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As others have mentioned, this is because 3D Realms are using Digital River for software distribution, not because of something 3DR has deliberately done themselves.
You get this "download insurance" option not only with 3DR but with a lot of shareware providers who have opted for DR over another platform like Steam or Impulse. I'm fairly sure that EA used Digital River for their old store, too.
DR have been very long established (it has its roots in Walnut Creek, CDROM.com, and SImTel), and I assume that a low cost per download is why people keep signing up for it - even though it's us, the paying customers, who suffer as a result.

Well, there's an easy solution for that: don't be a paying customer of theirs. I'm not, even though I'm itching to get a hold of Death Rally again. I sure hope GOG can cut a deal with Apogee about expanding the catalog.

http://www.regnow.com/
there using the REGNOW platform from DR. The company needed to cut costs and yahoo needing a staff to babysit it they went for this store. if the new apogee needs more cashflow to make it's games Apogee LTD will give apogee LCC more titles death rally may not hit GOG if Remedy who owns the ip does not want it here we have to rember apogee/3DR owns very little of the IP rights to the games they sell. the ID stuff would need the permission of id and or Activision who has the ip rights to distribute id games right now. a good amount of the apogee library is owned by who ever made the game.

So frustrating with these rights holders issues etc...
grr, I have all the games from Apogee and also 8GB of DOS games, not to mention my real collection of hard copies of games like Terra Nova, but I want to actually buy them on here, that's the main issue for me.
In fact I own some of the titles I bought on here already, but I like having them on here and supporting this place as well as supporting the dev's, but there is no way I'm putting up with nasty shopping sites like the one we are all dogging on.
I'm sure that feeling is mutual amongst us GOGers.

well that may have let to the downfall of 3dr just read the jobs page http://www.3drealms.com/gethired.html
http://www.3drealms.com/press/devrule.html
the way apogee did games was basically it came out when they were happy with it insted of a set date. take two more or less gave them a choice realease what you have by this quarter or no funding. apogee decided to not put out a game unworthily of an apogee logo and shut down 3dr until people play there way.

What I expected was to get an email after my purchase promising that my download would be available in 1 day. Then get another email a week later promising that it would indeed be available 2 weeks from this email. Then a week from the last email I'd get an email full of screenshots of the game that I ordered telling me how awesome it's going to be when I finally get it. Then 2 months later I'll get an email saying that I'll receive it in 6-8 weeks. Then finally on week 7 of the 6-8 week promise I'll get an email saying they're shutting down but they've got movies of my game in action.
That's what I expect from 3d realms.

+1

Ah, OK. So there is a thread about this. Good thing I looked because I was about to make one.
However, the amount of whining in this thread is incredible. Maybe it's because I'm a junkie for old DOS games, and ESPECIALLY Apogee's games, but I like the new prices, and the fact that all of these games have new installers, DOSBox wrappers, icons, PDF manuals, and hint sheets where applicable. I'm fiercely loyal to Steam and GoG, but I've also been waiting to buy the whole Apogee/3D Realms catalogue digitally for years and years, and this is the best opportunity yet.
Charging for an extended download service sucks, yes, but on the other hand, these aren't gigantic games, people. All of my downloads go to a backup drive, and I can very simply move an extra copy of the install file(s) to my external backup hard drive and/or burn them to a CD-R.
And also, with all the different creators and licensing issues between all of Apogee's different games, I doubt we'll see a complete pack on Steam or GoG. I'd love to be proven wrong, though. =)