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General discussionHow many of you actually boycott Steam games?(1376 posts)(1376 posts)
(1376 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 31, 2021
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kai2: ... GOG's inability to acquire (and keep) a number of games I'm interested in keeps me updating the Steam client and searching. Plus, Steam has active groups that talk about turn-based games and military games -- and that keeps me going back for the group info and conversations and browsing the library and their recommendations.

To quote Brokeback Mountain... "I don't know how to quit you!" (Steam)
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Canuck_Cat: My strategy is to take the games slow (100%ing them), finding hidden gems, stretching the value of the games by community discussions, and distracting myself with other activities. I can probably get it down to 1-2 games per month at my rate. There are plenty of indie titles I wouldn't have touched on Steam given the AAA catalogue that I'm appreciating right now on GOG.
This is probably the best approach. My backlog is so huge, without considering the perma-installed games that I always go back to, that I really have to find a game that I know I can sink hours into, or it's a subject matter that I'm really into, and it's already underserved. That said, sale times come around, across all platforms, I do go through my wishlists and make decisions about how much time I'm actually going to have, to dedicate to anything new, before I make a purchase.
Posted May 31, 2021
I dont buy many games on Steam anymore, but i wish gog have also more multiplayr games, like battlefield or good old Age of Empires, some oldschool need for speed...

I totaly boycot Call of duty/activision/blizzard games because they are ridiculous expensive and mostly interested just to play single player campaign in them.

Also no epic bs, ubisoft/origin just few good titles. ItchIO not sigle game interested me unfortunately...

We need more AAA games on gog.
Posted May 31, 2021
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anothername: I used to just ignore it. But since a few years ago some games I still really like to buy/play arrived as steam only (Civ5, FO:NV & Skyrim as most dominant examples) I'd say yes, I boycott it. But I also don't pirate these games regardless of how interesting they sound.

Its not just steam, its all singleplayer games with online DRM.
*9 years later*

Well, at least New Vegas managed to arrive here ;)

Yo, 9y younger me: You're a fat slob!

thehehehe, pwnd myself :P
Posted June 01, 2021
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haidynn: It's odd that LiquidOxygen80 seems not to grasp that all the tribalism problems have everything to do with the intentional divisions created by Steam in the first place. You can't actively be against the tribalism if you don't recognize just how toxic Steam has been to the gaming community in order to secure a maximum amount of profit and make it harder for games to sell outside the Steam infrastructure.

Just like with Macintosh Fanatics who don't understand that the entire structure of Apple's business model is the complete control of the market at the expense of personal liberties. Only a company like apple can get away with releasing an update that intentionally breaks phones that use third party digitizers (happens when you break your screen and don't go to the Apple Store to pay extra and get it fixed)... and Apple can do that because they've so greatly brainwashed their followers into believing everything Apple does is for the good of the customer, not for the good of Apple's profit.

Tribalism starts because people stop seeing corporate entities as these profit driven beasts and claim "well GoG is fighting for DRM free games" instead of "Well GoG is fighting to maximize its profit in a tough market dominated by Steam." But the reality is that it's the lack of any actual choice that starts the tribalism... after all, Apple hyped Macintosh for years as being the cool kid OS since the only other major consumer OS was Windows. If there was actual competition in the OS market, that "We're the cool kids and those are the old people" game wouldn't have worked.

It's the lack of consumer choice and the brainwashing that the individual platforms do to keep it that way that drives tribalism.
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LiquidOxygen80: That's because Steam wasn't tried and true when it launched. Yes, they tied it directly to Half-Life 2, but there were a literal plethora of companies out there who could have looked at their model after and followed suit, and did not. Steam got where it is due to lack of competition from the selfsame companies who were bigger than Valve and chose instead to place their products on their platform. At its inception, there were many, MANY companies who could have taken a crack at it after Steam's success post HL2, with major properties they could have done the same with. Tribalism has existed long before Steam and it will exist long after. Before storefronts, it was consoles, before consoles, it was cars, before that, it was religion. Don't be foolish. It's in human nature to divide, but that doesn't mean something as ultimately meaningless as store choice should be one of them. What Apple does and has, however, is actively enforced, something that Valve doesn't do. Hell, comparatively speaking, Valve's approach is pretty hands-off.

