Hi community,

iam a big fan of having a backup just to have peace in mind.

i prefer steam. i like the achievments and so on. but i dont like the fact that all these games has DRM and you just buying the license of it.

now iam thinking to buy the game again on gog which i already bought on steam just to have a backup.

does anyone here handle it like my thoughts? thinking about do it so and back it up on an external hard drive.

You're still buying the licence here. But you can download the offline installers, burn them into a 4D hologram, bury that in a rock quarry somewhere, and ask someone to dig it up in 100 years.

And they might still work.

I don't buy on Steam but I know a lot of people here on GoG who double dip if a game also comes to GoG. They often call the GoG version "upgrade". So you're not alone, believe me :)

Yes, I've re-bought Steam games on GOG to get rid of DRM, if they're on sale for cheap. However some Steam games have no DRM and work fine with no Steam client installed. For those, I just zip the game and archive that, not much point re-buying already-DRM-free games.

The only games I have on Steam are just online multiplayer games that I play sometimes, so yeah, so far there hasn't been a game that I purchased twice both on Steam and GOG. That said, if there happens to be a singleplayer game so good that I just can't wait its arrival on GOG anymore, then I'd probably get the game on Steam and buy it again on GOG once the game did come to this storefront.

If the game is both on Steam and GOG, there is a good possibility the Steam version can also be backed up DRM-free. So unless you want to rebuy everything you already have on Steam blindly, you might want to try to check which of your Steam games can already be backed up manually.

However, on GOG you get an offline installer (if that matters; maybe it doesn't, a zipped installation folder might be just as good even if it may not include installers for various dependencies etc.), and the GOG version is also supported as a DRM-free product that should run without an online connection or the client.

Plus, GOG has a couple of nifty third-party (user-made) tools that let you mass-download your game installers.

Yep same thing for me, there is a list of Steam games that are DRM free. You can check them here> https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam

If in doubt you can always try it out.

Provided that the price is right, I re-bought some games I that already owned on console, predominantly the PS3. My original PS3 stopped working years ago, so I might as well look for alternative sources. In some cases, the option to use keyboard and mouse was an improved experience, especially first-perspective games.

Here...I do.

While it's true that you also only buy a license here on GOG, the whole business model (DRM-free games only) enables you to store your installers somewhere, far away from the internet and any clients, etc. and play the game whenever you want (or at least: for as long as your hardware and your (future) OS support it).

Most of my GOG games are purchases of games, that I priorly owned on Steam.

There's really only one thing you have to do (and best immediately after a purchase): download all your offline installers (and the extras that may come with some of the games, you buy, (if those are important to you)).

Because ONLY then do you really "own" your games. No matter what happens to GOG in the future.

I don't buy/rent many DRM'ed games, but for the ones I do, I doubt I would double-dip if they came to GOG later on.

If Steam were to remove my rental rights for the DRM'ed games I have there, and if I therefore needed backup copies of my DRM'ed games, then I could always buy the DRM-free versions from elsewhere (like from GOG) at that point (although most of the DRM'ed games I have on Steam and/or Rockstar Launcher and/or Ubisoft Launcher would probably never come to GOG, or any other DRM-free store, at any point, anyway).

So, no need to double-dip for a "what if" scenario that may not ever happen. Might as well wait until it actually does happen first, before needlessly wasting money on double-dips.

Never bought a game through Steam. All games I have there are either freebies or registered retail copies. Since I started buying on GOG, my Steam library has been pretty much static with around a hundred of games.

That being said, if there are still some games that I have only on Steam, I'll rebuy here if they are very cheap, (4 or 5 dollars tops). But I won't spend 20 bucks on a hypothetical scenario as said above.

If Steam goes down under (unlikely), my first go to to reclaim my games would be torrents. Paying again for something I already paid for is out of the question.

I purchase MP games and games that I think will never make it to GOG through Steam. Sometimes GOG surprises me and releases something I've already purchased at Steam (or via console). When this happens...

... I tend to re-purchase via GOG only my most favorite experiences...

... and...

... most only when they are very cheap.

