Yeah, I've come over that 'I hate steam' in the meantime, too and became more apathetic.
First I was really fu** off by the obligations they put on someone (nearly every new pc game needs an account for steam). But then I thought, okay, there are still enough old games I want to play, and most of the newer titles will also be released on GOG or I can play them on my Xbox 360 and for the newer titles, I don't care, because I don't have enough time to play through the older titles I already own anyway.
I miss that time, when you bought a game, and you didn't need no internet connection, and at some time there would be some patches which improve the gaming experiences but aren't essantially to play the games.

But there's one thing I doesn't like, and that's when I spent money on games, I have no access on anymore because of support inconvieniences.
Well, and yes, I would be absolutely happy if some developers would be more serious about what they do, and what they want to deliver to their customers.
I once had mail contact with a game developer, I played a shareware game from in the past years (game from 1996 or something like that), and he was gentle and was pleased I could talk about the ideas he had with his game and how it could be improved. They had also small resources, but that is some friendliness and personality I would wish from other game developers, too.
Surely there are still game developers like this out there but unfortunately there are also a lot of them who mostly care about the profit the make.

I was informed before that strange 'I can't log in anymore problem' appeared. Suddenly I don't get any emails from steam at all while my email account is still functioning like before.
Yesterday I made a new email account from another internet provider, and the validation mail still doesn't arrive.
At the moment, I'm just fed up with it and leave it be.
Support shouldn't be so difficult to contact.

For those that still claim steam has good customer service, just because they got lucky once...

Valve Explains Why Steam Customer Service Is Still Terrible

Don't worry. Better customer support will be a feature in 10 years, and then everyone will act like its been there all along, however the better customer support implementation will be wonky and cringe worthy at best yet will somehow beat Sony's and Microsoft's customer support out of the blue according to the millions of paid Valve shills.

Mark my words.

The dude from Valve didn't say it directly, but most of his words could be summed up: "if idiots would only be more carefull". I bet it's the same on GOG support.

This is what I really don't get. People complain about DRM when they have to be online to play anyway! ANY service can go down. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam, and GOG GALAXY. Oh what? You mean GOG has their own servers? Oh yeah. It's the world we live in where someone is providing the service and it can break down or be taken down. Nobody is exempt. If you play online only, you need to just deal with it. However those of us who DON'T play online all of the time should not have to deal with it, and with Steam you don't. I don't have to be online to play a single player game. You online gamers are the biggest bunch of babies.

Just because lots of us play online does not mean there has to be DRM.
There are games that are online & don`t have any form or DRM, so when playing you don`t have to rely on the games servers or steam working. Like co-op games, you can group with cronies, but if steam is down, you`re screwed even though the game doesn`t run on their end.
Yes, any service can go down, but steam does it regularly again & again, if it is their servers & DRM that stop folk playing what they were playing before it went down, the point stands.

" However those of us who DON'T play online all of the time should not have to deal with it, and with Steam you don't." Again, look at what I said about magicka2. Single player mode, you still had to be online until they finally patched it & even now, you lose saves if not online & lose access to your robes/weapons from other DLC/packages. Hell, even your char` name fails.
This is on steam...

Pretty much all support is awful.
The support deparments of all the companies are douches and all those of stores are incompetent.
It's just the way of the world.

Until something gets done about GOGs support I think you've got a bit of a cheek.

You don't get it, because you don't seem to understand the difference between DRM and a required internet connection (or how networked multiplayer works in general).

To put things simple by example: If Steam's servers go down, I can still play Risk of Rain or Terraria online multiplayer because it does not require a connection to Steam's servers to function. I can also play Risk of Rain and Terraria via LAN if I want to, which requires no internet connection at all.

"You have to be online to play multiplayer anyway" is a terrible excuse to add DRM to a game, as it only adds to the list of things that can prevent you from playing the game you paid for. Why would you defend something that is absolutely not needed, and only takes away from legitimate customers?

I think part of the problem lies in the nature of how digital distribution works - essentially, you have one storefront dealing with all of the world's purchases instead of different retail outlets handling sales support for their individual customers. Sure, the developer or publisher is responsible for technical issues, but usually when it's a simple matter of claiming a refund on a physical product, the retailer takes some of the load on its shoulders.

