethesda or GOG can't sell it to new customers.

I guess it is just technically easier to change the contents also for the existing owners...

Two things affect USB flash drives:

1. They have pretty low write durability, ie. if you keep constantly writing to them, they will eventually go bad. Of course the same is with e.g. SSDs, but they endure much much longer.

So USB flash drives are better for use cases where you write/change data seldom, but read often.

2. If they are unused/unpowered for a long time, they may/will lose the data in them. I just found a couple of very old 8GB USB flash drives in my laptop bag pocket. I recall acquiring them like 12-15 years ago (in my earlier workplace), so yeah they really are that old.

They had been sitting unused in my bag for 1-2 years, and they had become unreadable, lost any data that may have been there. However, after I reformatted them, they've worked fine. I needed them as USB installation media for both Windows 11 and Linux Mint, and now I am using one of them also to watch some old video files on my TV (my LG TV can play video files from an external USB storage).

Most are kingston (including hyperx) but there are others too.

And no, they are not misreporting capacity. They have worked fine in the past.

This.
Luckily I had backuped my Wolfenstein and it addons, so I'm not that fucked. But this doesn't change the fact that this kind of behaviour by gog and Bethesda is unacceptable and undermines every goodwill for and trust in gog and it's policies.

Ah yeah, they aren't good as a long term backup.

Btw when my usb sticks died, they just became read-only. I never had one that got corrupted.

(but you can also lose data if you unplug them without the safe removal feature)

Same, even if it's not the first time on Gog that old definitive versions are removed due to some recent change (that isn't always better).
Having to keep track of these installers (before refreshing our offline backups) is quite frustrating and error-prone.
It unfeasible to save multiple copies of each game version by default just to be sure..

It has the extra mission packs. If Wolfenstein 3D is missing anything then I'm not aware of it.

Both 28045s were replaced with the current version that is one file.

The older files were only recently removed from my account. Others lost access to them much earlier. *shrug*