I hate Steam with a passion and don't use it, but it's just not correct to call it the monopoly guy. Not only is it untrue, but it dismisses all of the other competition that Steam does indeed have... such as GOG. And without GOG, this forum wouldn't exist, therefore we wouldn't be having this conversation. Where we currently are having this thread discussion is evidence alone that Steam does not pass go and does not get 200 dollars.

Read - NOT Steam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj1wcs7SZj0

finally

GOG is an ant compared to Steam. Old games, new indies here and there and that's about it.
Physical copies that get released now more often than not just have Steam key + data on the disc and that's that. Sometimes just Steam key and Steam installation.

How many does have a redeemable copy on GOG? Probably close to zero.

The DRM-free practise already deters many publishers from GOG and fair pricing even more so. As such GOG will never be a "proper" competitor Steam and Steam will keep their monopoly status with ease.

And yeah, it's not monopoly to the full extent but by and far it's an overwhelming force.

Guess what... Perhaps steam won`t sell the number to cold callers, but that doesn`t mean that some of the staff won`t. Other big firms have said they don`t sell info` on, but that has never stopped their staff doing it themselves for some extra cash.
But that`s least of the problem, steam can also get hacked.

Yes, some "morons" forget their passwords/emails etc, but that is their problem & not everyone else`.
"I've never had a single hitch since I first started using steam 3 years ago. I've also never had problems with any Uplay game I own." - Congratulations, you are one of the few out of millions that do have problems.

Also, you say you`ve never had to contact steam, but complain aboutt GOG re:returns. Get back to us all when you do have to contact steam...

As for connection. I`m guessing you play single player games, so that is irrelevant. (except for a few cases like magicka2 with forced cloud..), but lots of us play co-op,pvp games & every time steam goes down, which is an almost regular thing some days, our games get fucked up. Even when, for instance, I play Magicka Wizard Wars. Hosted by Paradox on their servers, but if steam servers go down, so does our game..


TLDR: steam is shit. (as is any DRM)

Glad to see your learning :o)

Well, I can certainly empathise with the OP's problems, having experienced most of them myself.

I don't "hate" Steam anymore - I'm just completely apathetic about it. I can get my AAA games for PS4 or Xbox One, and I can get most noteworthy indies DRM-free from GOG or Humble. In fact, even most of the noteworthy Steam-exclusive indies make it to PS4 or Xbox One retail nowadays (as evidenced by the fact that I'm presently playing The Talos Principle, boxed version, on PS4 - excellent game, sad that the dev decided to act like an immature child when it came to releasing on PC outside of Steam).

The overwhelming majority of modern Steam exclusives that don't make it to consoles or GOG are either absolute shovelware, games that are overly reliant on an MMO experience, tacky visual novels, tacky hidden object games, tacky and pointless "simulators" (that aren't worthy of that title), or tacky RPG Maker games. In short, if you have a console and GOG, there's really very little use for Steam outside of redeeming bundle keys.

The fact remains that if you are perpetually reliant on an external instance to install and play your games, that instance has the potential to become a very real problem, because you as the end user have no control over it. I get Steam apologists pointing out that "consoles have DRM", and "you still need internet to download your games from GOG", and "console games are supposedly broken and need patches anyway" (which is not true 99.9% of the time, but they still quote the 0.1% to try and extrapolate it that way to try and prove their point), that "Steam isn't DRM and there are plenty of DRM-free games" (less than 10% of the games, most of which are simplistic indies and almost all of which are available DRM-free elsewhere anyway), but they miss the point - developers are a fickle bunch that, when given the opportunity to be arseholes, will often behave like said arseholes.

haha I was? I was up all night playing MGS V on Steam, clearly I learn very slowly. :P

nah. i'm just pretending to be malaysian because somehow gog's forum settings doesn't like me being an "other".

It's a bet they are winning too.

Modern gamers aren't exactly known for their patience or foresight.

They want their games cheap and they want their games now. Mandatory DRM is a fair price to pay apparently

Makes me sad

Yeah, that's what bothers me about it. Practically every company out there is selling our data and nothing seems to be done about it. I thought that the data protection act outlawed those practices?
This is very odd. Unless you disabled Steam Guard yourself you should at least be informed of any changes, even if your account was hacked.
To be fair, the main opposition is Labour. Democratically, we might have more options than the US, but that doesn't mean there are any that can really be considered good options.

Don't give data to company? ;)

i guess that depends a lot on where you put your priorities. I personally would rather put up with the inconveniences of Steam to play the game on an open platform, than spending a couple hundreds of dollars to buy a second gaming pc to play the game the way that Sony/MS want me to. And unlike the PC the consoles are totally locked down platforms. Worse than any attempts of DRM on the PC.
At least on the PC I can work around the stupidities that the companies force on us. On the consoles it is just take it or leave it.

And while there is certainly a lot of critic that can and should be thrown at Steam, in terms of account security they are miles ahead of GOG.

Intellectual property laws cover trademarks, patents and copyright and have absolutely nothing to do with the data protection act, which as I said, is there to protect personal data.
So never sign up to a website (like this one)? Never order anything online? Sorry, but I'm not willing to live in a fucking cave just to avoid being needlessly harassed by companies operating illegally.