I guess I boycott Steam.

Long before I ever knew Steam existed, I had a GOG account (not this one), some seven years ago back when the web site was called Good Old Games. Then about 2½ years ago I bought a game from the bargain bin, not realizing it required Steam. I was actually pretty annoyed at the time, but I signed up and soon got caught up in the deep discounts Valve formerly offered. Over time GOG became a way for me to get DRM-free backups, essentially. I was spending a lot of money on GOG, but rarely if ever playing the games I bought.

Eventually, between the fact that I got tired of buying games only to not play them, and the superior selection and cheaper pricing of games on Steam, I stopped using GOG altogether and was exclusively on Steam. Over time I got sick of the way Valve runs their business, and closed my Steam account, returning to GOG.

Except the problem remained that most of my Steam library did not exist on GOG, and while I would pick up games here and there, I rarely if ever played anything that I bought, because it was always a nostalgia purchase for some game I had already played and finished in the past on a different platform. All of the new games I wanted to play were exclusive to Steam, along with the majority of old games. I was spending money but not playing games, at which point I felt like I was setting my money on fire.

After about six or eight months, I don't remember exactly, I returned to Steam and closed my GOG account. For a short time it felt like Valve was finally listening to its customers; refunds, improved customer support, etc. And then they just made one anti-consumer decision after the other. I honestly don't know why I ever expected them to change, I was stupid I guess. So once again I closed my Steam account and returned to GOG.

...except that I still barely play anything I buy. More than half of my library is games I owned on other platforms (a quick count shows that 24 of the 68 games I own are unique to GOG, but many of those are games I received via Pinatas/Stars, and are hidden in my library, or games I received for free.) Of the games I purchased intentionally, I've played just 7 of them to completion, or about 10% of my total games. Despite intentionally buying them, I have never played 13 of the games, almost twice as many as I've completed.

I guess the point of this rant is that I don't know what will happen in the future. I'm unhappy with how Valve does business, but I'm unhappy with the games I buy on GOG. Maybe I just need a new hobby, or to stop buying games altogether. I feel like I'm just wasting my money.

Sorry, this rant was largely off-topic. Yeah, I'm currently boycotting Steam.

I wouldn't say I completely boycott Steam. I do still have a decent sized library over there (which I'm slowly converting to GOG versions through sales and Connect), but I very, very rarely make purchases from them anymore. I can count on one hand the number of times I've bought from them in the past year (due to exclusive releases or already having the base content on that platform), and I even eschew many Humble Bundles because they are linked to Steam keys.

Although I have concerns about how much power Valve wields within the PC market, and I strongly disapprove of DRM, I can't say those are my primary reasons for choosing GOG as my preferred marketplace.

Frankly, I find that Steam's lack of curation these days has made it an unnavigable mess, where even when I'm struck by the inclination to see what's on offer, I can't find anything for all the shovelware that's clogged the platform. Moreover, I often find myself running resource intensive games on older rigs, so even as much as having their client chugging along in the background can be enough to hinder my experience, if not disrupt it outright (yes, even with the downloads turned off). There are other reasons beyond that, but just those two alone are enough to have prompted and reinforced my decision to migrate several years ago.

I may not always agree with GOG's direction (to be fair, I don't have any complaints that come to mind at present), but as it stands, I feel that I have a great deel more agency as a consumer and gamer on this platform than I do when utilizing Steam. So, no. No boycott, just a vastly superior experience which makes me want to be here and not there.

I boycott Steam whenever I'm not using it.

For instance, right now. I am in here, posting, not using Steam, thus effectively boycotting it.

Tomorrow I'm going to start Portal 2, which I have on Steam, so I'll be lifting my boycott, until I decide to stop and do something else, at which point the boycott will be back on, and so on and so on.

I find the term in itself, and this whole discussion, damn sexist. Boy-cott...

If I boycotted Steam, I wouldn't have come across an awesome game, Star Traders: Frontiers, which is in early access. I hope they bring it to GOG. GOG seems very selective with their In-Dev games but from what I've seen, ST:F has been a model EA project so far.

