The manual that was removed my have been added after the fact as an update, which happens often when site users provide different versions of the game manual.

And it was.
German manual was added in 2018.

That's also a very good idea!
That way only the real game owners would be informed of the issues involved.

A warcraft III patch removed a voice line from a human unit. probably to avoid a lawsuit from GW.

My Two Cents on this whole issue:

We are never going to 100 percent OWN anything in the digital space, but GOG, YOU REALLY NEED TO WORK ON COMMUNICATION AND CLARITY, the fact there was no warning this was going to happen was insane.

Fair enough, though as the user below you stated it was added around 2 years ago.....yet no DMCA/etc until now.....one would think the IP holders would either let GOG host it to be nice or charge them a bit to let GOG still host it, and also wonder why they didn't notice it until now.

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Unless they did it BEFORE removing such so people could DL such before the removal, this wouldn't help much...though it would allow some to know what happened and why.
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This was by me(I posted it and it seems you marked it as another user), so i'll reply a bit: Eh, I say GOG should've found a way to let current owners keep it and let new buyers only get the cut version.....and if others sued GOG should stand up sometimes.....GOG backing down so much is why we have lost several of GOG's founding "pillars" over time, aas well as other things.

As I said before: Gog keeps backing down/giving in to partner demands and keeps weakening it's position, leading to situations like this where they have to slyly remove stuff without informing owners of said content or removing games from the store with little notice(like the most recent: Battle Princess Madelyn).

If GOG keeps acquiescing to ip holder/partner demands I think people should (sadly) expect more of this sort of thing in the future.

(One example of how GOG has little control: The store pages text blurbs/pics/videos cannot be changed much[with exceptions like spelling mistakes/stuff that might glitch the site/etc) due to GOG/partner agreements...the store pages are mostly under the control of the ip holders for each game/movie)

Technically GOG is removing stuff from libraries on a daily basis, because there is no rollback to earlier versions for people without Galaxy (as in all Linux users) since the old versions are replaced with new ones. This affected me heavily with Gothic 2 even before Galaxy even existed, since they removed the package that enabled installing the game without the expansion that breaks the game's balance quite massively.
They offered me a download from a fileserver, but later I noticed that it's just the English version and I won't play a German game in English for obvious reasons.

They KINDA HAVE to? like I dont know why people dont get this. if they do not agree to their terms THEY CANNOT SELL SHIT HERE. Steam is the same way. It sucks I agree but this is not an ideal world, so ideal terms are something that do not exist.

"The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copyright is the exemption from direct and indirect liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries. This exemption was adopted by the European Union in the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000. The Information Society Directive 2001 implemented the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty in the EU."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
and
https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/European-DMCA-Takedown-process

it sucks, but there you have it - basically the same thing, maybe just another name for it
i agree with this. a bad experience capped off with good communication and customer care results in a much better outcome than silence.

Also for those wondering about the WC3 patch I mentioned:

In the initial release version of WC3 the Human Gryphon Rider had a line that said "This warhammer cost 40k....hehehehehe" and it was removed in a patch, I dont know WHAT patch as at the time I did not have frequent internet access, but when The Frozen Throne came out, it patched the game and removed the line. so it could have been before that.
I find many of GOG's communication issues quite annoying and concerning, and have made my opinions on them clear on these forums several times and several criticisms of GOG before (I usually get downvoted to fuck for them though)

yeah, i haven't really been around the forums here that long (been on gog a while, but only recently on the forums) but there is a definite lack of blue posts around.
it's nice to see new mods coming in. hopefully that channel of communication is opening up slowly. we'll have to wait and see.

definitely need a social account manager to handle their tweeters and forums. i seem to remember there being a couple of "omfg, you did not just tweet that" moments from gog a while back? and since then they've been more shut down comm-wise? i don't know the whole story though, i didn't really follow it. i have too much real life drama to also get tangled up in internet drama too.

They should still be able to let old owners keep such like they let them keep bought games that get delisted.....people come here for complete uncensored DRM free games, not games with pieces missing.

Musing: I wonder, if gog had to chop a third of a game out(various maps and levels) would people be ok with it? :|

depends on the game for me, if it was a mp component on a SP-focused game, I am not ashamed to say, yea I would be ok with it.

That's what they wanted removed? They must have had sticks up their behinds to ask for that to be removed.

Me as well....some are blindly loyal to GOG, it seems.

I meant SP levels/areas/etc.

1. Games Workshop is notoriously litigious.

2. Painfully loyal, you can still like a store and acknowledge its flaws, no one is perfect.

3. Yeah then no.

GOG/steam have lawyers too, and could stall them in court(if they had to stand their ground on something at some point, I mean) until said rights holder gave up. Look at Eat Sh*t Bob, the musical, for example, on YT(warning: there's much crude language in that vid)....a different type of suit, yes, but they took the threats and laughed in their faces....at some point GOG has to stand up for itself and the customers here or they'll keep being seen as a pushover(legally) and be a bit lesser in some customer's eyes.

There are some here who hold every GOG choice as close to sacrosanct(or so it seems) and if anyone criticizes GOG they act like that person wants to take GOG in an alley and beat the site with blackjacks.

That is what I mean......at some point we(GOG and customers) have to draw a line and say NO......even if it's not something that matters to us, but does to someone else....the line must be drawn somewhere and at some point.