I can't believe that valve doesn't get some cut if you buy from these other resellers.

They get more people used to using there DRM client, that probably more than makes up for it.

That's my understanding and it's been confirmed many times. Steam's model is that developers/producers can generate their own keys (for free) and sell them through resellers without Steam's intervention and without Steam getting a cut. All the keys sold on Humble, Fanatical, etc., are not generated by Steam, but rather by the developers/publishers. The benefit to Steam is obvious --- it solidifies their stance as the biggest marketplace by far. It's similar to Epic's approach of giving games for free.

Just google "does steam get money from games sold on humble" (or similar), or simply see here:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

GOG does not allow developers/publishers to generate their own keys, which is why there are practically no GOG sales or bundles outside GOG.com.

Thanks, that was news to me.

If I understand correctly (and their policy on this hasn't changed in the many, many years since this was posted) they technically do allow developers/publishers to generate their own keys, it's just that they don't have an automated system for that.

Quote: "Here's how it works:

"Please give us X amount of keys."

We reply:

"OK, here you go."

That's about it, really. It would be silly to charge developers for keys to their own game :)"

Thanks. It seems to work wonderfully, judging by how many GOG keys are sold by developers/publishers as compared to Steam keys.

I recently approached Humble concerning a game that they published and which is available on both Steam and GOG to ask them if I could buy a GOG key instead of a Steam key. The answer was no.


There are also a few on Humble --- you can filter them by selecting "DRM = GOG" or click here:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/search?sort=bestselling&hmb_source=store_navbar&drm=gog

I wouldn't take ANYTHING M$ says seriously.
That comes from a company that has history of openly publicly contradicting their own statements over time.
Like for example they (some moderately short time ago) started claiming they "support Linux" xD

GREAT! ( /s )
Don't forget to share it with us once you finish it so that I can report you to appropriate authorities for breaking international scholar research ethics rules ;)
Perhaps you would make another news along already existing one with "certain" institution making "certain" commits to "certain" open source project ;)

You do remember that digital console refund rates correspond in no way to OVERALL console refund rates right?
Like, maybe CDPR has data from PSN store, but they DON'T have refund data from physical retailers (remember, you CAN refund physical console versions a lot of the time [depends on store policy but it's not unheard of]).

REALLY?
Make a life experiment then.
Since according to your words "1% is a low number" then why not try?
Cut 1% off your income every month, for example put it in a 15 km deep hole (so that you cannot get it as easily and temptingly as from a jar let's say).
Then watch how this "not much" affects your life.
Even if this is a "change money" for some people in a short run it will become a formidable pile in the long run.
Also, calling 1% a "low number" REGARDLESS of "1% of WHAT" is PROFOUNDLY stupid.
If 1 million people buy your product and 1% is dissitisfied it means some 10 k people have a problem.
Is this really not much for you?
If hypothetically 100 m people would buy CP2077 and "only" 1% would refund do you REALLY think the "1% is a low number"?

Knowing how inconsistent results placement is with DDG (that search engine is MOODY AF) I would personally be afraid to use it as a viable tool for researching somebody's involvment in such obscure forum such as this, let alone using that as a denominator of QUALITY of forum interactions of the screened person.

"We will fix it the next time we will UPGRADE forum CMS"
I wonder if you will get the joke :P

The funny thing is I was told by Blue in PMs at least once that I should not be paying attention to rep system, with some implications that it is not important. Meanwhile most people are aware that if your rep here tanks low enough you then loose some forum privilages (was it link posting?).
How ironic.

The term "flop" doesn't have to have anything to do with finances.
Something can still be a "flop" after selling ANY number of copies.
End of the story.

If you know certain (developer intended but not end user disabled) Steam runtime CVARS you can even pull this off with "normal" Steam app.

Are we talking SteamCMD?
That IS 100% official tool.

"Depot Downloader" then?
"official"? NO.
"pseudo"? No, just unofficial. It's nowhere near "pseudo official". It is just stright up UNOFFICIAL.
"Backdoor"? WHAT? Do you even know the meaning of this word? This accusation (that it is a "backdoor") is so laughable I don't feel like responding to it :P

Depot Downloader is based on steamkit lib, which is directly based on Valve's API that IS publicly documented.
And you are free to write your own tool with the same purpose based on said API should you desire so.
So:
1."Not public" - FALSE
2."Not perfectly tested"? WHAT? Like what? The API? It IS tested by Valve themselves. The "unofficial app"? Well then feel free to file bug reports. Go crazy.

Actually Steam has official API for querying info on depots and whatnot.
From which you can usually gather if a game has some DRM at all (IF you have enough technical know how to discover them by ONLY LOOKING AT FILES LISTS).
So TECHNICALLY Steam's way is more convenient as there is no such (publicly querable) API for GOG.
There is SteamDB, and it's EXCEPTIONALLY useful for "technically gifted people" while "GOGdb" is awfully BASIC at best.

