Desura as a Steam codes store?

Some games comes with optional steam keys, but I think you can count the numbers of games you buy in Desura with Steam codes only on one hand...

Yeah, but the community is different. GoG was very wise to build up this forum to begin with, and to let people do as they wanted (though some today do not like that...), which encouraged a community. But, the community here and on Desura are different, as here it is only a 'normal' discussion forum, but on Desura it has the integration of the modding community, This includes the ease of developers to publish on Desura when they have a game in IndieDB, and that quite a lot of Desura's community is there - not only in the actual storefront, as it is here. Same with ModDB

Still, different strokes for different people. I do feel there is more affinity between the structures of GoG and HS, than either of those with Desura.

I have listed my reasons. I'm also not pro-anyone, I'm not sure why it has to be "Either you're with me or you're against me". I'm just saying that HS currently offers a better service, especially when they expand their catalogue - GOG is bound to do something if they want to be comeptitive. That's not me bashing GOG, that's me offering critique. If you just keep saying 'everything is fine' in spite of the fact that it's not, you are not actually helping anyone.

I wouldn't say thats an unbiased opinion when all your doing is giving pro's of another service and no cons mate.
At least they have (at least for now) given up on releasing games that have been bundled a billion times already.

It is the pro's gog needs to compete with, not the con's...

If you and Fenix are going to tell us about the sun shining out of HB's ass how about a balanced view and tell us of the negatives of the HS (along with the already explained positives) ?

Well that's the thing, the cons are few and far between. The DRM-free installers are offered by the devs, so the're not consistent (which in itself is not really a problem as I'm yet to encounter a DRM-free installer offered by the dev which does not work), and the size of the catalogue, which I have mentioned. That's all the cons I can currently see when you directly compare HIB and GOG. Just look at it from my perspective, all right?

I buy an indie game on GOG and I get:
- DRM-free installer for Windows and potential Mac version
- Some extras, if they are included by dev

I buy an indie game on HS and I get:
- DRM-free installer, for Windows and potential Linux/Mac version
- Steam key
- Some extras, if they are included by dev

Do give me the cons of Humble store here.

Not necessarily. A lot of people buy from GOG (and Desura, and Humble Store) specifically because they know 100% they're getting a game that doesn't need to phone home. They buy from GOG precisely because it doesn't have Steam's DRM. GOG profits from this disadvantage of Steam. GOG also profits from Humble's disadvantage that you cannot be 100% sure that you're getting DRM-free.

It's this market advantage - being an opposite to Steam and co. in terms of DRM - that GOG needs to build upon. Unfortunately, it's precisely this that GOG hadn't been doing much of until this past week. When your main selling point is DRM-free, releasing an identical or inferior product to what other competitors have seems a bit pointless. Why buy Volgarr the Viking here DRM-free when you can get it DRM-free and with a Steam key from Humble Store? There's no point in GOG competing with Humble's pro in this area because it means compromising on the DRM philosophy.

While I personally have no opinion one way or the other about the indie game thang here on GOG, I do think that GOG is simply facing too much competition in this area. They'd be better off focusing on recent and previously DRM'd stuff alongside their traditional old games business (even though the latter may be drying up).

No argument here, but what I meant that if GoG is competing with HS they need to beat them on the Pros (having a better service) than on the cons (having a worse service)...

Anyway, I have said it before - but it would have been nice if gOg's focus now had not been to compete on whether it is DRM free or not, but wheter they can get old games running out of the box or not. This is an area where gog have been excelling in, and I do feel that this is what still could have been it's USP. Especially now that there seems to just be more and more competitors for the DRM free niche.

Yes, Steam and other do sell old games also, but GoG is still the place to go to that have the best service for them, and are making sure that they are running properly out of the box. I do feel it is a shame that this focus shifted.

Get me right, I do not have any problems with GoG selling new indies as such, but then they need to compete with that market also, and I do feel that gog is loosing its USP compared to others then and becoming a "me also" service.

Actual cons of the humble store:

-The game page library is too lenghty and messy (I've "reclaimed" everything since the debuts of the hib)
-The "true" game catalogue is currently inexistent (I'm talking about the widgets)
-No notifications for patches or infos about the game version (which version of dungeon of dredmor do i get to download?)
-No site-bound community to get infos for mods or workarounds when the game doesn't work
-No clear politics about DRM (indies doesn't necessarly mean drm-free)

Well... Kind of like GOG, since forever I've had to use my browser's search function to dig trough the games. They have added search recently, but it's really not different (and does't work in list display anyway)

Well yes, I have mentioned that. That's why I'm talking service, not catalogue, currently.

True. Add that to the list. I'm fairly sure that's just a matter of time tho (let's be honest, it took GOG ages to implement this)

I can pretty much guarantee you that vast majority of customer base does not really give a shit, as they quite simply don't actively use discussion boards.

That's a problem of ideology, not actually a practical disadvantage - it stands to reason that when game has a DRM-free version, it will contain a DRM-free download on HS too.

GOG coud of course try play the ideology note even more than it did so far, but that doesn't in any way change the value you get out of your purchases - which is currently just better on HS. Still, HS has an ideology spin too in the form of charity donations. Update notifications would be nice tho.

I wonder if over time this will go the way the bundles have where it shifts more to steam only stuff. Also I don't know how successful they will be with most of their previous market being people used to paying a few dollars for a group of games.

I agree with this being a bigger problem for Desura than GOG.

Desura doesn't have nearly the customer base that Humble guys do tho, that's where it becomes problem for GOG.

Actually they do have a similar feature - don't know when the added it.

Noticed it when I bought the Daedalic Bundle. There was a little notifier at the top of the list - something along the lines of 2 games updated since your last log in and these games were highlighted. Shame I didn't take a pic.

Edit: *Correcting myself* It was only one game - Lone Survivor.

It is not that they don't work (all the HIB DRM-free installers I've tried before have worked IIRC), but some other things:

- File naming is inconsistent, at worst something like "Setup_GS.zip" for some game IIRC. Can't really tell afterwards easily what game that was.

- Some files are packed (zipped), some are not, some are installers while some are files you run directly from the uncompressed package, etc.

- Especially considering the inconsistent file naming, it doesn't create a nice organized directory structure for your installers and extras like e.g. the GOG downloader client does.

Having said that, I can certainly live with those things, but they still make the GOG version preferable.

Another thing that affects bigger downloads: GOG has at least some kind of patching system (ie. you don't generally need to redownload and reinstall the whole game when a new version comes out, just download and install the patch), while I think HB DRM-free games still come without separate patches. But even this is not a real deal-breaker for me, just a matter of some extra convenience with GOG DRM-free installers.

It matters to me more though that GOG is more strict about its DRM-free policy, while HS is more like "Yeah, whatever.". I feel GOG is actually trying to get publishers to release more games DRM-free, while HB/HS doesn't.

On the other hand, what I certainly do like about HIB DRM-free installers is that you can optionally download them also with a Bittorrent client. Mainly because I still find it more trustworthy than the GOG Downloader, which still seems to have bugs at least time last time I used it heavily to download loads of games (ie. some downloads have gotten jammed, or the pause/resume works erratically, or a download which is said to be completed successfully was corrupted after all).
In my mind it is somewhat comparable as the reason "I buy from HB because they give a bigger cut to the developers.". That is also "merely" an ideological reason.

(But I guess that is not true anymore with HS, they still give the developer "only" 75%, which appears to be the industry standard.)