Hey zaktheevil,

you can add games that you don't own on steam to your Steam library by clicking on on "Games" and then on "Add non-steam games to my library"

This will create a shortcut for Witcher 3 in Steam for you.

Hope that helps, bye.

I mentioned mandatory in parantheses, did I not? I didn't criticize anyone either, I merely mentioned I've never seen someone mentioning auto-download of redist files as something positive. The point is, I own hundreds of games on Steam (and GOG) and I'm a computer geek; I don't need redist files for every single game, it's a waste of bandwidth.

Wow.

As my first foray into the forums of GOG, while searching for this very topic, I see a bunch of people judging and berating someone for a simple yes or no question, and just about anywhere I go on GOG, I see people talking shit about Steam and their userbase. I understand that many of you might disagree with DRM, or may have even been burned by Steam, and I'm not here to defend them or their DRM practices, nor am I here to attack GOG. In fact, I love both of them (especially over Origin and Ubisoft's whatever). And before coming to the forums, I thought that getting The Witcher 3 from GOG was just going to be minimally inconvenient for me, but now I can plainly see that GOG's community is toxic, and it's convincing me to just shell out $60 on Steam instead of taking advantage of my free NVidia offer, just so I don't have to come in contact with this community again.

I may only have a few games on this account, but I'll definitely be reconsidering any future investments. You ruined something awesome. I hope you're happy.

I had some issues with DRM on Steam in the past.

I bought DiRT2 on pre-launch and attached the game to my hotmail account on GFWL. There was no GFWL in my country at that time so I was forced to provide fake adress info so I could save my game (lol).
When GFWL came to my country, I already had a new Microsoft account so I was trying to move my game to my new account, where I provided my real adress and my real information. I waited 3 weeks and various international phonecalls to microsoft to get this done.
At the end, I lost all my savegames and all my multiplayer info. Had to start from zero.

This is one of the worst cases of DRM lock I was into, but I faced some because of Steam distribution way.

Cheers!
Well, you know Steam forums so you probably know that it's not GoG exclusive feature have assholes around.
For me, both are an awsome way to get help so I leave the assholes in bypass on my mind ... :-)

Hope you come back and enjoy the good part of it!

Many communities enjoy belittling some other community to feel better about themselves. Besides, have you been in the steam discussions? Half the threads are flame wars, the rest is filled with "so this game is crap" or "price is outrageous, devs should be ashamed!" or other nonsense.

This is my first time on gog.com and I got Witcher 3 for free from buying a 970 for my pc. I use Steam and have never had issues with it since I started in 2004. I don't understand what everyone's problem is with "drm" as it seems to me that very few games limit the number of times you can download. I know EA titles do this sometimes but the ones I have through Steam have always been available for a reinstall.

That being said, I know nothing about gog.com. In my library section I clicked on the game and it shows me 7 different parts to download instead of just a 1 and done like Steam. I find this to be really annoying, much like the days of installing from multiple floppy disks.

There are also a number of "goodies" on the side in zip files to download, including music and avatars. I will guess these are stand alone products and not an actual part of the game.

So can ANYONE please give me a valid reason why they would not offer Steam keys to people who received the game through a promotion?

My issues with steam? I was living in a small town at the Arctic Circle, where internet was almost non-existent when Half-Life 2 launched. Most shops there sold pirated games and most gamers didn't care. I found official box that was sold for 20x more than pirated game and bought it. When I installed the game it required me to connect to internet and download steam. I used my mobile CSD connection to download steam and that cost me over 1000 rubles (about $35 at the time) and took almost an hour. Then it required me to download huge patch, that would take almost a day to download and I would need to pay more around 20000 rubles. So I just deleted it and got pirated game for 100 rubles.
Since then I hate Steam even though I have 100Mbps unlimited connection now and still have to use it a lot because most games only available at steam.
This was a standalone installed. You can just use gog.com downloader to get all parts or install gog galaxy and it will install the game like steam does.

You know you can use GoG Downloader or Galaxy so you will not need to download each part separated, right?
If not, you need to learn as you did when you downloaded Steam client, remember?

You simplify Steam experience and make GoG experience looks harder with fake accusations. This is known as LIE!

Thank you for a reasonable response. I certainly understand people not wanting to install a separate client just to have access to their games. Steam initially made me uneasy that way. But its been 11 years for me and I have finally accepted the fact that we live in a digital age.

Now my problem is, I don't want to install a new client every single time someone decides to offer a product. The developers, when making their deal with Nvidia, should have allowed some choice for people who used their promotion. EA promotes the Origin client and PWI uses Arc specifically for their products but still sells their games on Steam. That's all I want is the choice to use the platform I have used for years.

There was no lie so please refrain from your accusations. At the start of my post I said this was my first time on gog.com. From their own website the download section contains multiple parts to the game install files. I never said I use their Galaxy client.

And Steam is a simple platform to use which is why its been copied numerous times over the years. Origin, Gamestop (formerly Impulse), Arc and now Galaxy just to name the ones I know.

So buy it on steam if you like it so much. People already offered you to just add a non-steam game to your steam client. You didn't pay anything for it, you got it for free. You are not required to use galaxy client. The problem with Steam/Origin and other platforms is that your game collection is tied to the platform and if you lose access to it - you lose access to your games.

Steam: You need to download Steam client, install, log into it, use Steam Guard and, at the end, you can download your games.
GOG: You are not forced to use any client to download from GOG so you can log in and download anything you want. If you want, you can download Download Manager and, now, Galaxy.

And you say you are not simplifying Steam and making GOG looks hard then it really is.
I say you are used to Steam and was expecting the same experience on GOG but they are different platforms. So you were lying and I will not refrain my affirmation.

But let's not get upset, I am not "accusing" you, just saying you were not telling the truth because I know both platforms and have been using them for years and can say both are easy to use.

*Peace*

I would have never played W3 if it was not on GOG and DRM free. I like to download the title, keep the installers, NO online activation, NO internet required EVER, NO keys and I can play it anywhere I want. NO forced updates nothing. Since I am strictly SP Offline gamer.....GOG suits me down to a tea :)

For my it is ONLY Gog and nothing else :)

A big welcome to GOG KWindhunter and I hope you enjoy the flexibility it allows. You can of course always have W3 on Steam as well if that is your preferance :)

that is entirely different and you know it.

We are talking about DRM, not illegal activities.

There is nothing wrong with DRM, with steam, you can play whereever you want, you just got to log in to your account to play....the only games that need constant online to play tend to be mostly, if not entirely online in the first place, like counterstrike for example.

Many people are just experienced in life. How often do businesses make bad decisions and cease to be businesses? Every day. Some are even shocking. When VALVe goes belly up for some reason out of the blue, where will all your Steam games be? Still on VALVe's servers. If GoG died right now, I'd still have access to every single one of my games that I purchased.

The language in VALVe and Steam's ToS is pretty disturbing; they've thought of this eventuality and the possibility that you can be denied access to a game you purchased, and their ToS protects them from legal action stating that they sold you a subscription and if you suddenly lose access to that subscription, then it doesn't matter. You got what you paid for and they are not responsible for reimbursing you at all. So it's not the desire to see no change that drives many of us, it's online activation for games where a company when out of business and their activation servers shut down. Now I can't play a game I paid for because in order to do so, the game has to connect to a server that doesn't exist. THAT'S the major problem most of us have with DRM like Steam. That, and if I move/vacation in the mountains somewhere with no internet connection, why should I be denied the digital goods I have paid for if I have the game backed-up/installed on my computer? There are real issues for some people.