Can I activate Half-Life 2 (including episodes), Empire: Total War and all the other steamworks games at GOG.com so that they are stripped of all those useless Steam crap they come with (steam cloud, auto-updates, steam client et all) and most importantly Steam DRM? You know, I have over 120 games on GOG and would like to have everything in one place and DRM free so, pretty please, let me activate them on GOG *puppy eyes*. ;-p :-D (and in case it's not apparent, I'm (half) joking)

On steam all of your games are NOT bought they are only rented. Who is sooo dumb to take this ? i do not ever buy a DRM game since it's only rented NOT bought i hope all understand this. Steam is for me simply a scam and should be treated like that....

Yes, there are so many things that could happen that would prevent you from playing your games on Steam, but the games are so cheap that it's worth the risk. I think I've got about 120 games on Steam, spent probably less than $600 on them. If I spent $600 on physical copies I might only have like maybe 30 games. I'm also a fan of Steam features like the overlay, cloud, achievements, etc. And as much as I don't like DRM, Steam's is at least non-intrusive, and actually provides features that may be very useful to players, like the ones I mentioned above.

Anyway I think DD is getting more and more popular every day, and Steam is the biggest DD retailer, so I'm at least pretty confident that they'll be around for a while. Will they always have the same standard of service? Maybe, maybe not, but for now to be able to rent a good game for a couple of years for only $5, I say why not?

The danger of steam is not only the DRM but once valve has too much power then they will do what ever they want with you. You can see it already like COD that is only play with steam or ? I have never used steam because i see it as a scam. Ofc the games are cheap because how much does it cost for valve ? Exactly 0 and it is like printed money.....

Well, they have to maintain servers and pay for bandwidth. Also, they have sales so often that you can get a lot of games for a very low price. As for the CoD comment, it is the developers choice to use steamworks. The reason they decide to do it is because it is WAY more popular than any other form of DRM. It actually has some benefits after all. I look forward to a time when DRM is gone, but for now, devs will continue to use it to appease publishers/shareholders.

Gamers should just stop buying ANY DRM game then it will stop FAST. Why ?
Bankruptcy always help you can bet on that. And why i see steam as the worst ripoff ?
Valve has lured players with Half life 2 into steam and most did not even know that it has DRM when they sold it. In other words they deceived a lot of people. And who says the automatic updates are positive ? If you want to use mods how do you want to apply them ?

You can apply mods just as easily to steam games as you can to retail games. The files are just saved in a different location. Also, you can disable automatic updates for any game you want in steam. It is an option.

Valve has done nothing but support PC gamers with extremely competitive pricing and their DRM system is the best out there imo. As for boycotts, well, good luck with that.

Valve has done nothing but supporting PC gamers ?
Why did they not tell the customers who bought Half life 2 that it has DRM and if you really think that Valve wants to "support" the PC gamers with this scam then you must be really a guy with an all is good mantra. So tell me can you sell the games you bought on steam ?
Nope and then the game is not yours it's only rented this should be clear. Who wants to pay full price for a rented game ?

Half Life 2 came out in 2004. Steam was new and I'm sorry if you felt ripped off by it. I don't sell my games so I don't really see it as a problem, although I will admit it is a valid point. I'm not a guy with an all good mantra, I just think Valve is a very good company, and I wish there were more Valves and less EAs, Activisions, and Ubisofts... The steam platform has so many sales that I have been able to play many games I may not have otherwise looked at, and Valve makes great games themselves. Half Life 2 is amazing imo, same with TF2, L4D and Portal. I like Steam as a program and it offers many features I love, like tracking my time played, taking screenshots, cloud saving, achievements and a chat client.

The only really good game valve has done was HL 1 nothing more....
HL 2 is rather a mediocre shooter. A fail game if you ask me..
The same year far cry came and has blown away HL 2 on almost any level except physics but that's it. HL 2 was so easy that you could play it on difficult and eat a pizza at the same time.

Whatever. Half Life 2 is widely accepted as one of the best shooters out there. It seems to me like you just want to bash anything related to Valve. I don't really care to continue this.

I thought HL2 was 10 times better than HL1, which I've always believed to be pretty overrated (good game, don't get me wrong, but not the 'best FPS ever' kind of good).

Also, I'm pretty sure everyone hated Steam when it was first introduced with HL2. I bought it when it just came out, installed it, and realized I had to install this 'Steam' software which seemed pointless and wasteful of my system resources. I didn't return to Steam until 2007 (for The Orange Box). I only really started buying off of Steam during the 2009 holiday sales since everything was so cheap, so even though I was still thinking that Steam was pretty awful at the time, for the insanely low prices (I'd never seen games go for that cheap before), I had to get them. Then I also realized Steam had become a much friendlier application with some pretty neat features, so I stopped disliking it and embraced it.

I mean, I knew at the time that not having the physical discs puts me in jeopardy of losing them at any time (heck, I lose plenty of game discs randomly anyway), but for $3 or $4 a game, the rewards are worth the risks.

Even in terms of renting the games, where else can you rent a game for $5 for 2 or 3 years? Say if you've never played HL2 before, it'd be foolish to turn it down for $2 on a sale just because you've got this 'I'm not paying for it on Steam on account of it being like a rental' mentality. Play it, enjoy it, finish it, and move on. Just don't buy games at full price - you can buy a whole year's (or more) supply of games for $40 - $50.

Anyway I won't say any more about this subject. I see where you're coming at, and I agree to some extent, but I believe that there are clear positives that need to be considered.

Well for 2-4 $ that's clear since you only rent it that's well worth the price. Just it makes no sense to pay full price for a rented game. Ofc the prices are cheap since it has no marginal costs for valve they could sell it for 1 $ and it's still good for them. I hope all think about this again. And HL 2 is not a good shooter. Put away the gravity gun and there is not much left from the game. It is linear and not challenging at all > boring. For me a 08/15 shooter.

If GoG gave us steam keys, they would have to give portion of all sales to Valve, and that would defy the logic of avoiding the middle man (steam) in the first place.

I also like to have my games publicly listed on my (steam) profile, and while I do understand why gog does not have any stats (no drm for tracking them), I really don't get why there are no public profiles, with game listing, friends, gog mixes and... well, just that. Maybe a public wishlist.

Then, people who are into that kind of staff would have a reason more to purchase games here (see, this is my amazing gog profile with lots of games on it), and everyone else could just select to have private profile.