Of course, this is part of the reason why GOG's support has dropped massively in quality of late - they're simply not capable of handling this volume of sales. I don't think any digital storefront can be without employing and training an absurdly high number of people.

That being said, Steam's is certainly worse by far - in part due to the lack of investment by Valve, but also due to the lack of curation and quality control in the products it sells (more defective products means more support enquiries which means a greater workload), and also the DRM (just one more thing that can and frequently does go wrong).

Interestingly enough, my "I hate Steam" phase was partly driven by the fact that I really couldn't fathom the thought of buying a console (pre-2008 I hadn't had a console since my PS1) and was worried about being forced into a DRM platform that I really couldn't stand. I actually bought the PS3 initially mainly for PS3 exclusives, but eventually it became my main platform for multiplat titles as well.

Even today I'd still prefer to buy the PC version of a game if it was DRM-free on disc, but the visual parity really doesn't matter to me any more, and the performance and visual gap between PS4 and PC nowadays is so minimal that the only thing worth getting worked up about is the lack of modding - and by the time mods become a viable option (and that only applies to a minority of games - most games have modding capabilities but never see any decent mods), the game has usually been so devalued on PC that you can pick it up for a few dollars.

LOL

Getting heat up, aren't you ? :)

I had around a semi dozen of experiences with GOG support in four years, never took more than a day :)

I'm cool here ^_^

I'll tell you a couple of true stories to illustrate what you're not understanding.

A few years ago I had to move up here to the north of Germany for a new job. For the first month I was reliant on temporary accommodation in a holiday home, which meant no internet. First thing I did was to buy a USB mobile internet stick (bear in mind this is before the days when you could use a smartphone as a wi-fi router, but the problem stands even today).

Yah...me, feeling like an idiot, suddenly discovered that not only did I have no wi-fi and no wired internet, I also had no mobile reception in the place I was staying. I think I'd probably have had more luck with reception in tinyE's hotel. If I was incredibly lucky, I could cramp my laptop up to the corner of the room and get a few minutes of very slow mobile internet, but nothing that was usable for even logging into Steam.

Up until that point I had a game of Half-Life 2 going, and indeed, after three days, Steam's offline mode decided to conk out. I was already pretty anti-Steam at that point - my Steam account basically consisted of my old Half-Life key redeemed, The Last Remnant and Half-Life 2 - but my reasons for largely avoiding Steam were vindicated in one fell swoop.

Somewhat hilariously, I also had Might & Magic 1-6, Descent and Evil Genius installed on my laptop from GOG, along with the installers in the download directory. You can guess what I was playing for that month - I actually got through both M&M 1 and M&M 2 in that time.

Another true story - I think it must have been three years ago, Valve's German authentication server conked out for an entire three days. That meant that while the Steam service was essentially "online", nobody in Germany could log on. Now, thankfully, by this point offline mode was a little more stable, but it was impossible to install anything - even from a backup or retail disc - and it was obviously impossible to download anything.

What you're forgetting is that, while you do have to be online to download any game, with Steam, Origin and UPlay, you are dependent on the continued good graces of these servers remaining online even after the purchase. It was GOG games that I was playing when I had no internet in my temporary accommodation, it was GOG games that I was playing while Steam was universally inaccessible to German users. This has nothing to do with the fact of GOG's classic games being "better" or "worse", but simply the fact that, thanks to their being DRM-free, I could actually install them and play them from my local backups.

"Being online" is a two-way street. I can be online today, tomorrow, ten, twenty, thirty years from now. But the likelihood of Steam's servers, or Origin's servers, or UPlay's servers being online? Nah. If these three companies haven't gone out of business (more likely in the case of Valve than with EA or Ubisoft), then they'll almost certainly have lost interest in running these services.

And the fact that I'm sat here playing a 21-year-old copy of Space Hulk from CD - which is still working today, and is unlikely to ever see a digital re-release (EA no longer holds the Warhammer licence) - is thanks only to one thing - the fact it is not reliant on any online service.

Im not talking just with games though. Community and the website included, it's not exactly great. Though they do have their moments. But saying that I have had good experiences with both companies.

before or after witcher 3 ?