SargonAelther: ...because Gabe Newell killed the used game market for PC. And the sad thing is that, if it wasn't Steam, it probably would have been someone else.
Phin77: <...> The fanboy'ism that continues to this day with video games is embarrassing. Nintendo VS Sega.. Steam VS Epic or Gog.. <...>
Have you read the second part of the snip that you quoted? I said that if it wasn't for Valve, it very likely would have been someone else like Microsoft, Activision, EA or Ubisoft.
I am not a Steam hater. I am against all DRMd digital stores and platforms, Steam just happens to be the largest one in the gaming space. I trash iTunes and the Microsoft Store, Ultraviolet and all this other short-lived garbage just the same.
Disc based DRM was nowhere near as intrusive as any of the online ones with machine limits, activation limits, or any other nonsense that is external. I have loads of old CDs and DVDs and they work great. Some require community patches, but that's hardly different on your lord's platform.
Physical media is the greatest source of media preservation there is. Greater than that of GOG, legally anyway. When a publisher loses the right to sell a product for whatever reason, physical releases do not get lost. There is still a market for them. Art gets preserved and can be traded. Executive pigs may cry how it's "not meant to be" traded second hand, but so far they have failed to lobby and make that illegal.
Now this is very different when it comes to digital releases. If the publisher loses, everyone loses. This content cannot be acquired and enjoyed any more, not legally anyway. I can still buy a CD of No One Lives Forever or GTA Vice City 1.0 and I have, but I cannot buy those delisted Telltale games. Not legally anyway, thanks to GabeN.
Piracy is not a service problem. It's an ownership and control problem. With a physical release, the publisher can't break into my home and repo my copy. They cannot apply any negative patches without my consent. On Steam, however, they can do whatever. They can yank games from my library (and they have), they can remove content with a patch (and they have). I have no say in it. Guess who doesn't have to worry about losing Steam games. A pirate.
When Steam launched, people hated it. People also hated that Half-Life 2 required it. Sadly people had no choice. Majority of people are never willing to participate in boycotts.
Why are both of us HERE, if Steam's services are oh so great? Because the sense of ownership and control trump an infinite amount of other services and fluff. I don't care about your fancy big screen mode, or forums, or guides, or the grossly overrated mod workshop, if you retain the ability to yank games from my library, or allow publishers to patch out content that I paid for.
When Steam yanked agony unrated from my library, to avoid getting sued by a league of soccer moms, I was in shock. It's one thing to yank from sale and quite another to yank from my library. I never expected such a thing from an esteemed paltform such as Steam. I thought I'll contact support and they'll sort it out straight away. To my surprise, Steam's support were COMPLETELY indifferent. Absolutely dismissive. They told me to contact the developer. Looking at the forums, I realised that they were indifferent towards everybody who had lost that game. Developers were blaming Steam and that was far more believable. Who has control over user libraries at the end of the day? Developers are customers of Steam just as much as gamers. The developers did offer massive discounts in the short term, and eventually released the unrated version as a DLC for the censored version, but Valve never returned the yanked standalone uncensored version to this day. All the time grinding achievements for nought. What if the developers acted indifferent too? There was never a sense of ownership with Steam, but now they have lost their so called "service" shtick too. But hey, they are a massive company that prints money passively, why should they bother being nice? They have lost any shred of respect I may have had for them.
Sure GOG is not immune to weird library removals, but the culture here is completely different. Generate a few angry posts and it will get sorted in most cases. Sometimes we may even get an apology. Even if GOG didn't solve a lost game issue, I'd still have its installer. I download everything I buy. GOG's support may be hard to reach, but it is far better that that of Steam.
As for launchers, I launch my games the same way I launch my other applications. Start Menu. There has never been a better launcher. I do not buy games on GOG only to crawl back to Valve's crappy launcher, which is not necessary for GOG games. I also prefer M&K over a controller, so I don't care about no big screen mode either. Not that you can't use controllers with GOG games lol.
I have the Steam Deck and it's collecting dust, because of its crappy half-baked desktop and lack of a keyboard. I prefer GPD, all of their handhelds have keyboards. With Windows, there are no compatibility issues or missing codecs that Valve's unwilling to pay for. Heck, with ROG Ally being as cheap as it it, the excuse for getting a Steam Deck decreases further.
What GOG needs to do is stay committed to DRM-Free games with offline installers. That's the main reason everyone is here. Everything else is just bonus fluff. While more fluff is always welcome, no amount of it will ever add up to DRM-Free games with offline installers. GOG is the second best thing since physical (offline) PC games.