Again, don't get me wrong. I despise Apple as a company and I don't purchase their products, primarily because you were spending exorbitant amounts of money for a brand, not a solid product. I'm not a Stan for Gabe, by any means, but Steam frequently suffers from the atypical "hate us 'cause they ain't us" mentality from those who don't like their hold on their market. Can Steam do things better? Absofuckinlutely. No one's perfect, and anyone viewing any corporation like it's an individual entity needs to stop and examine their lives.

What I've been saying all along seems to be getting missed: Do your research. Look at each store's EULAs, partners, owners, and pricing, extras, etc, and make your decisions based on what actually effects your individual user scenario. Wasting your time judging the people who shop Steam is like sitting outside of Kroger and yelling at people because they don't shop at Walmart, Giant Eagle, Piggly Wiggly, Meijers, Community Markets, or whatever other regional supermarkets you have. Ultimately, if what you're wanting is more people to take notice of and use GOG, don't you think that yelling at the people who are still customers here is going to result in them simply not bothering to engage, thus, sending more paying consumers to other platforms? That whole scenario lacks common sense and is counterproductive.
Steam launched forcing people to download steam to get the products they wanted, there were games sold in stores that didn't have a CD in them... just a steam key. Steam then became the defacto way of getting multiplayer and more games began selling as steam exclusives. Steam then began attacking the modding community by introducing steam workshop. Now if you didn't buy the game on steam you couldn't download any mods. Steam has been using monopoly antics since they began. Steam used to have a separate forum and store, consolidating this allowed them to add in more dividing features like the "actually owns the game" mouse which has people constantly at other people's throats if they use steam forums without buying the game on steam.

If you're unwilling to admit that something as ultimately meaningful as store choice is a reason to divide, you're part of the problem. Steam wants to divide the community, their actions are all to maximize their own profit. Division is good for profit.



You're really missing the entire point here. Lack of competition breeds division. You see it in politics as well. When people don't have an actual choice tensions build as does hostility. People need to stop thinking as these corporate entities as their friends, GoG would start selling DRM if they thought they could grow their marketshare by doing so. Corporations are all about profit and once you recognize this then you can see the terrible things they're doing to us to keep us divided and at each other's throats.
Posted June 01, 2021
I wouldn't say I have boycotted Steam games but I can say that I almost never purchase from them directly. Their sales aren't that great and so I get Steam keys elsewhere. Also yes more than ever I can buy games elsewhere too at better prices. The people that crap on all these new distribution platforms make me sick as more choices = better for the consumer.
Posted June 02, 2021
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LiquidOxygen80: That's because Steam wasn't tried and true when it launched. Yes, they tied it directly to Half-Life 2, but there were a literal plethora of companies out there who could have looked at their model after and followed suit, and did not. Steam got where it is due to lack of competition from the selfsame companies who were bigger than Valve and chose instead to place their products on their platform. At its inception, there were many, MANY companies who could have taken a crack at it after Steam's success post HL2, with major properties they could have done the same with. Tribalism has existed long before Steam and it will exist long after. Before storefronts, it was consoles, before consoles, it was cars, before that, it was religion. Don't be foolish. It's in human nature to divide, but that doesn't mean something as ultimately meaningless as store choice should be one of them. What Apple does and has, however, is actively enforced, something that Valve doesn't do. Hell, comparatively speaking, Valve's approach is pretty hands-off.

Again, don't get me wrong. I despise Apple as a company and I don't purchase their products, primarily because you were spending exorbitant amounts of money for a brand, not a solid product. I'm not a Stan for Gabe, by any means, but Steam frequently suffers from the atypical "hate us 'cause they ain't us" mentality from those who don't like their hold on their market. Can Steam do things better? Absofuckinlutely. No one's perfect, and anyone viewing any corporation like it's an individual entity needs to stop and examine their lives.

