From what I saw, he was talking about GfWL. Doesn't the service hold digital copies, just like Steam does? He says he only needed the serial number, so he could have backed up that one.

If you really don't see the difference there then wow...

No it doesn't. GfWL is just Xbox Live on your PC. He did have the serial backed up (fortunately), but the problem is he should not have had to jump through the hoops that he did with GameFly to find that serial and the online activation is a problem in the fist place, since we are talking about installing and running a single player game (that does have a multiplayer component). The DRM on this game is what was preventing him from playing it and GameFly's incompetence was preventing him from getting around that.

doesn't matter. hard drives fail. fact is, if GOG ever shuts down, sooner or later you'll lose your games unless you keep several backups at any given time, and keep renewing them regularly. nobody is going to do that, especially not if you own a lot of GOGs. most people don't even have the space to back up all their digital games.

Well, that's just stupid then. Glad it is dying.

Nice generalization, but you're wrong. I definitely back everything up and I'm sure plenty of others here do to. I've got a local backup on the PC where the games are installed that gets refreshed every three months or so. That backup is further backed up to an external drive on a second PC, along with every other file and game I have, and I even have a large batch of the game installers written to DVD. That's around 320 GB of data all backed up multiple times. I have had hard drives fail, several of them in fact, and I have learned from experience not to trust them forever. With average hard drive sizes now in the terabyte range, plenty of people have plenty of room to back their stuff up and there is no reason, other than laziness or ignorance, for them not to.

I have a 1TB external that backs up all my game downloads, music and movies. I am reaching the limit on keeping all that stuff on my internal and external, so I will probably buy a second external and back everything up twice that way.

It's just common sense as we move more into a digital world.

Sorry to keep you waiting on the response. Been a busy couple of months... >_<

TryMedia can be hit or miss, really. I'm not wild about their pricing of old games, which seems to ALWAYS be 20 bucks (Plus 10 bucks if you want their worthless "1 year backup plan", which lets you re-download the game from their servers...).

Usually, I end up finding their portal through another store front trying to sell a game, but from what I can gather they do have their own site somewhere on the internets. Before GOG, I ended up snatching up RCT, RCT 2, and rFactor from them as well as Robot Arena 2. RCT 2 had corrupt sounds, however. Not sure if the other games they have will have the same issue. Speaking of which, their customer service on product issues will send you in circles.

If you can't find a game here and don't mind blowing money away, however, they can be somewhat helpful.

Gamefly had Gotham City Imposters up for a little less than $4 (I think it still is but the sale ends today).

I figured that was more than fair price and gave it a shot, didn't have any -real- problems with the download, install, or purchase (though it still was a bitch to find the serial key since it's so burred under layer after layer of bull shit, even when knowing where to look).

the sale reeks of desperation and pandering to get customers to buy from them, and it worked .... just like when I bought Bulletstorm from D2D for $7 (nice to see some things have remained consistent).

I think their real problem is that they are attempting to hold on to the rental format despite it being a near failure (especially when it comes to renting PC games), they need to drop that shit and go to a straight up digital store like how D2D was.