Offline mode can bypass Steams restrictions.
However small children are inconsistent in clicking the "stay offline" button.

However more importantly, Valve don't want you to play different games on different computers. They don't want you to have that right. They have been very clear on this on the way they made SFS. It doesn't matter if there is a practical work around, when this belief is a part of their core design.

There is nothing stopping Valve removing or restricting offline functions later.

Also I've had a set of bad experiences with Valve. I've had them refuse to uphold their end of the SSA and then ignore my complaints when confronted.

I simply don't want to use Steam


Kids ages when I left Steam were 15,13, 7,6 and 5. It was the latter three that didn't keep Steam offline. The Eldest needed Steam online since she did multiplayer games.

I still think, as far as workarounds go, buying every game on a new account is the easiest solution. Of course, not if you want to keep every game active on one profile through SFS necessarily, but a simple spreadsheet with which game = which login would simply mean that whenever you want to play a certain game you log in with a particular set of credentials, done. Game can stay installed in the meantime, and from the sound of it the people who'd use this method aren't the types to leave their client logged in to begin with.

Wouldn't recommend it for large libraries of course, just for the ones that prefer not to miss certain 'must-have' franchises but have reservations buying on Steam and want to minimize it's effect, particularly for people who have the need to share their games, like families.

I agree with you, it is the best of a bad lot. When Rise of the Tomb Raider gets released, it might be something I'd seriously consider.

Its just we should have to jump through these hoops

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I opened a brand new account on Steam and GOG, and started over.

That seems... expensive.

I will chime in again as this thread seems to have been resurrected.

I had a steam account (actually I still do, read on).

My registered join date to Gog signifies the boycott of my steam account. You can check the date, I have boycotted steam ever since. Many people seem to think that boycotting is a flirtatious thing and cannot be considered to be fact. Please believe that many do boycott steam.

I got tired of signing into steam with threats that if I did not agree to their new terms, I would not be able to access the licences I had purchased. This may have changed, I don't know because I do not use the service anymore.

One particular dev whom I cared about, touted that the move to steam was a financial necessity in order to release a new IP. At this point, I abandoned the dev and steam for my own personal disagreements with both parties.

This stance, in my opinion, was justified. That dev has since had the audacity to release the same titles I boycotted, right here on GOG. I, amongst many others who fought tooth and nail against steam only exclusive, asking for it to be made available on alternative platforms, were ignored. It is now available on Gog.

The above is a slightly separate argument as why I boycott steam but please read on.

Curiously enough, my attempts to abandon steam were constantly thwarted. For example, on requesting that I wished my account to be permanently removed, I was met with statements from steam that this was not physically possible. In addition to this, I was asked to provide detailed bank transactions showing purchases I had made to steam, in order that they may "deactivate" my account but not remove it entirely.

Faced with providing purchases with differing bank cards, over a long period of time, I gave up (note that all this transaction detail would have been readily available to Steam- they just wished to throw obstacles in the way as it may have been "fraud".

This is the kind of bullshit that people need to be aware of when purchasing through any online "client". You are purchasing a license through a shop. The shop may well tell you 7 shades of shit that you need to perform in order to access your license, but should you ask them to revoke it you will be met with stoney silence- they do not have any rights to revoke a license which you have purchased.

I presume that my steam account i s still active, with a fair few games I might add- I am unable to get this account removed.

Not that it bothers me, my money is with Gog, until such time as/when/if they pull the same client shit.

Yes, it is. To be fair, I did not leave either site with the intention of returning. I would not have bothered closing my accounts if I thought I might come back. At the time when I left Steam, I genuinely felt I was done with Valve entirely. And at the time when I left GOG, I genuinely felt Valve had finally turned a new page.

It was, as you say, an expensive lesson.

Here here. I've had the exact same kind of shit from Valve.
They are the worst company I've ever had to deal with.