I tried that.
After 3 games you need to keep a spreedsheet for account names, I got 5 before realising how insanely stupid it is to force people to do this.

Reinstall (or the loss of validation SFS often suffers from) is a massive issue.

It takes about 3 minutes to log in, wait for PIN to be emailed, jump through all menu items to set up SFS and log out.

with 5 accounts that was over 15 minutes.

With 20 games you've just spent an hour setting it up


Its another work around... another way to excuse VAlve for doing the inexcusable.

And the award for the most ridiculously stupid statement to be said in the place that makes it's stupidity immediately obvious goes to...

...StingingVelvet!

Congratulations, your prize will be sent in the post in the form of all games ever availiable without Steam (There's quite a few).

I want the award for the smartest statement! Lemme try: When you are pushed, boycotting steam is as easy as breathing.

When I discovered GOG and started to evaluate its provisions (DRM-Free, Offline Installers, extra goodies etc) it was one-stop-shop for me till today.

I rebought plenty of games I had on Steam by that time and never looked back.

Though its tempting sometimes to buy somethign on Steam that is not available on GOG, I avoid it (got a pretty large backlog, able to keep me occupied for 2 lives on GOG :p) and awaiting its release here.

For me, having a client to manage friends and games that i use everyday + the super-important choice of downloading and keeping backed up offline installers without client dependencies, is a WIN-WIN situation.

How about this one:

Any of you boys want to boycott Steam, now's the time. There isn't one of us that doesn't want to be someplace else. But this is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or boycott Steam. Your call.

for most intelligent post? heck , no.

You are, however, a candidate for the following categories:
- Best use of hyperbole
- Applied propaganda
- Most rhetorical devices in one sentence

YES!

You can chuckle all you want, but it is what it is. Of course many games can be had without DRM, but the vast majority cannot. If you're the type who loves Deus Ex but can live without playing Human Revolution, even when it's been on sale for the price of a rental, then hey... more power to you I guess.

While I much prefer GOG.com, I am not really boycotting Steam either (I am currently playing mainly two games, Age of Empires 3 and Team Fortress 2, both Steam games; on the side I am playing also Deus Ex (GOG version)).

Anyway, for myself I could consider it feasible to restrict myself only to e.g. GOG games. I already have so many interesting games in my GOG library that I probably can't play (finish) them all in my lifetime, so it isn't like I would run out of games to play by restricting myself to GOG.

So I wouldn't say boycotting Steam is really boycotting PC gaming, but severely restricting what you can play on PC (especially among newer AAA titles; but then Steam doesn't get them all either, e.g. the EA Origin exclusives, or Blizzard games). Still, you'd have lots to play even in GOG. In a way I see it similarly like I've never owned any Nintendo console, nor any newer Sony or Microsoft console. I am sure that has caused me to miss lots of great exclusive titles on those console platforms (especially Nintendo), but for some reason I don't really mind it because I still have something else to play on PC.

So it all comes to whether you have "enough to play" on your chosen platform(s). If you feel you are fine, then I guess you are fine.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/is_windows_10_the_biggest_threat_to_steam_gog

Depending how strongly Microsoft starts pushing Windows Store on Windows 10 (and S and whatever), Steam may also be fighting for its survival. That is the very reason Valve has been expanding also to Linux (and SteamOS), as a "plan B". It won't happen overnight, but Steam slowly but surely dwindling into niche when more and more people buy from the Windows Store instead by default, and Microsoft making it more and more cumbersome not to do that (and even restricting it completely on some of their devices).

That is of course bad news for GOG.com too, but at least GOG games are DRM-free and can be still played on your existing PCs (or Win32 virtual boxes or emulators, if available; or in many cases Linux WINE too)), independent of GOG's survival. :)

Last time i was on steam i inputted about 200 codes from Humble bundle... damn that was a lot... took forever.

I also downloaded a bunch of the smaller games i had and tested if they were DRM'd, and those that were i gave a thumbs down with a simple explanation... that did mean i had to leave them running for 10-15 minutes before it would let me do my review. Though it did mean i got a couple games that were good (Cthulus save the world, and The Enchanted Cave 2, for example).

Beyond that i haven't touched steam except to claim some 'free games' from Humble Bundle, thankfully i found a way i don't have to have the shitty client installed.