Not entirely accurate. There were some significant abuse cases in the past and eventually Valve made some manual confirmations neccesary under some conditions (say unreasonable batch size).
Examples being that some developers were generating some batches of keys with official (given to Valve) purpose of giveaways while in reality selling them themselves to circumvent "Valve cut".

edit: fixed some errors

Regarding steamcmd: this is just the steam client on console for scripting; some people obivously never read the documentation nor tried it out. It also has really nothing to do with DRM.

Depot Downloader is unofficial, yes, but it also has the same requirements for downloading anything, namely a valid account and the proper licenses attached to it (even free stuff, which will be added at no cost to the account).

I smell some aversion against command line stuff and quickly shelving everything that is such as "hacker tools". My guess is that for someone "lgogdownloader", "gogrepoc" and "gogcli" are also such "backdoor tools".

(The) Steam (Store / Client) is in reality just a CONTENT DELIVERY SYSTEM, not a DRM. DRM may be tacked on by third-party DRM, enforced usage of Steamworks (by discretion of developers) and/or implementation of Steam CEG, but this is all optional. Many games on Steam may be archived and are playable by coping/moving them to another computer.

On the GOG side, the Steamworks equivalent is Galaxy, which is also present in the offline installers, but not enforced. This is the reason why there is the fat Galaxy.dll in the game directory in most games now.

I could agree nearly with everything you say but I fear that the point I am trying to explaing is not being clear enough.

Ok, Forget about "backdoor" or other pseudohacker words etc... Call it "circumvention". That is what I mean. The SteamCMD is a circumvention with some features not intended or perfectly tested as a proper tool for download officially a game. It is more a debug feature. something like a convenient steam console.
steamcmd does not necessarily have to work with every game, in the same manner that not every preinstallation necessarily have to work if it is moved to other computer.

Comparing a circumvention in the "classic Digital DRM app" with a voluntary will of offer games DRM free games in other store/app is force things to the absurd and a conscient example of self hoax or bad will.

What I mean is that I see here a lot of hypocresy. Boycott Steam but I use a circumvention even using external Steam Keys. Just because I am obsesed with purity and Clients.

Yes I agree with you about what a client is. It is not necessarily the DRM tool but the delivery system like the web explorer is for download an offline installer. But it's not me who is obsessed with gaming clients and how evil they are..

And finally just two more things:
Every game installed under Galaxy works directly from the game folder with or without Galaxy running. That is not in that way for every game under Steam. Steam Client and Galaxy are not the same.

A preinstallation is not a proper DRM free game. It is just a consequence.

Well I do now have to confess to buying one item (ADOM, at $9.74) though I would have spent another $20+ on the current weekend sale under normal circumstances.

That however has been my only purchase this year, and I intend to keep it that way (Drakensang 2 may be another exception) until we see more positive action from GOG on the issues raised here.

While some of the other posts here have been interesting, I would ask that people keep on-topic.

Yes. Thank you! I heartily agree with this wish.

First of all, it would be kind of nice if next time you would bother to quote me when responding to what I've said.
You know, just so I can at least have a chance of knowing that something is up without having to manually check each "there's UNKNOWN-relation-to-yours new post in this" thread on this exceptionally technologically dated forum system.

Now that that's out of the way let's get down to business.

If we're supposed to be ultra precise here then SteamCMD exists specificly for the purpose of deploying and managing multiplayer game servers (for games that do have self hosting package available within Steam system, which needless to say quite some do).
It doesn't have a GUI *even as an OPTION* because it is supposed to be able to run on headless servers (a large chunk of those multiplayer games' server instances allow running without ANY reliance on GPU rendering [or caculations for that matter] on the server side of things).
I think (It's been a while since I read THAT part of Valve's documentation) it is even written (the exact purpose I outlined) somewhere in said documentation officially.
Naturally many useless (from server admin perspective) functions are cut off but it's not like you can just install, update and so on the games/workshop with it.
It packs quite a formidable amount of functionality, including even some messaging system (personally I never managed to make it work but perhaps I was doing something wrong).
Note 2 things here:
- within SteamCMD you can actually login ANONYMOUSLY (ergo without a Steam account) tho that automatically cuts off large chunk of functionality (you should get the idea generally speaking, don't even think about "trying to download games for free" this way as that is simply not going to work)
- "normal" Steam software actually has a so called "developer console" tho it's functionality is vastly limited compared to SteamCMD (it also doesn't report command completion statuses which personally pissed me off a bunch of times) tho it *used to* be possible to download depots through it too

Let's just make one thing clear:
This (SteamCMD) is official tool, made by Valve, left officially in public, meant for server admins and power users.
BY ALL MEANS it is NOT *EVER* meant for NORMAL users and NEVER WILL BE.

