GOG Galaxy is built around the chromium base... and the red launcher calls home... A LOT (to GOG's insight server).
Seems like a good first step on the path to DRM.

I'm glad you're still happy with GOG. Honestly.

I no longer see a significant difference between GOG and the competition, certainly not light years, perhaps a few centimetres,

Wait, what!? Since when and how?

Oh goody... I can't wait to see the fallout from Mr. K's post :-D

He's completely right but ppl always start screaming that 'no steam is DRM through & through' :-D

I don't get it. Yes, there are drm free games on steam. Yes, you can copy your steam client and steam-drmd games to another offline machine and play it there. But afaik, you still need the client for download and installing. So what do I miss here?

Why is it that when someone is complaining about some games on GOG not being updated fast enough for them, their proposed solution to that always never is to boycott such developers until they change their ways, is it really that difficult to see how it is the developers who should be punished first and foremost for ignoring their GOG customers, instead rewarding those developers with more of your money by buying their games on Steam?

I decided that it was not worth it already back when I was still contemplating how to deal with Half-Life 2's online authentication, as I was able to predict that client based DRM could introduce cracks that only tampered a specific version of the Steam client to launch a specific version of one game, making it near impossible to try to maintain a fully future-proofed Steam library without having set up a separate VM for each version of the client just in case some obscure old game could not be made to work otherwise, so I simply decided to not play any Steam-exclusive games as long as they are not officially sold without needing the client to play them, which is why none of those third party lists on the forums mean anything to me, as only an official DRM-free tag would hinder the publishers from adding DRM back later as anyone who bought such games while they were tagged as DRM-free could seek a refund over false advertising.

There is some command line tool that was originally intended for installing player hosted servers for some games on Steam, which apparently can also be used to download and install any game on Steam you have in your library, but it is unclear to me how it is any better than having the client installed on some old notebook as either way you would have to be online to install the games and at least with the old notebook you would have to figure out what registry keys you may need to import and save for later when you try to get those games to work after moving their installation folders to your main gaming computer.

You don't need the client to download anything... if you know what you're doing. All purchasing can be done through any web browser.

Valve is happy to tell you all about it: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/api
And basic 'steam needs to be running' is still publisher choice; thousands of games don't need steam installed even.

One of my favorite examples is https://store.steampowered.com/app/226620/Desktop_Dungeons/
Runs just fine on a Steam free computer... I can 7-zip the files & take them to any other computer.... and it's identical to a copy that's been 'installed' (which is kind of moot for this game... there is no installer version & I believe the freeware version which has less content is also just zipped up...)

Course here's where the shouts of 'you don't know which ones are drm free so they're all drmed!' come in...


---Edit---

Sometimes... all you have to do is pull your head out of the sand: https://github.com/search?p=2&q=steam+download&type=Repositories

There's a command-line tool (AFAIK, developed and maintained by some individual developer(s), or perhaps by steam itself, but available from the steam website) that allows you to download and install steam games. It's called SteamCMD: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD.

It's like a very primitive gogrepo (i.e. not very technophobe friendly), allowing you to download and install one game per invocation (but, still, it can detect if your local copy is up-to-date or not, and patch accordingly). Once installed, assuming the game is client-free/DRM-free, you can play it without any client or any online connection.

Obviously, while you can use SteamCMD for any steam game, this is primarily relevant for client-free/DRM-free games, but that's anyhow what I'm interested in.

It's not essentially different from the GOG model, except that the game ends up in your backup fully installed, rather than as exe/bin files like on GOG. If you want, you can always zip it into a self-installable exe, but I don't bother.

I have been playing almost exclusively steam games these past 4 months (since I began buying on steam), all DRM-free, and I have never installed the steam client.

It's only a few hundred games https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_Steam
"This page was last edited on 7 September 2021, at 19:16.!"

Gog`s score!

What would be Steam's response? :D

The response would be utterly simple: that list is wrong!

The list is absolutely meaningless. It is ridiculously lacking and clearly not well maintained. Here is a list with thousands of DRM-free games on Steam and it too is sorely incomplete: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games.

If you don't believe me: Read what the list you quote states about itself:
"DISCLAIMER: Currently this list isn't even remotely a complete listing of DRM-free games on Steam!"

The vast majority of "drm free" games on steam are shovelware, even valve uses drm for most of their games. Also sometimes you have to jump through hoops to get it drm free like editing something,etc

That "editing something" means in most cases putting a string of numbers (the game ID) in a txt file.
For anyone who has ever modified autoexec.bat and config.sys files it is not even worth mentioning, as it only takes few seconds to do.

There are plenty of games on Steam that are lacking quality, to put it nicely, after they started accepting (almost) anything. That doesn't mean that the majority of their DRM-free games is garbage though.

They have tons of old games running on DOSbox, and all those games are DRM-free, if not as is, then after you copy those files to your own DOSbox. The same is true with all ScummVM games.
And as far as I'm aware of, all AGS games are DRM-free too, and if by some weird chance they would not be, the upcoming AGS support in ScummVM will fix that.

I don't have the first Half-Life games on Steam, but some people have told that even those are DRM-free, even though they are Valve's own games!

If you don't play the latest AAA games, there are quite literally thousands of DRM-free games on Steam, even if you exclude all freeware, tons of RPG Maker games, and all that.

Very true. And at least for me, the "editing something" part takes zero time, as I have incorporated it into a batch file that I use to call SteamCMD.

As for the repeated argument that the "vast majority" of DRM-free games on steam are "shovelware" (a.k.a. "sour grapes argument"), while that may well be true, depending on one's definition of "shovelware", even the "small minority" that are not "shovelware" is likely larger than GOG's entire catalogue

I dont mean AAA games only, it can even be AA games. Also editing is just one issue, the issues can vary for example some games don't save without the client,etc. As previously mentioned, an immense of the games drm free on steam are crapware.

Thank you! I am always glad to see facts, so far there are about 2500 games : "Launcher-free Games
The games on this list do not have any DRM once they are installed which means that they do not require the Steam client to be played." They are missing offline installers but can be installed via SteamCMD... and this is... a command-line version of the Steam client.... so... it's like a choice between Galaxy 1.0 and 2.0 still a client.
I`m sorry but I want (sounds boring now) client-free offline installers available through any web browser, I am not sure what everyone else wants. I know only what I want. (and that is not too often)

When you saying you have been playing games on Steam without a client using a command-line version of the Steam client, I feel like someone has tricked you by using your emotions against you.
There was a time I thought you are a sexy anime girl... and I still like that thought. ^ I can`t argue with you :D