Don't feel like verifying right now, but if true, it's ironic since Steam was CREATED as DRM for HL2.

I find it kind of hilarious that it's not against any rules using GOG's forum to discuss better alternatives to their own services. It's either dumb or brave of them.

As suggested, Humble Bundle has some DRM-free alternatives.

Believe me, it is. And yes, ironic indeed.

That's actually one of the things I really appreciate about gog. Threads like this also provide gog with invaluable insight into what people don't like about their service/what their users think other storefronts do better and how they could improve our own storefront.

Any of those drm-free alternatives offer paysafecard as payment?
Because by now i only used it on Steam and GOG but yes steam is no longer an option until i get a new pc(which is unknown when).

Why do you need to verify? There's been a thread on GOG for years on the topic.

Steam was created as a distribution and community platform. Their DRM system (CEG) came later.

Will you also bring your conquest diary to their forum as well?

Just kidding of course.

If you're into experimental/meta stuff I can recommend The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide. Also "Everything" (which is sadly not on GOG any more) and Silence of the Sleep are good games. Granted, many of those games are not for everyone, and probably "too niche" for GOG.

Verify that HL 2 was DRM free actually.

Steam have two "layers" of DRM - the basic Steamworks client check that's been there since Half Life 2 (2004) and CEG (Custom Executable Generation) that was added as a second optional layer in 2009. The extremely primitive Steam (2004) at the time was indeed little more than a DRM wrapper for HL2 though (with a huge amount of negative sentiment at the time), and many of Steam's social / community features only came years after this (eg, cloud functionality was only added in 2009, user reviews added only in 2013, etc).

It wasn't originally DRM-Free back in 2004 but the DRM has since been removed but not for all Valve games. Eg, HL1 (Source), HL2 and Portal 1 are "portable" & DRM-Free but other Valve games like HL1 (non-Source) and Portal 2 are still DRM'd and refuse to start without the client.

Thanks to a gift card I received as a b-day present, I can confirm that HL2, Both Episodes, Lost Coast, HL1 Source, and Portal 1 are all DRM free on Steam. Is there a maintained list anywhere of what games are and are not DRM free on the Epic store?

I could confirm, I just didn't feel like installing the game again. :P

Sadly, no. Rules them all out for me too.
Of course, since I'll definitely never see anything requiring a client for anything as DRM-free and the other requirement is also not having regional pricing (or at least none with prices above base), the only ones I ever considered were Shinyloot (which has vanished as a store for years), Zoom (which is basically inactive, and never has sales that I know of) and itch (which afaik at the moment still doesn't have regional pricing, just allowing devs to specify the currency for the price, but saw a post by them not long ago saying that introducing it is a priority, with more payment options maybe being considered after that, but at that point I won't care anymore, not unless I'll have some tools like I do for GOG to be able to check each game's pricing matrix at least).

No, that's not true. Developers can make the games invoke the client to do a basic "is the game on this account" check, much like the lowest level Steam DRM. Like Steam, as far as I know even that is optional, so the devs can put DRM-free games on there if they want.