If Activision could get bought, then Sony or Nintendo could get bought. If Atari and Sega can leave the console space, then Sony or Nintendo or Microsoft can leave the console space and shut down their services (which are also used by physical games).  

You are right, I think they can't use the term owning legally in the agreement as even physical media will still use the term licensing when selling you the game, book, etc, even as they already have used "yours" as a term in the publicity as explicity said they can't take away your games from you because you do have the offline installer and executable files, and at least that it is still claimed in the purchase step to this day, which is why I've been saying "GoG claims to sell you the game", as they did multiple times before, but yes, it's technically still a license, as physical media also is. They claim you get to keep it tho.

Just to ilustrate.

Printscreen from the purchase page.

Old print from reddit on them claiming you can "keep it yours forever".

Had to make it a separated post because VGChartz is messy with handling image in quote and edits sometimes and didn't let me post the above in the same reply.

If you switch from Windows to Linux like I did all my GoG games are unplayable lol. I didn't have much and I am sure it will eventually support Mint.

They're probably mostly playable but mostly not by any means supported by GOG itself (some games on GOG have official Linux support, just not via Galaxy - at least yet). Instead, you probably need something like Wine or some other compatibility layer (might also be possible to add them to Steam as non-Steam games and play via Proton, but I'm not sure about that). It's probably not terribly inconvenient, but it's definitely an additional hurdle. Still, if you want to be able to play your GOG games on Linux instead of having to purchase them again, you probably mostly can if you really want to.

I hope it gets better though. I'm seriously considering switching to Linux myself after Windows 11, because Windows 11 is the worst Windows I've used by far, and I have little faith in Windows in the long term.

Windows 11 killed my SSD. It was crashing like crazy post update somewhere in 2025. Windows 11 is spyware. I was so done. I never had an OS piss me off as much as Win 11. Even pre updates fucking everything up. I went with Mint and been fine. 

I'm already using Linux everywhere I don't have games, which isn't much, but it's something: my laptop and work. The only reason I haven't switched over is the lacking game support, but even it's pretty good at this point, so if Microsoft continues like this, I might just bite the bullet and go full Linux. It's unbelievable how Microsoft made previously perfectly working features worse, and even the improvements, like tab support in File Explorer, somehow either make it worse or don't work properly. Of course all this is coated in us losing more and more control over our own hardware, with increasing amount of telemetry (like you said but more bluntly). At least Windows has been very stable for me for a long time now, but so many other things suck now.

own means the ones you download via torrent

True. But the GOG games are DRM free and if they are single player (which I play mostly anyway) without internet connection. So if you downloaded them from GOG and saved them they cannot stop you from playing - or even know about it.

Some indies support Linux, but not all do. And while in theory you could set up things things Proton yourself, it sure as hell is not as easy as Steam does that for you. For old games GOG often let's you download a complete setup with an emulator like DosBox, including a Linux version. Maybe something like this they could do in the future with Wine as well. But that will be a lot of work, work Steam already did with Proton.