What I've been saying all along seems to be getting missed: Do your research. Look at each store's EULAs, partners, owners, and pricing, extras, etc, and make your decisions based on what actually effects your individual user scenario. Wasting your time judging the people who shop Steam is like sitting outside of Kroger and yelling at people because they don't shop at Walmart, Giant Eagle, Piggly Wiggly, Meijers, Community Markets, or whatever other regional supermarkets you have. Ultimately, if what you're wanting is more people to take notice of and use GOG, don't you think that yelling at the people who are still customers here is going to result in them simply not bothering to engage, thus, sending more paying consumers to other platforms? That whole scenario lacks common sense and is counterproductive.
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haidynn: Steam launched forcing people to download steam to get the products they wanted, there were games sold in stores that didn't have a CD in them... just a steam key. Steam then became the defacto way of getting multiplayer and more games began selling as steam exclusives. Steam then began attacking the modding community by introducing steam workshop. Now if you didn't buy the game on steam you couldn't download any mods. Steam has been using monopoly antics since they began. Steam used to have a separate forum and store, consolidating this allowed them to add in more dividing features like the "actually owns the game" mouse which has people constantly at other people's throats if they use steam forums without buying the game on steam.

If you're unwilling to admit that something as ultimately meaningful as store choice is a reason to divide, you're part of the problem. Steam wants to divide the community, their actions are all to maximize their own profit. Division is good for profit.

You're really missing the entire point here. Lack of competition breeds division. You see it in politics as well. When people don't have an actual choice tensions build as does hostility. People need to stop thinking as these corporate entities as their friends, GoG would start selling DRM if they thought they could grow their marketshare by doing so. Corporations are all about profit and once you recognize this then you can see the terrible things they're doing to us to keep us divided and at each other's throats.
I don't believe we have any common ground to continue this conversation, because I don't believe you're capable of seeing any logic aside from "thing bad!"
Posted June 02, 2021
While I doubt I would ever completely boycott steam, it is becoming increasingly clear w/ big tech that compromise is not an option. If you put up with the things they do they'll just take more and more control. One only needs to look at social media, windows 10, iOS... Part of the reason I gave GOG a second look in recent times as I moved all my accounts away from gmail and I remembered I had a GOG account at all. Steam has never been draconian in my view despite what people may say. And it does have value-added services. But it is still not ideal.

Regardless, there's maybe 1-2 AAA titles a year that are worth looking at these days which are the games that refuse to go anywhere but steam, and indies seem more than happy to support GOG. As such, I am here, and will be here for the forseeable future. I'm going to pick the DRM-free (and sales tax free) platform every time when there's a choice.
Posted June 02, 2021
I don't boycott it for two simple reasons:

1) Some games are exclusive to them
and
2) They make purchasing games WAY easier for me than GOG does

If GOG received all of the same games and if they had prepaid wallet/gift cards in retail stores like Steam has, I'd absolutely switch over to GOG exclusively. Steam and Valve are garbage, IMO. Yes, it's cool to have easy access to games and great community features but with Galaxy, GOG is getting really close to Steam in terms of features. I wish I could switch to GOG only, though. I love CD Projekt and I love owning the games I purchase. Unfortunately, it's really hard for me (a non-credit card holder) to buy games via GOG and there are a couple Steam exclusives that I can't/don't want to live without.
Post edited June 02, 2021 by JakobFel
Posted June 02, 2021
I’ve not used it as my main site for so long at this point it’s less of a boycott more of a preference for GOG....except for Squenix games. Since they’ll never ever come here or any other DRM-Free store. Especially when i’m in JP region lol.

I bought Dragon Quest 11 the other day and it’s been super worth.
Posted June 02, 2021
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pkk234: I’ve not used it as my main site for so long at this point it’s less of a boycott more of a preference for GOG....except for Squenix games. Since they’ll never ever come here or any other DRM-Free store. Especially when i’m in JP region lol.