So yeah i boycott steam as much as i can.

Which is, of course, what I meant.

And Microsoft can't make Windows a closed platform (as in requiring their approval to make software for it) and maintain their OS dominance, so I really don't see Steam being threatened that way. Valve are huuuuge on free and open platforms so it makes sense they're looking at options, but I don't see it ever being needed. I guess stranger things have happened though.

One thing I know for a fact is that as long as a game has a healthy fanbase someone's going to make sure it runs on a modern OS, and that includes dealing with crazy DRM. That and Steam's likely decades long existence are what made me relax about DRM hatred I used to bathe in. Now I just see it as more of a rolling-eyes annoyance rather than some great moral affront.

It doesn't have to be black and white, like that either the future of Windows is completely open to everyone and all competition, or that Microsoft completely locks it up overnight, iOS-style. There are at least fifty shades of grey in between.

What we have seen so far is MS nudging the Windows market towards the Windows Store. Step by step, make it a bit more and more cumbersome not to use the Windows Store but still trying to get your games and applications from other stores or elsewhere, hide the options to do so further and further down somewhere that casual users can't find it easily themselves (e.g. to enable "sideloading"), make your own "Windows S (Mode)" devices where it may be even required that you obtain your software from the Windows Store (in which case many people even in "legacy" Windows 10 will also opt for a Windows Store version, just so that they can use the software IF they sometime in the future by a Windows 10 S device where sideloading is not possible, etc.).

We will see what will happen, but based on the linked discussion, to me it seems this is MS's current strategy, slowly nudging the competing stores to obscurity. The possible plans to make Win32 a virtualized "legacy mode" and not offering sideloading in many devices could be pretty big nudges.

Saying that it could never happen to Steam because of their extensive library of (legacy) Win32 games is about as relevant as saying in 1995 that PC game developers will keep making MS-DOS games from here to eternity because there are already so many MS-DOS games/users around. Win32 will probably be the next MS-DOS, first put to life-support, and then finally cut away. Then the main question is, how easy it is for Microsoft's competitors to sell UWP applications, directly competing with Windows Store on an even playfield?

There is a reason why even Valve got a bit anxious and came with SteamOS and invested resources to Linux support, and why GabeN directly showed his dismay towards Windows 8. It seems Valve at least did feel threatened by the arrival of an official Windows Store, they understand what kind of leverage it gives to MS over who gets a cut from software sales on future Windows versions.

Sometimes yes, but sometimes the fanbase is apparently not big enough, and you still might want to try some old game.

Like, lately I've been reading about the issues of running Black & White 2 on modern PCs. It seems the original retail version has copy protection that might be incompatible with e.g. Windows 10 (and I think also Windows 7 with recent updates), and the existing noCD cracks for the game seem to trigger an internal "anti-piracy" nuisance which makes your population not to age, meaning your village will be full of small kids not suitable for work etc., making the game unplayable. I presume that is some anti-piracy mechanism, similar like some Settlers games having only pigs produced on a cracked version, or some Operation Flashpoint making your weapon accuracy bad or whatever it was.

You might argue that Black & White 2 is not important enough to be preserved, but still there seem to be quite many people complaining about it, people who apparently wanted to play B&W2. I have no idea whether I'd like the game, never played it.

Plus, if and when some unknown guy offers on a torrent site a "100% fix for the aging problem in Black & White 2! Download this small exe file!"... well, better first be sure it doesn't contain malware... I prefer if I don't have to use such unknown fixes from unknown users for my purchased games.

Christ on a bun. Just listen to yourself. The type who "can live without playing Human Revolution". Yes I can. Anyone who is not completely insane can. I love gaming, but in the end it's just a game. It's people like you who give big publishers the power to fuck everyone over, because you "can't live" without playing their big name titles, no matter how shitty the deal is. Bring on DRM, bring on pre-order exclusives, DLCs, microtransactions. You'll pay. After all, you can't live without it.

There's more great DRM-free games out there than either of us is likely to have the time to ever finish. My backlog (counting new games only, no classics!) translates to over a 100 hours of gameplay. My wishlist (again, counting new games only) is many times that. And that's just on GOG, and I'm a picky bastard, I'm only interested in a fraction of the games available here. And according to you that's "boycotting PC gaming". Sure. Fine. Whatever.