There has to be some amount of customer responsibility as well. The publishers inform the mimimum specs for a game, if the customer buys the game for specs that are not compatible with the game, then the game not working should be a risk the buyer should acknoeledge while buying. That is what I do when I buy games above my specs. Witcher 2 for an example wasn't promised to run on my rig, but I bought it anyway. no-one else to blame there but me, had I not gotten it to run in somewhat playable fashion.

And, further more, syaing that fixing the game would make the game run is also flawed premesis, as the hardware in question migt be too old or too marginal for the company to actually be viable to make the game run on. The line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise people would be demanding the new Crysis to be released on C64, just because there's one dude who wants to play it on one.

I don't like Steam because I like to have a clean Task Manager of running processes, when I play a game I want to be able to run it and only it, no other background processes. The very idea that I have to run a social client on my computer, taking up system resources in the background, just to run a game I have paid for... it is beyond belief really.

I notice most people use the old "I've never had a problem with it" shtick for defending Steam, and that's fine but your personal experiences are not everyone's personal experiences. If you're going to defend Steam don't bring up your personal experiences which are irrelevant to other people, use real arguments such as "I like the Community features of the client" and explain why, that would be a legitimate argument. I've never had a technical problem with Steam, but I still have a problem with it in principle. That is, I don't want any social clients, processes, or background crap running on my computer at any time which I'm not aware of, and cannot uninstall, and I certainly won't tolerate any system unnecessary processes to play my owned games.

I know many people simply don't care because Steam is reliable and convenient, and that's fine. But the very existance of Steam, to me, is problematic. I want to own my own games, in the sense of real personal ownership no different than how GOG sells games, with no management or protection of my digital ownership of said games. Steam games are services, they are not owned.

You wouldn't expect a game to force you to open MSN messenger every time you play a game, so why is Steam's DRM taken for granted? It's outrageous.

My definition of "lose" is "not getting what you want""

Hmm, good point. Well fortunately they are playing a metacritic 20 and it serves them right too! I hope they paid full price!

Oh, wait. Now I have even less integrity because I wanted them to pay full price to those terrible developers.

I guess there is no hope for me.

Well, I could list out the features of the client that I like. And I could say that background processes do not bother me. My computer is more than able to handle them without impacting my gaming experience and not only that but those processes give me the client I just mentioned liking, etc.

The thing is, you have already decided that you do not like this and I simply respect that. So, I don't want to try to argue why you should just get over yourself and see things my way. You could just as easily tell me to do the same and perhaps more. ;-)

I don't know why the hell we go back and forth about Steam and other clients so much around here really. It's okay for people to have their preferences and act accordingly. I don't see how the many threads will ever result in anybody changing anybody else's mind about anything to do with these. People tend to be pretty set in their opinions about such things.

I do agree with you 100% about freedom to do with our purchases as we wish and that they should not be rentals. Software licensing sucks and is bullshit but it is at a point now that I cannot see anything short of worldwide governmental intervention ever really fixing it and giving us what should rightfully imo be ours.

Since I just said that, then why the hell do I use Steam? Well, it is because I want to play the games available there at the prices available there and so I make the tradeoff for lack of any real alternative. They kind of have us by the balls with this stuff, not just Steam but the gaming industry as a whole with their EULAs. Of course, GOG is a noteworthy exception although I do not think I can legally trade, sell or leave in my will the GOG games I own or the account itself. So all is not exactly perfect here either but at least I can download the games and take possession of them on whatever media I choose which is certainly better than the majority of other digital distribution I am aware of.

Please correct me if I am wrong but I am guessing that it is not legal for me to download all my GOGs to a USB drive and then sell them all to somebody because I decided I don't want them anymore. I don't think I can do that or leave that drive full of GOGs I bought to my nephew either. My GOGs are DRM-free sure but I don't think my legal rights are what I'd like them to be even though the law in this case is not enforceable and I can actually do whatever I damned well please with them. It would be nice though if bought some GOG and wound up not liking it if I could gift, trade or sell it at my whim. What prevents me from doing this? I guess I don't really own the game fully after all in the same way I own some physical item in my home, like the sofa or something. Anyway, I won't argue for a moment it is still a hell of a lot better here. I just think sometimes people forget this isn't true utopia yet either.

For me, Steam has made what I otherwise feel is a shitty situation more palatable by giving me various features in their client that I do like such as time tracking, screenshots, social features, and the great sales in the store. So, I accept the deal that my purchases are rentals and in consideration of this I very rarely pay more than 10 bucks for a game there for games that opened at 50 and 60 without DLC. I just wait and get it all cheap because that is all a rental is worth to me, nice client and all.

That's cool and I can respect that. I just don't think I am comfortable paying with my own money for games tied to an online service/client which could quite easily go down. At least in GOG you can back up your games with those easy-to-use installers which you can keep on as many back-up hard-drives, USBs, burned DVD's, as you like, on Steam you can't do this.

