I 100% completely doubt GOG will ever shut down for good, as in, "Dear users, please download all your shit before [date of death] as you won't be able to anymore after that, sorry for the inconvenience but alas we had a good ride, byebye". Worse that can happen is that they'll get eaten up by one of the bigger ones like Epic or Tencent. Depending on how that goes it'll be a fate worse than death, but at least you'll still be able to reach your acquired library.
As for the ongoing discussion, I think GOG's biggest problem is that it cannot decide what it wants to be. Remember when GOG used to stand for "Good Old Games"? Well they very unabashedly swept that under the rug at some point a few years back, now GOG stands for "it-doesn't-really-mean-anything-actually,-move-along-sirs-nothing-to-see-here!". Sure enough it still is a pretty decent store to grab hundreds of oldies but they don't seem to even try to market themselves as that kind of place, in fact I have the slight impression they're ashamed of having this label, it's almost as if they feel being a retro store isn't COOL enough.
Then you have the second leg of GOG's tripod, providing a "curated selection of games". As many have already pointed out that's just bullshit, they let in lots of shit and let out many good stuff. This is currently the Page 1 of GOG's newly released games:
Someone forgot to tell Ò.ó_KrzysztofChan_xD that his personal weaboo faggotry should not be a part of their curation standards.
Finally, there's the DRM-free side. I personally like it a lot, as probably most of you here but make no mistake, the absolute majority doesn't really care about it, swing the COME CONSOOM shiny plate in their faces and they'll create their accounts on the 79th client, just like they're already doing with the streaming services. A few years ago you'd think people would be super pissed off if Netflix gets stripped off many of their best shows and each goes to a different (paid) streaming platform. Fast forward to present day and the hordes of retards are happily paying their subscriptions on 3-8 different ones. If anything the last 10 years have showed us that yes, companies can get away with lots of shit, people might complain in the beginning but they get used to eating the shit eventually. That's not to mention the whole pandemic situation.
So, to conclude, what is GOG? Is it a retro store but too shy to admit, or too cool to be the store for the old gamer? Is it the most competently curated store, except it really isn't? Is it the ultimate lair of DRM-free games, in a world where the majority doesn't really care about that? At the end of the day it feels as if GOG's somewhat the vegan, hipster version of Steam. Don't get me wrong, I like GOG, but perhaps I just like my "interpretation" of it: it's the place that provides me with stuff that's not readily available anywhere else, like half of Sierra's catalogue for instance, or SMAC, the Gold Box games, Elvira, Blood Omen, etc. That's the slice of GOG that I like a lot, it's the slice that I made myself as its consumer. When it comes to the image that GOG provides you though, there's hardly anything to appreciate other than the DRM-free stuff, which is a weak selling point for the larger masses.