Peculiar... Especially since Dark Messiah of Might & Magic was developed by Arkane Studios in France. The same guys that made Arx Fatalis.

I doubt that would work on court or consumer protection agency. I don't know how false advertising in internet is handled (I know you could get refund using proper channels), but if it was paper, roadside or other such advert in Finland, it would be grounds for fine (stating what you wrote would make it worse in such case actually :P)

GameTap has done this sort of thing very successfully; free users see ads before games launch, while paying customers have no ads and can access a much larger selection of games.
If anything, I think Valve is more likely to go for a rental system rather than some sort of budget service. Steam already supports temporary game access in the form of the free weekend deals they have from time to time, and it wouldn't take much to expand this into a full-blown rental/subscription service. I imagine many publishers would jump at the opportunity to make rental profits from PC gamers; console rentals are very popular but earn the publisher nothing, but a Steam rental service could turn the most popular games into a permanent source of income for them.

And HOW are they getting jumpy? in all honesty?
Steam has over 20 million subscribers. They've gotten bigger then EA Downloader, Gamers Gate, Stardock Impulse, Direct2Download, and all the other digital download services, but now according to some fanboys they are crapping in their pants over a NEW provider that ONLY provides old games?
Yeah, I realize you guys don't like to hear the truth, I realize what you'll say. But I really don't care.

/facepalm
Jeez, not this crap again.

Ah right, I've never used Gametap, so I guess it does work as a system. I didn't think of the rental idea, yeah that's totally possible I guess because Steam has control over what's in your account. Still wouldn't attract me back though - just bored of the service.
Epic ROFL.
But...but... its so fruity! I love collecting this stuff. We, ah better stay on topic though.

So true. Granted, there are some overlap in titles between the two, but GOG offers an entire array of new stuff while steam at this point is almost exclusively releasing new stuff (the only old thing I remember them releasing in about a year was the X-Com franchise).
The whole Steam vs. GOG debate is stupid. It's like having a Fox vs. Criterion DVD argument. The two cater to two entirely different markets.

Exactly. Steam offers new games with some of the least drm on the market (but still drm), and gog offers old games with no drm.
I love how these clowns insult me, tell me I'm stupid, etc, while their busy making the most worthless comparisons ever.
Expected reply. If you guys actually made an attempt to refute you'd look worse then ya do, so you insult me. Although I can't see how much worse you can look when your saying a large digital provider selling new games is afraid of a small one selling old.

Chillax Zellio, I'm just posting 'what ifs' laced with sarcasm.

It's probably too early to say they're even getting jumpy, but some recent events do seem to indicate that Steam is at least responding to GOG in the form of certain deals they're offering. Now, you're correct that Steam is currently far, far bigger than GOG, although this says nothing with regards to what kind of competitor GOG could become as time progresses; the largest consequence of the size difference at the moment is that right now is when Steam can apply the greatest market pressure to GOG because of the size disparity, in the form of drastically reducing their margins or even selling at a loss in order to squeeze GOG out of the market while they're still small.
As for the threat GOG poses to Steam, while the overlap between GOG and Steam only constitutes a small portion of Steam's catalog, it could be that Steam has seen a non-trivial drop in sales within that portion since GOG entered the market, thus giving them cause for concern as GOG's own catalog expands. Additionally, key aspects of the GOG business model, in particular the "no DRM" aspect, seem to resonate quite strongly with at least a portion of gamers, and such an ideological following can easily end up spreading, slowly encompassing people who initially didn't even know what DRM was until one of their friends brought it up to them. Also, if GOG's business model proves particularly successful then other companies, both existing ones and new ones, may adopt a similar business model and look to bring new games to the market through DRM free digital distribution. This would stand in stark contrast to Steam, whose business model currently revolves around a DRM platform, and thus if numerous companies starting adopting the GOG business model it could end up being death by a thousand cuts for Steam.
Now, I'll finish by saying that all of this is incredibly speculative, and currently there's not even solid evidence that Steam is offering any kind of serious market response to GOG (the Ubisoft weekend deal was only a single data point, and it's not even known if this was actually a response or just coincidence). But, while even saying that Steam is getting jumpy is premature, implying that Steam has absolutely nothing to worry about from GOG is either disingenuous or simply lacking in the ability to imagine all the ways that competition between the two could play out.

Feels like an Apple (GOG.com) vs Microsoft (Steam) argument.
Apple has far less users than Microsoft, so much so it's kind of hilarious, because if you look at their ad campaigns, Microsoft is really fighting negative press by Apple (see the fix vista ad), Is it because Microsoft is greedy and needs to have every customer? maybe, but I think it's more along the lines of, it's because Apple, despite having a small user base, gets a lot of attention (David Vs Goliath).
GOG.com potentially could get screamingly more amounts of attention than Steam, because it is DRM free, and offers many of the old games people love as opposed to everything from new indie games, to blockbuster hits. Why should Steam be bothered? Not because of slightly lowered sales, but because of advertising, word of mouth could spread like wild fire, and it will lead to steams eventual demise. (and the death of drm)

Not sure I like the choice of companies, and the comparison isn't quite the same, mostly due to the diverse markets that Apple leads in compared to Microsoft. For example, the iPhone and iPod have a hefty market share. Not sure what their revenues are though.
having a hard time finding microsoft profit reports... not really good at sifting through business news. Apple did post a record revenue of $10 billion on Jan 21st. (see more here, in case I read that wrongly!)
Anyway, basically I would suggest Apple vs Microsoft is nowhere near the david vs goliath battle people make out. Apple is just another mega-corporation, that some people prefer to another mega-corporation.
Not sure what a reasonable comparison would be, really. I just felt that calling Apple, or Google, or similar small in comparison to Microsoft, is just not the case.

Heh, I didn't mean to spawn a Steam vs GoG.com thread. ;)
I love both, largely as Steam has fantastic tools for Multiplayer (VoIP in every game is a killer feature) and GoG.com is dead-easy for the Single Player classics.
Concurrent releases on the umpteen digital delivery services is to be expected as well, and encouraged, imho.
But to give one service, the dominant service no less, a significant boost by having a release-week sale is just, well, unkind.