Sounds like you had a good set of experiences then... I ended up with stuff like Skyrim and Calpyso and other games that demanded the steam client be present and signed licenses or they wouldn't work...

One of the games was Hoard which annoyingly if you force it to work without the client, happily goes into DEMO mode...

I got slapped hard on almost all my games (except Dungeons of Dredmore), so...

Something else I thought off. The update policy of "drm-free" games.

I know reading the forums long enough that a lot of distributors of GOG games treat GOG worse than Steam, as GOG games' updates are far behind steam's updates. IE Wizardry 8 got an "update" last month on steam, and none for GOG. Long live the Queen on GOG is at 1.3.23.4 and steam is at 1.3.24.

I think their remark wasn't directly aimed at you, but at an imaginary publisher. It could have been worded better (as it sounds a bit offensive, indeed), that is sure, but if my interpretation is correct I believe they have a point.
I have heard many times, especially from GOG users, people saying that they bought the same game twice, first form Steam and then from the "delayed" GOG release. That surely encourages a certain way of thinking: first of all, in the beginning developers will put their products exclusively on Valve's store (helping in reinforcing their already achieved victory against any form of competition -I consider every store offering Steam keys as Steam itself) for convenience, since they know that the majority will abide to any kind of rule they impose; then, maybe, they will put them on other stores knowing that some people, especially those particularly caring for the DRM-free concept but not enough to "boycott" DRM'd games altogether, might even buy the game again -a sick strategy, to say the least. That way, once they have sold all they could on the main platform, they can sill get more sales from them and from the last few people who neither bought the game nor have resorted to piracy. (An impression Deep Silver in particular gave me. After the games have been sold at 80% discount countless times and bundled to oblivion as Seam keys they appeared here, but the newer ones, even if DRM free -only in Germany, but they have multiple language packs included anyway- have yet to show up. I don't believe in coincidences.)
Imo, to support the developers and the DRM-free concept would be indeed better to buy twice in the same place, or better, more than one DRM-free copy, regardless of where; buying first on Steam and then anywhere else contributes to keep those who desire no DRM second class citizens living of discards. See the big publishers on GOG: regardless of what anyone may think, they distribute here only what they consider leftovers -and why shouldn't they, since the conditions of their sales on Steam follow their own rules, respect for the customer being only incidental if considered at all, basically granting them a free and constant market analysis and retroactive control on the product?

I always say that I find absurd how economics works in the videogame industry the inverted way as everywhere else: here, the customer base must adapt to the producers' demands (otherwise Gaben's behemoth will just crush them and they can forget about playing legitimately bought videogames) rather than influencing the market.
If people stopped accepting this, they could only benefit. Everyone minus Valve could only benefit, actually, and I think that many major publishers are starting to understand this as well: problem is, they want to “rebel” by pushing their own Steam clones rather than letting users breathe.

i don't understand why the devs of many games release updates on steam and not on GOG. Are we rejected gamers because of our choice of Drm free?

This aspect does concern me as I do not want to be treated as a second-hand customer. I am hoping that this changes going forward because if it does not, it will be very problematic for everyone involved (I can foresee even more problems where multiplayer is concerned).

Not boycotting Steam, but if a game is available on both platforms, I will buy it on GoG

My Favorite driver simulator is on steam but haven't played it in 7 months, I'm committed to gog and their principles of fairness to gamers around the world.

A lot of the time this is because an update was released *for a Steam bug* and doesn't apply to GOG. If you look at the Steam posts for 1.3.24, it's entirely about changing the way achievements work on Steam.

In other cases, because an update is simply so minor, like fixing the spelling of a word, that it's really not worth the hassle of uploading an entire new fullbuild.

I can't speak for anyone else, but GOG always gets updates when they're important. If it wasn't important enough for me to bother updating the installer of my own direct distribution, though, it does lag behind a little because of the awkwardness of pushing the updates here.

Unfortunately nope. GOG only get's updates when the dev "remembers" that GOG exist. Read this thread, if it wasn't for GOG customers remembering the devs that GOG exist, GOG would have gotten a lot less updates. Until GOG get the Devs/Publishers of the games they carry, to update their games here on GOG in a timely fashion, going GOG only isn't an option. Why wait two years for a dev to update their game here, when it was updated 7 times on Steam (Symphony), or play a broken game (Sam & Max Save the World) that's almost unplayable here, yet is fixed everywhere else. The list keeps going

Bang goes my boycott

http://store.steampowered.com/app/391220/

or maybe not


https://store.eu.square-enix.com/emea_uk/games/pc/all/1/

Steam is like A.I.D.S .. dont do it :D

Thanks, that is more or less what I was trying to say (sorry for late reply, Trails in the Sky ate all of my free time, and a lot of time that shouldn't have been free on top...). I could have indeed worded it better or in less inflammatory/personal attack-y way, sorry.

If your only goal is supporting a dev, it's admirable, but in such case it's even better to buy both copies from them directly and avoid both GOG and Steam. As far as DRM is concerned, buying from both sites doesn't mean much. Yes, it helps GOG stay afloat, but optimal business model if lot of people behave like that is what I tried to say earlier: "We release on Steam with DRM, and when sales die down, release again on GoG. And as a bonus, we get some people who will buy twice even if they would only buy once if they had a choice from the start". I shortened last sentence into "suckers", sorry if sunshinecorp took it personally, to mean "anyone who buys multiple copies, regardless of reason" - that was not my intention. Either way, what you get as a result is GOG as eternal second class citizen.

I realize buying exclusively here is not MUCH better. As long as they release eventually they get their money from me... but at least the incentive of overlap is removed and the message is clear. Intentionally buying from both sites feels kinda like voting for both major parties at election - the message it sends is meaningless at best.

Oh yeah? I'm doing A.I.D.S. right now! Try and stop me!

With the recent "Mobile Authenticator" sham, scam and the ridiculous excuses they used for enacting this forced assault on their playerbase. The "boycott\" of the Steam store may not be for the same reason now, but there's certainly a great many users who have stopped purchasing from Steam completely now, including me. No longer any reason to support them.