I had a steam account around 2005 before I even thought about GOG. But since finding GOG, I have 3x more games than steam. Honestly feel I'm not missing much, since I don't play MP anymore.

Imo you won't have to give up PC gaming altogether, but you might end up missing many games depending on your taste.

Thanks for the reminder to focus on the DRM aspect.

The way that Steam designed achievements, and the way that GOG integrated them into Galaxy, makes them act like the recent online-locked bonuses for Witcher 3. The launcher needs to read some data from the server after installing to make the UI work, data that could be integrated into the game but isn't.

If GOG's servers go down then the UI for those pop-up notifications will stop working after reinstalling the game, even though you've got an offline installer. For the platforms that don't have Galaxy, they never have worked. So it's a DRM-like behavior on Windows, and vendor lock-in (with the Steam version being "better" than the GOG version) on other platforms.

It's NEVER going to happen. GOG didn't pull it off in well over a decade. Nothing else will. At this point you have generation(s) of 'gamers' who grew up playing games on their phone. What kind of concept of ownership do you think they have to hold on to when they decide to move on to other platforms? None.

Don't expect it to get any better when cloud gaming becomes more and more common. People are already remote playing their consoles, and eventually Cloud gaming will be viable enough to be big enough of a market (moneywise) to get its own games. Games that will never, ever be in your hands (harddrives) again, only in datacenters.

Remember that the whole infrastructure of Steam is dependent on a centralized service provided by a very centralized corporation with very centralized ownership.

A really bad hacking job (the kind where a lot of user data is leaked, tons of user accounts are compromised and possibly lost and the service is down or flaky for some time) could seriously jeopardize them. Could be an outside force or disgruntled internal employees.

You could also have someone not extremely competent (or just extremely unlikable, perhaps downright despicable even... like would go to jail for life kind of despicable) at the helm once their dictator for life kicks the bucket (or maybe he could even get dementia in his old age).

You could have a fragmentation of access along national lines if things get hot between a significant number of nation states (I'm sure that many Russians must be absolutely thrilled right now that their ability to play games is dependent on the goodwill of an American company).

You could have a big enough body of nations that legislate in a way that is not favourable to how Steam operates.

You could have an emerging competitor(s) that disrupts Steam, especially so if Steam makes some bad calls and burns a lot of capital on dud projects (which can happen to anyone really).

Some disaster (natural or social) could decapitate Steam's leadership and workforce (as far as I can tell, they are pretty centralized).

I'm sure I'm forgetting other scenarios.

People have a tendency to assume that the world is a way more stable place than it is. If you want something more solid, you need to decentralize control internationally (kind of like many successful open-source projects are doing). I personally view Steam's operation as a very brittle one.

That's how the legend goes, but it's bullshit from my point of view. At the beginning of the century, we were heading into the golden age of digital PC games distribution, one in which PC games were sold by developers on their own platforms, without a publisher or distributor in between who would have raked in a whole lot of cash, but at least would have done the fucking marketing for the developer.

Along came Valve with their stupid launcher. And people hated that stupid launcher back in the day. It was felt to be completely unnecessary, way too much DRM, and many a PC enthusiast swore on the grave of his grandma that they'd never install that crap.

With PC games, we have a console like situation today. But Valve doesn't make the hardware, so there's no reason why they should get Sony's or Microsoft's cut. They don't fund the development. They don't advertise the games they're selling. They take no responsibility for the quality of the games they make their money with.

Steam hasn't "saved PC gaming". Steam is a mere money printing server farm, and a server farm hasn't ever saved anyone. Valve was never in a position to save PC gaming, and PC gaming didn't need to be saved anyway. We were going someplace great. For a short time, you could get really great games DRM free via the humble widget. Heck, maybe there'd still be a Telltale and a Telltale games store if Valve hadn't taken 30% of their potential income. I don't even want to think about how GOG would thrive today if Steam had been rejected by customers.

PC gaming was on the verge of flying like a bird, and Valve locked it in a cage and threw the key away.

Maybe the bird would have crashed or been eaten by some other predator, but that still doesn't mean Valve has "saved" the bird by locking it away.

They've branded the industry with silly achievements and game cards and customer levels, they've steered the industry in a direction in which games lived and died in development. They've driven the prices way through the floor so "extra cash" counter movements like microtransaction or games as a service were basically forced into life. And time and again Valve drove home the point that they could do absolutely anything immoral - like continuing to sell to Russia - without getting any kind of shitstorm by their customers about it.

Valve fucked PC games.

It makes me sad to see how the word "Steam" has taken over the role of the words "PC Game" in so many places. You see all the time how game developers and articles and especially Youtubers list what consoles a game has been released on, and instead of saying "Switch, Playstation, Xbox and PC" they say "Switch, Playstation, Xbox and Steam", but the game is available on GOG too.

No one I've recommended a game to even knew GOG existed before I told them. A frightening amount of people think "Steam" means the same as "computer game" now. I've seen countless of young Youtubers say Steam game instead of PC game, and none of my friends had heard of GOG. I wouldn't have known of GOG myself if my brother hadn't told me.

Would be nice if GOG could demand that developers who sell their games here actually list GOG on their website next to Steam and the consoles. I was quite pleasantly surprised to see GOG listed on the website of No Man's Sky, but it's been rare to see for the games I play.

Sadly that often doesn't happen even for publishers with games on GOG. Eg - "buy Don't Starve from Steam, Mac (Steam), Linux (Steam), XBox One, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch" but no GOG despite it being here years. People who edit PCGamingWiki (myself included) have probably given GOG more free advertising over the years than the publishers actually selling the game can be bothered to on their own website...

Steam started life as a DRM for physical media

Valve didn't save PC gaming, because they needed a healthy market to get physical users bound to their system.

For 5 years Steam was a sticker on the outside of a box and the code inside it.

There's one thing I've always wondered, how did EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix and all the other big pubs, not realize that Steam would become so powerful because of their own games, only to try to leave when it was too late and then come back with their tails between their legs? They were really stupid.

"Hey want to kill the second hand market, get all those extra sales while having near complete control over pricing as we've removed the effect of depreciation, and to have an infinite long tail market"

Greed

Valve offered something very lucrative, they just didn't see (or want to see) what was to happen next.

Yes, it's a sad thing to be sure :/

I do hope that the developers who complain that they have low sales numbers on GOG aren't the same people who don't tell anyone that their games can be bought on GOG...

Just about. Now it's not uncommon for people to just wait until the games are the price of a cup of coffee on some Steam sale before buying anything. In their lust to kill the used market, EA and Ubi created something far worse or them, and indeed for PC gaming as a whole.

As it turns out, there are no free lunches, and no way for games to be expensive forever.

GOG has never been a big player though.

If a big player like Steam or EGS became interested in creating a side business that pushes DRM-free gaming, then it would become popular.

Speaking of which, that reason is why I find it ironic that one of the most popular "community wishlists" on GOG is "Don't get bought by EGS," even though if GOG were to be bought by EGS, then that would probably be the best thing that ever happened to GOG, and it would be amazingly beneficial for GOG's customers, assuming that EGS would be interested in co-opting GOG in order to maintain a DRM-free branch of the EGS business.

Most or all of the issues that are being complained about in this thread would go away and not be a thing any more if that were to happen.

I own a 1,000 games on here, don't lecture me about supporting the DRM free principle. However boycotting steam does f**k all and you need to accept that.