But, I do value having them DRM-free.

I'd much rather purchase the games once... and from GOG... but with GOG's inability to guarantee most releases and almost non-existent MP (extremely low player base even on most MP games they do offer), Steam and console still get some of my business.

I'd say my GOG library is 1/3 - 1/2 games that I own elsewhere but wanted DRM-free. It's hard for me to feel good about re-purchasing games, but having DRM-free PC versions feels important to me ATM.

And then there are games like Dragon's Dogma...

... that I have purchased... 2... 3... 4... and even more times! *ugh*

I went through many of the same thoughts that you are having now, sometimes in December 2020. I was having a hard time choosing between keeping my fancy Steam profile with achievements and all that fluff versus DRM-Free games. I chose to go with DRM-Free games in the end and I have rebought what I could on GOG. Many games have achievements on GOG now too, so you mostly get the best of both worlds. You will never truly abandon Steam anyway, even if you rebuy games on GOG and make it your primary store, since some publishers will never come here.

Here's my story, if you care lol:

My profile may say that I joined in 2013, but for all intents and purposes I joined in December of 2020.

In 2013, I came in here to claim the free Fallouts and bought Clive Barker's Undying. Then I pretty much forgot about this site. DRM-Free was nice, but I never saw any future for it, thinking GOG would be stuck selling 90s and early 2000s games forever. Resisting Steam and DRM seemed pointless.

Then in 2020, when I bought Cyberpunk on Steam, the RED Launcher told me I could get some wallpapers and junk if I logged in with a GOG account. There's a special "Cyberpunk 2077 Digital Goodies" pack for Steam owners of Cyberpunk 2077 basically. So I dug that old relic of an account up, went to GOG.com and saw Horizon Zero Dawn banner on the homepage. I really did not expect to see that here! I thought GOG was still stuck selling 20+ year old games and the only new games were 1st party. Suddenly fighting DRM stopped feeling so hopeless lol.

It took me a few months to decide whether "abandoning" so many Steam games and achievements, and whatnot to start over on GOG was worth it, but I decided that it was in the end. I have rebought what I could and now I have triple the amount of games here than I do on Steam lol. Obviously I still use Steam for massive games that are very unlikely to come to GOG anytime soon, such as GTA, Starfield, or Halo, or whatever, but GOG is my primary store now. Expanding to sell new games was the right move for them.

I am kicking myself for not checking out GOG at least once a year between 2013 and 2020. So many great games got delisted, which I've missed. Cryostasis, Riddick, Various Telltale games...

I did that about 180 times, plus I got around 50 games for free.

Go on.


But other than you, I never touched my Steam versions again.
My "duplicate on GOG" section has 232 entries, my "duplicate on others" around 80. That's 310 games I will never have to play on Steam again.

I usually buy games on gog, but there are some games that I got on steam because are only there and got no drm or the drm is really weak or connected to steam api (so it's not a real drm made to avoid copy, it's just that the game want to use achievements (for example) but cannot since there is no steam running).
The main thing is that I don't want to use piracy website, but I was able to discover two open source project to emulate steam api offline without steam running:

https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator

(this allow games without drm, that only try to use steam api to run without it).

And a remover for the most basic steam drm:

https://github.com/atom0s/Steamless

That way I was able to get games like Steins;Gate/Steins;Gate 0, Digimon Survive, Yu-Gi-Oh Legacy of the duelist link evolution that are not on gog but do no really use any strong drm on steam and where I don't need to resort to piracy to remove the drm.

I think you can use that to make a backup of your games on steam (after all you already paid for them).

Of course my method will not work for insane drm like denuvo.
Of course you should try to get your game drm-free from the start (even on steam there are games like Pillars of Eternity 1-2 that are drm-free without any issue).

To create an installer you can use:
https://jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

(the same that is used by gog if I'm not wrong).

In the end I think the most important things are:
1. Support drm-free when you can (top priority because you get what you want and you support creators that offer this alternative solution)
2. Be able to remove drm without using piracy if you already got the game (or the movie, or the ebook)
3. Avoid anything with a strong drm that cannot be removed