BEST thing about Desura over steam and many other regular game retail sites (even GOG) is that Desura actually puts up their own hosting space for quality game mods - they even do that for games which are not listed or sold in their catalogue!

So not only are they a great online distributor, but they also distribute MODs for FREE. I think its fantastic and its something I wish GOG, Steam and the others would get onto. There's nothing like finding out about a great Mod for a game, only to find that because the game is more than 3 years old the mod team itself has disbanded and the download was somewhere on Mega-Upload or any other big online hub that has been shut down; or its only living on a handful of random computers around the world (it is thus lost or very hard to come by).

I'm sure the mods must help Desura too - many quality mods can effectively make a game purchase 2 for 1 with what they add and change.

The mods and Indie Royale are actually what convinced me that a Desura account was worth it. I'm usually pretty leery of online accounts, but the Desura people are doing it right.

For what its worth I currently only use Steam - Desura and GOG.

Steam - has the most and generally gets more of the newer games on the market when they actually hit the market.

Desura - smaller library and don't always get the latest games, but they hit the indy scene a lot more and they generally have quality indy stuff as well. They also do some upfront Alpha and Beta funding (which they actually list separate as opposed to Steam which leaves it to the product description and also only do Beta funding)

GOG - I er shouldn't have to explain about GOG ;) :)

DESURA

Desura lets you download the games from their site so you can install them manually. The games installed by the client also run when executed directly from the exe and don't require the client to be running. They don't stop people from having DRM, but they don't impose any themselves. Also the only DRM I've come up on so far was a game or two that needed a serial key, the rest were DRM free.

If your concern is having the games tied to the client and being forced to run it, that does not happen with Desura.

Desura doesn't have any DRM of its own because it's run by liberals. xx

Hey would you happen to know anything about Hard Reset's Exile DLC? Is it truly Steam Exclusive?
I'm considering just getting the Steam version because it's made by the CD Projekt people and so maybe it's not an always-online game.

Desura, because it's the one I actually know of and use.
First time I've come across beamdog, but from the sounds of the thread it's not really much of a competition. I guess I'll add it to my avoid list.

As far as I know yes it is steam exclusive. As I stated before I don't know if that is intentional or an oversight, but that is the only version they have updated with it.