As for the social features, that's fine that you like those features. But to me (and I assume others) social features are meaningless and unwanted, I only play single-player games and to me the very existence of social features or integration or whatever with how I want to play my games, I find that offensive. I pay to play games, not to have social bullshit shoved down my throat, and let's not mince words Steam is a social client, a social service.

Using Steam it is IMPOSSIBLE to install/play games without using their social client, so by definition it is forcing social features on gamers.

I hope Steam doesn't go away at some point and take my games with it. That would suck. GOG wins this contest hands down and a good thing too. It is nice to know I have over two hundred games here that nobody is going to be taking from me without coming in here with a gun while I am asleep.

I sometimes have wondered, what happens when Gaben dies. He is at some rather significant risk of health problems such as coronary artery disease. Old Gabe has made some nice promises, sort of promises, about what happens if Steam goes down but will somebody following Gabe be concerned about his promises? Hmm.

Once again, they are just long-term (hopefully!) rentals and I am painfully aware of that. It's true of all my games except my GOGs and a few CDs I have around here.

It is impossible to install/play most (there's a few exceptions but not many) without using the Steam client but you can easily skip the social crap completely. You can configure the client to open to your games list by default so that you do not see the store, just your games and by default the friends list does not open. Best of all, there is no need to have friends on Steam if you don't want any and if somehow you wind up with some or someone you don't like, it is a simple affair to make them disappear completely and permanently.

I think the best way to play Steam games for somebody who doesn't want anything to do with the client is just use a desktop icon to start the game or use the Start Menu if you are running a version of Windows that has it. Then you never see the client at all. It will by default show you ads for stuff on sale when you exit playing but you can turn that off in options.

Again though, I am not trying to talk you into Steam. I guess maybe i am saying if there was some game you really wanted to play that was Steamworks or something, it wouldn't be so bad really if you ran it from an icon and killed Steam when you were done but yeah, you'd still have the client you don't like in the background.

It's too bad they could not make that optional. The Mac App Store I use for some Mac games is kind of the opposite of Steam. My games are tied to the App Store account so they are still rentals too basically but there is no client involved. The App Store is an App itself on Macs but it is not always running and it does not run when you play your games. It's just there to buy and download stuff as well as notify you of updates when they become available which you can then either install or pass on at your option. Steam could give users this option while still retaining their DRM. I guess they don't bother because they are doing so well for themselves that they don't need to. Maybe at some point somebody like Amazon.com might change that but why those guys do not sell world wide is beyond me. There are people in nations around the world who want to give them their money and they won't take it. I don't get that.

Please post your comp setup. It'll be good for future ref.

Also, did you read the system requirements listed on the game's page?

Like many good arguments on the internet, by definition your definition is correct. If you define Steam as "a social client" then of course by definition you're right. If however you consider Steam as a game download service, then you're wrong. Nobody is forcing you to have any friends on Steam or do anything else social, so why you claim that social features are forced on you isn't clear to me.
A lot of indie games in bundles and bought from their sites are DRM-free too.

But frankly I'm sure that if GOG went under then some years later I won't be able to play many GOG games, because there will be no guarantee of OS compatibility. That's similar to games I have on CD. Those of them I'll be able to play will be playable thanks to being DOSBox or ScummVM games, not thanks to being GOG games. If I bought this kind of game elsewhere I expect I could also continue to play it. I imagine that Loom and the Indiana Jones adventures which I have on Steam will continue to be playable just the same as games I bought on GOG.

How is it "my" definition? Steam is a client yes, can we agree on that? Steam has social features? Are you going to deny that?

That's like saying that you are a social person because you are a person and have social features. "Social client" doesn't mean it's a client with social features, it implies a client whose main purpose is social. If you define it just as having social features, then of course you're right but it's meaningless because they aren't forced on you, they just exist. If you define it as having a main purpose which is social, then it's purely your take on things.

If GOG goes down, I have no way of proving I actually own any of the games I have backed up on my drive. They may as well be downloaded from the pirate bay, for all anyone cares. If steam goes down, I can do just that - get the games off of pirate bay with zero moral or ethical issues.

You can argue there might be legal issues, but the reality is, that's about as enforceable as not giving off multiple copies of my GOG downloads to someone, especially where I live.

You can also argue that there might be records of GOG purchases remaining somewhere to prove my ownership, but the same applies to Steam.

As for the "IMPOSSIBLE" part, it does not apply to all games. Quite a large amount of steam games on my hard drive right now can easily be played without Steam running. You just need to find the executable, which isn't difficult.

I still have problems running Witcher 2 on my system... I guess gog is a scam and I should stop supporting them.

Whether Steam is a "social client" or a "client with social features", it still requires me to use it to buy/install/launch games, that's bad enough. The very existence of stuff like "Achievements" is forcing social features on gamers.




Actually, there's a big difference there you failed to see.

The executable is the main component of a game which is subject to copyright. So by finding an executable (I presume you mean a crack) for a Steam game you copied out of its directory, you are still pirating it.

With a GOG game, as long as you keep the installers backed-up, you're fine to play all your GOG games whenever you want, without needing access to the internet.