I was wondering why steam has a list price 4 dollars less than GOG for Grimrock (10,99 $ on steam vs 14,99 $ on GOG)? I thought that GOG always had better prices, but it seems that this is true only for old games, where there is no competition. But how on earth a potential buyer would choose to buy from GOG, when the same game is priced nearly 40% more expensive, than its straight competitor?

this DRM-poisoned variant must be sold with discount... better use the clean stuff even if it's a little bit more expensive ;)

Because you are mixing your currencies.
You see Legend of Grimrock costing €10.99, which translates to roughly $14.72, which means 27 cents cheaper than GOG. Moving to the other "major" currency zones, we see it costs $14.99 in the US, £11.99 in the UK and €13.99 in the EU zone (Greece is EU2).
For more info and comparisons, SteamPrices is your friend.

Well, you are right, my mistake. I didn't notice that steam prices were in euros. Thanks for the clarification. However, I am sure that in order for GOG to penetrate more in the digitial downloads market, it should provide more competitive prices, compare to steam, for new games as well. This will, of course, reduce its profit temporarily, but in the future it will gain much more from increased sales.

But when you buy games off steam you don't actually own them as opposed to buying them off Gog.com. EDIT: This is actually wrong, but GOG.com is much less restrictive and once you download the game you can personal use it however you like - even if your GOG.com account is banned for any reason.

Always amazes me how many people make a huge deal about Steam. Way to overreact.

I do not buy from Steam anymore, I purchased a few games in the beginning but once I found out that if I choose to leave Steam they will not allow me to take my games away with me I packed in buying anymore.

You own nothing at Steam other than the right to play a game.

I am now addicted to GOG, great site, great games at great prices, and they are all mine :)

I own ONE game from steam because when I purchased it directly from the developers website that was the only way to have access to it and I was utterly pissed. I do not like steam, I do not support it, and my biggest issue with them is they feel like wall mart to me. Drowning out everybody else just waiting until they literally have the market in the palm of there hand and they can start turning up the heat. no thank you, I won't wait until they start an xbox live like pay system to make me gain access to games I already own. I never trust someone who threatens to take there ball and go home, and in the case of steam it is, and always will be there ball, they just let you play with it for a while.

Sorry, rant over, my little console gamer heart is broken and I'm still mad at Steam for having my copy of The Path. QQ

This. Nowadays I'd definitely only get games from GOG, or perhaps from GamersGate as long as said games are DRM-free.

That being said, I do not mind playing Steam games as long as they are on my friends' or colleagues' or relatives' PCs and not on mine (see my avatar for example, it is Dishonored on Steam, and I only play it on my friend's PC).

I wouldn't even take a game for free from Steam. There are some things that'll never cross my door sill - Steam is one thing, a bitten-into apple another ;-)

I don't see what's all the fuss about steam? Their cloud service for backing up game settings and savegames is very useful! The only problem I see with them is paying euros instead of dollars...
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No one denies that their services are useful or convenient. The resistance against the steam concept is primarly political as this practical advantages are mixed with severe user disadvantages.

In short, steam pushes a customer-producer relationship which removes some qualities we enjoyed on the PC platform since the beginning, the open user controled platform: we owned our software (not just revokable licensing), we were in charge of the software on our systems (no prevention of using by being not online, no update enforcement), and we enjoyed a direct decentral software distribution from whatever source we like (instead of centralistic walled garden model which can prevent the free availablity of software).

Well the difference with Steam is that when you buy a game and you like it so much you tell your friends about it and they end up buying it too. With the likes of GoG your friends most likely end up getting the same game for free from you! I'm sure you can see this doesn't bode well for the game companies.

I own games on both GoG and Steam (as well as uPlay, another DRM platform from UbiSoft) and while I can certainly recognize the qualities in all of them, I really don't mind the over-protectiveness of the DRM platforms as long as they provide their cloud services. I can still download and play my games on any machine I want as long as I'm logged into my account and *bam* all my settings and save games are right there with me!

Of course there's always going to be resistance against "The Man" but sooner or later we grow up and leave behind our rebellious youth...

No, this is not unreasonable youth rebeliousness... more likely the opposite. Many folks here at GOG ("good OLD games") are experienced IT oldtimers which have seen paradigms rise and fall and know therefore what is technical hard requirement and what is just economical or political motivated. This is about what kind of software distribution infrastructure do we want and accept in future? The walled garden concept, enforced with DRM mechanisms (made attractive with conveniences) or a user focussed open platform model ?

I'm clearly in for second model. Also, most of the conveniences Steam is offering ("cloud" stuff, social aspects, faster updates) can be incorporated into a non-DRM GOG like concept too... while keeping the advantages of preserving the "full control to the user" philosophy.

There were now several customer trusting business experiments in the last years which proved that its also commercially feasible: GOG worked out commercially wise, the HIB bundles worked out, "pay what you want" in general worked out... if it is feasible (convenient and cheap), people prefere to do the right thing... it gives the additional quality and warm feeling "I'm doing it the right way". Especially if the customers are treated with resepct and trust in ahead.