I bought Dragon Quest 11 the other day and it’s been super worth.
I'm this way with the clients. I still regularly visit different stores looking for good deals but client-wise, I almost exclusively use Galaxy 2.0 nowadays unless it's a new game that's really demanding on system resources.
Posted March 15, 2022
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I haven't purchased a single steam game since it's inception what 20 years ago.
However I feel with the path GOG has chosen and steams linux support direction, as well as the direction the windows walled garden is going in; that in the future I will have to choose steam as the only viable store where my dollar counts.
Posted March 15, 2022
low rated
I quit buying from them years ago when their lefty authoritarian mod staff started cracking down on free speech and censoring any criticism of their site or forums. I've done the same with GoG as well. There's other ways to procure games after all.
Posted March 15, 2022
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illiousintahl: the direction the windows walled garden is going in
I'm woefully ignorant of the Windows ecosystem at this point as I use Windows only as a glorified console to install & play my games (which Windows 10 does competently, though the mandate is admittedly not very demanding).

You got some indications that it's getting worse? I thought it was actually getting a bit better (in terms of getting Linux stuff to run on Windows anyways).

With Windows becoming increasingly an office-oriented platform (given that increasingly, people use smart phones and tablets for their more casual needs), wouldn't it be economical suicide for them to become too much of a walled garden where you can't run non-vetted software?

At an office, if a critical piece of software (sometimes internally developed for internal usage) the business needs can't run on the platform, it is a problem and Windows does have competition from MacOS. Granted though that for a lot of use-cases, the client-server paradigm with a browser renders the issue moot, but I'm still noticing a fair share of thick clients whenever I encounter internal bureaucracy. I can't imagine them wanting to vet all those clients with Microsoft.
Post edited March 15, 2022 by Magnitus
Posted March 15, 2022
My stance is:
* I will not buy any game from a DRM-encumbered store like Steam, period. In fact, I will avoid having any accounts on such a store. (It does not matter if the steam version doesn't actually have any DRM checks; I will still refuse to buy from there, and it doesn't count as a DRM-free version to me.)
* If it weren't for the fact that nearly every notable payed PC game (in particular, nearly every GOG game) gets a steam release, I would do a soft boycott (girlcott) of such games, de-prioritizing such games over games that only exist in DRM-free versions. Unfortunately, it is not feasible to do this at this point. (The "soft" part of this is that I might get such a game if I really want it, or if I want to support the developer, but will otherwise de-prioritize such games.)
* Keys for steam (and other DRM-encumbered stores) have negative value. If I have a choice between a purchase that includes a key and an otherwise identical purchase that does not include said key. I will go for the latter. Also, I will not give away any keys I do end up getting. This does mean that, back when Humble Bundle was still acceptable, I would pay a smaller amount just to avoid getting the steam key.
* Bundles that include both DRM-free and DRM-encumbered content are not acceptable. If I *really* want it, I might purchase it at a level that includes only DRM-free content, provided such a level exists; if it does not, then it's an automatic "no".
* At the moment, everything else being equal, I would say I prefer itch.io to gog. This, however, is lower priority than the other options. Everything else being equal, if the itch version includes a steam key (in addition to the DRM-free download) and the GOG version does not, I will go with the GOG version, for example. (Other considerations include things like platform support, update frequency, price (particularly when sales and bundles are taken into account), and perhaps extras.)
Posted March 15, 2022
We refuse to patronize Ste*m for many of the previously stated reasons. Plus there is the matter of VAT, which is intended to be applied to purchases by EU residents. Since we reside in Bora Bora, 1/2 a globe away, we are, by no stretch of the imagination, an EU resident. Ste*m and GOG react to our location differently, which is why we support our Warsaw-based soul brothers and not the other entity. For us, it's a matter of principle, ethics, and honour, which we respect and support. Also, we are, after all, a Polish peasant at heart. ((;--))
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionHow many of you actually boycott Steam games?(1376 posts)(1376 posts)
(1376 posts)