That's actually a very good point :)

You can't go around making sense on the internet. That's crazy talk. Everybody must stick to one store for everything. People are too lazy to use more than one. I bet most of the people complaining about having to use more than one DRM-free store don't archive what they buy.

who is crying about having more DRM free stores?

I would love to have access to a crowd of small stores for DRM-free games rather than 2~3 big ones. Then I would not need to worry that much about moves such as the introduction of GOG Galaxy.

Another benefit is that it would allow each store to specialize in a specific genre: one selling only adventure games, another selling only strategy games, etc.

In my ideal world we would not even have any store for DRM-free games, each developer would provide DRM-free installers for their own games. For browsing we would have websites dedicated to listing games, and for each game linking to the developer website where you can buy it.

DRM at first I thought added some value to the product to deter casual copying. I quote Hachette Book Group's motto "The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce creative works that enrich our culture". DRM was meant to mimic book production as it costs money to print books, hence it should cost money to "make" copies. A game that has frustrating DRM isn't meant to last long like a poorly maintained book and would "expire" at the end of its term. What is the ultimate DRM? A bad game without DRM is still a bad game, which is a form of DRM in itself is quality control. Being DRM-Free is sort of like an honor system. Always Online DRM, Streaming service DRM (Amazon Luna) and now I am reading into how AI/LLM is being used to develop such stronger DRM than us humans could create.

The people that only want to use one store.

the problem with zoom is that it has no games, this year so far they barely added new games and its mostly updates to what they already had.

The problem of Zoom is not the size, the quality, the future or the number of games. All is fine, and the number of titles is solvable.

The problem are a misunderstood competition, hostilty, victimism and fifth column ridiculous practices.

All of that is irrelevant and I am still interested in three or four games of their store.

But I want to be focused in one main store I am comfortable with, and a legit couple more to not have problems with my card. Problems that I had in the near past when I puchased in diferent sites I was mot traditionally focused in. Now I prefer to be in the safe side.

I think most people would love to buy from one favorite store. But that is not possible nowadays.

Another issue holding them back is game sales. I was about to buy Seal of Evil and Dangerous Waters on ZP, but now it's pointless since GOG also released the games with a great deal.

I have seen smaller DD stores have at least one big game sale each year. Not sure why ZP can't do that.

ZP might hate GOG, but at least GOG is still bringing us games regularly with multiple sales a year.

Lots of people only want to use one store because they want everything in one place. That doesn't make sense to me, if you prefer DRM-free. As long as there are offline installers and you're planning to back them up then why does it matter what store(s) they came from? If someone isn't going to back up the game, or they refuse to play anything that doesn't have achievements then why use a DRM-free store at all?


I just want the best version(s) of DRM-free games wherever I can find them.

They really do need to implement big sales at least once or twice a year. Sometimes GOG sells a a game for 1/10 of the price that ZP does.

If overpriced, Matrix Games/Slitherine can do it at least once a year. ZP can handle it. They could have a couple hundred games at 50% off for a winter sale or something like that.

I think it would benefit them.

Hot take perhaps, but I think it's just culture clash. GOG (and not necessarily the almighty GOGBear) are Polish and therefore have a nonchalant way of focusing on keeping their own dystopian ways alive, while ZP has clear US origins where it's more about who-knows-who, making noise, getting in the face of your competition and capitalism. Well, maybe I haven't picked my words quite right, but I definitely would expect more drama and corporate head-butting coming from the US.

P.S.: Just to be clear, I'm not excusing any of their behavior, past or present, I'm only saying a large part of it is hardly all that surprising, all things considered.