You may have a point regarding censorship and that is fair enough. I'm not a Steam user and not really familiar with recent 'goings on' there. My point was more related to DRM and on that front, Steam are at least not misrepresenting themselves.

Also, given recent events on GOG, they can't exactly claim any high ground over Steam on the censorship front either. So, I think my statement that 'GOG is no better than Steam' still holds. Whatever moral high ground they once had over Steam, they are quickly losing.

Almost like GOG went on censoring spree on Cyberpunk forum regarding all mentions of adult themes that were removed from the game, yeah. Pot, meet kettle.

You don't need the steam client to download, install or backup steam games. There is a simple command-line tool (like an extremely simplified gogrepo) that allows you to do just that.

And you don't need to strip anything from all the DRM-free games available on steam, of which there are many thousands, possibly more than there are on GOG.

And steam games tend to be much cheaper than GOG games, if you are willing to wait for bundles (e.g. Stellaris is currently $1 for the base game on Humble Bundle, while the cheapest it has ever been on GOG is $8).

Corporations = people. The most greedy people tend to flock to corporations (well, along with law firms and Wall Street ...)

Except that it is all a workaround. The day Steam openly supports drm-free downloads and clearly indicates which of their games are drm-free, I'll consider it a viable alternative.

Plus, I read an article lately about how they scr*wed over a bunch of artists with their Steam workshop which didn't make me exactly love them any more than I already did: https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive

Furthermore, they pioneered modern locked-in multiplayer. As far as I'm concerned, GOG lost an opportunity here to be a leader and take the moral high ground when they decided to emulate what Steam is doing instead of creating a more open multiplayer tooling ecosystem, but what they are doing with Galaxy is very much a reaction to what Steam is doing.

Guessing which games are DRM-free on GOG is also a workaround, maintained by the community. The day GOG openly and clearly indicates which of their games are fully DRM-free and which are not, I will consider it a viable alternative.

I don't think steam is a better alternative than GOG, except price wise, which is why I don't buy there either. I was replying to the goglodyte who seemed to suggest that GOG is.

Well, not that I approve of the practice of locking content away, but with GOG at least, I get something that runs DRM-free with pretty much everything except Gwent which is free.

It might not always be 100% of the content, but honestly, the drm-free version getting treated as a second-class citizen predates Galaxy. I recall that even before Galaxy, there was a lot of content that was Steam-only locked into Steam's client/libraries and I'm sure this is precisely why they have Galaxy now.

But is GOG slipping in its drm-free values? Sure. Were they ever into drm-free as a principle rather than a business decision to cater to a niche? I've been skeptical about that from the beginning honestly (I've seen enough to know that genuinely principled private corporations are an extreme rarity, its mostly about business).

However, there is something to be said about their initial business model have been solely based on being drm-free and them still openly, although grudgingly now I feel, providing support for that.

The day they won't anymore, well, I'll have my collection backed up and ready to play. I have enough to last me a lifetime and peer pressure (with regard to newer games) doesn't affect me much.

Like with capitalism, GOG is the worst X out there..except for all the rest.

Those who switch from GOG to steam DRM over our grievances somehow excuse and accept the same grievances from steam DRM. Hypocritical, to say the least.

Regarding GOG emulating steam..It would be a good idea, if they took the good things, but as it looks, they're only doing the bad things!?
How ...truculent...can you be..?

This might be of interest to many here. A statement by a GOG blue, reported by mqstout, clarifies GOG's new stance on DRM:

Thanks Lifthrasil. I am going to update the first page a little later this evening and I will quote it. If any quote validates the boycott and gives us some insight into GOG's current position, that one is surely it.

It's sad and pathetic... but at least it's a statement. The most pathetic part is perhaps that it needs to be reported back by a user, because no blue will have the decency to post this in either thread themselves. Had they come forward with this new policy openly in a proper news post months ago I'd probably still rant against it, but it would still leave me with more respect than I have for them now.

Also the "developers and publishers should be free to design and sell their games in a way they choose" is such a shitty line. You could use the same to justify any kind of DRM or other anti-consumer practice. And what a nice way to shift the blame away from yourselves and onto the devs and publishers.

Ah well, my total spending on GOG this year amounts to a little more than what I'd pay for a meal at McDonald's, and it looks like that's the kind of money I'll be spending here from now (not that I was ever as big a spender as many other users, but still).

Absolutely. The level of apathy on the part of a site that used to pride and differentiate itself based on having standards is simply stunning.

It's not a "new" stance, Gog never cared about multiplayer nor optional content, long before Galaxy said content was simply removed or disabled (heck it was even a common complaints back in the days.) but it never prevented a game having said optional content to be released here as long as it was optional and had minimal impact on the SP.

That's the reason why something like the Escapist issue or the Deus Ex one (and Northgard too most likely) gets fixed relatively rapidly but they don't care about a bunch of paint jobs in X4 that have no impact on the SP.

Like I said before, it's not really Gog changing it's stance, but more some peoples only noticing it today. Gog never was the DRM-free fundamentalists that some seems to think they were, that always had a more pragmatic approach.

I have just done some fairly extensive re-working of the first post. I have added a couple of updates after the 'issue list': the first one quotes that rather stunning recent reply from GOG staff and the second includes a link to a list of successful consumer boycotts, which is intended to be a standard answer to those that keep saying (erroneously) that a consumer boycott of GOG can't be effective.

I have also split the list item for 'DRMed games on GOG' into two separate ones - one for non-cosmetic DRM and another for locked cosmetics. That is to differentiate for the benefit of those that may not consider locked cosmetics to be DRM.