Not entirely accurate but I don't want to go into some exceptionally technical details.
Depot Downloader is nothing like SteamCMD.
Sure it runs MOSTLY on the same API, but (apart from obviously trimming out 99% of the functionality SteamCMD has) some parts are actually different.

I don't mean to be picky but it is not entirely like that.
Here's a tip:
You can't obtain just about ANY free license like this.
The command used for requesting a license from a server used to not work on packages with type "No Cost" (while it did work for "Free on Demand" to give an example).
I used to nag Valve HQ to fix it few years ago. I would have to do a checkup (cannot make one for probably next few weeks since I'm busy) but I doubt they changed this part.

Welcome to the world of non-technological "commoners" people who highly despise anything that has "non clicky interface" :P :D
Personally I never understood that.
Imo text based tools often have far greater utility value (as in, for example less distractions and thus faster to read out software behaviour feedback).

Yeah, that's the thing, something most people CONSTANTLY miss.
The fact that Steam by itself does NOT enforce ANY form of DRM "by default".
Valve does not force developers to put ANY form of it into their games.
Valve does provide 2 things:
1.Entire backbone, quite extensive feature rich platform to distribute and handle content on.
Btw, majority seems to openly ignore that even storage alone costs LUDICROUS amounts of money on this scale, and the "Valve cut" isn't as unjustified as some people are actively trying to make public opinion think it is.
Any DRM being put into a game is ENTIRELY a decision of developer/publisher. NOT Valve.
Effectively people should NOT make the connection of Steam == DRM or "this game has DRM in it" == "oh, Valve bad".
2.TOOLSETS, namely Steamworks, Steam Stub DRM, Steam CEG DRM (generally seen as abandoned at this point, personally I am not aware of ANY game with it released in the past several years), and a bunch of other things. Valve gives developers OPPORTUNITY to use them tho the decision is left entirely to developers discretion (there are totally games on Steam that have literally NO DRM at all after downloading).

To be precise direct equivalent to Steamworks API would be Galaxy API, NOT Galaxy SOFTWARE ("client"), just API.
Here I would like the public to note 2 non obvious things:
1.Steamworks itself is NOT a DRM (this is something MAJORITY seems to be confused about and mistakes it for a DRM while it is NOT one)
2.Games with Steamworks embedded into them can still be made to run without Steam itself. Curious right? Not quite if you are deep with the technical documentation. The cases of games with Steamworks that retain the functionality even running without Steam are rare tho (after all most developers seem to not go very deep into documentation).

You are really mixing all kind of stuff here A LOT.
It's not even remotely circumvention type of software.
For that to apply it would have to circumvent SOMETHING. While it does NOT.
It is quite literally just a tool using commands that are not supposed to (hey, the entire interface even) be used by common end users (just DEVELOPERS *and* multiplayer server admins).
It is only and actually just that (unlike SteamCMD which has WAAAAY more functionality).

There seems to be a common misconception that boycott == "everything or nothing".
It's really not like that.
Even if you decide to buy less, or not utilise certain features (say using SteamCMD over normal Steam) it CAN already be a boycott.
Side note:
I don't personally boycott Steam PER-THIS-THREAD'S-OP-STANDARDS.
But that does not mean I accept everything on it. I don't. There is plenty of things wrong there. I recognize them, and try to force changes, I personally (I don't mean physically) talked to some Valve HQ people and you CAN make them change things if you try hard enough.

This isn't correct at all.
Web browser exists in number of flavours serving the same purpose of accessing SEVERAL systems.
Meanwhile you can use ONE (if excluding SteamCMD for a second) software to access Steam's content delivery system.
Same goes for GOG actually. Putting offline installers aside - if you want to utilise Galaxy features there is only one piece of software that can allow that (this isn't particularly obvious as for example Steam is partially open source, API is mostly publicly documented and THEORETICALLY open source replacement software could be eventually made for it).

Pretty much incorrect.
I know of at least one case that DID require Galaxy.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - the season pass content required Galaxy and / or (this behaviour was inconsistent between people but common denominator was either) internet to actually work at all.

One could argue that "DRM free after downloading through SteamCMD" is almost dead on close to "downloaded GOG offline installers with web browser".
For both you only need to do that once, and you do need network connectivity for both.
The only difference is that for "Steam DRM free games" you need to use dedicated piece of software (SteamCMD, very portable software btw, doesn't require installing PER SE) whereas with browsers you have multiple choices (still, you cannot just curl / wget it from GOG servers as the API GOG uses is somewhat intrusive).

Yes, I agree. It would be nice if we could please keep the thread on topic.

Of course GOG finally closed the Tonight we Riot thread because they are clueless hypocrits.

"It got out of hand!"

The hell did they think was going to happen by giving away a propaganda game from a commie developer? And on May Day? That the forum would break out into sunshine and kittens? I swear GOG must be operating in some bizarro dimension at this point. They sure are making it easy to not spend money here though I tell you what.