I am with the OP. It is not just older games that seem to be released on Steam and Gog.com at as-near-as-dammit the same time. It is fishy.

DrT

Woah, they used GOG's icon? That's not cool!

Valve keep regionally restricting them ¬_¬

But GOG still have the incentive of no DRM and free extras.

Now -that- I can agree is a problem. Regional restrictions should not even exist.

Publishers keep telling Valve to regionally restrict them :)

Except that this is Square, who specifically told Valve NOT to restrict games in Japan.

To be fair, it might help is certain governments like Germany and Australia got down off their moral high horses and The Japanese came to accept PC gaming as a legitimate pastime that DIDN'T bring shame upon your family for 100 generations!

I thought they were blaming eachother for the region restrictions. Is there a link confirming it is Valve doing it?

"The only Japanese publisher to have a change of heart in that respect was Square-Enix, but even then it seems that either Square or Valve (depending on which is asked, the blame is assigned to the other party) are still not willing to stop restricting Square-Enix published titles via Steam in Japan. "

Your words I think.

In this case it's fairly obviously Valve. Why would Square restrict titles on Steam when they've given GOG permission to sell worldwide? And, also, in this case, it's not just Japan but France too which is finding them restricted.

Do I understand correctly ? Did Steam use screenshots that are publicly known to represent the gog version of the game ?
I think this is something worth discussing.

We know the screenshots on the gog storepages are most probably taken from the gog version of the game. Remember the 'Chaos Overlord' visual glitches, they were present in the gog version of the game and in the screenshots displayed, which is ground to suspect that gog do its work with the expected integrity : you sell a software, all advertising material is directly related to that software.

Now ... is my last statement exagerated ? do the screenshot just have to reflect the gameplay experience and that kind of things ? do the source software really matter ? should we have the specs of the computer used for videos and screenshots ?

Back on topic, I did not witnessed with my own eyes that Steam store page features screenshots taken from gog (and I don't know if gog took it from yet another source), but if that's the case it's borderline dishonnest and plain lazy (even) from Steam in my very humble opinion.

Sidenote : I am a steam user, I don't hate them but I certainly don't like (some of) their practices either.

Edit : and I am totally fine with the fact that Steam sells the same games as gog.

oh noes!

abandon ship, abandon ship!

It is because it is not Valve who place the screenshots and videos on Steams store page, but the publishers. So in this case it is Square Enix making use of the same promotional material as they use for GoG. GOG may have made these materials, but they belong to Square Enix.

Gorky 17 and Septerra Core is up on Steam now and apparently at 50% off. They also added KnightShift, an old game from 2003 that GOG doesn't even have. Oh noes. :p