I actually LIKE Steam.
It's convenient and their sales are awesome, plus it's easier to chat with my friends whilst gaming.

I like GOG more, mind you. But GOG dooes lack a few of the nifty things Steam has that I likes.

Sure, but there are still many more good games out there so that boycotting Steam is not really an act of abstinence of video gaming. The market is somewhat smaller but still more than enough to play good games the whole time.

Some people probably just think that something is wrong with DRM. It's more like a moralic, philosophic, ... whatever kind of thing and then they abstain from the goodies happily. I like fast food but still I don't eat it everyday.

As a compromise I would even recommend to just not buy many games on Steam but only the ones that aren't available DRM free anywhere else and that you would really, really, really regret not to have played. That can't be but a few, maybe 1 to 5. That is, if you would not like Steam but still are a hard core gamer.

I am not sure how convenient other tools are but there should be some out there that allow easy chatting whilst running software. It's nice that Steam has it included, but it's not unique.

Most other tools require minimizing the game. Some games do not like that. Steam has the interface built in to the games, so you hit shift+tab and it opens the Steam interface over the game, so you don't have to deal with your game going "I don't like being minimized!" also, in most SteamWorks games, it auto pauses. >.>

But I don't just want to "play games". I want to play the very best and unique out there. And if you want those games, you need to include Steam. Whether you like it or not. Automatically dismissing a game because it is on Steam is no base for any discussion. As Steam is simply a platform that has no influence on game design.

The only games I regard as amonst the best from Steam exclusives are Civ 5 and the new X-Com. So for me I do not need to buy more than two games from Steam if I really cannot live without. Only two.

And I think it can be a base for a discussion. I don't see why not? There are people who don't need to play all the best games. Of course to stay fair it should either go against all DRM or against none, not specific against Steam.

P.S: Civ 5 is available on Mac without Steam and without DRM. So only one.

Given how subjective "best" is, how can You keep repeating that as fact and not...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

Sure, taste is subjective, but I think you'll find most people consider Fallout: New Vegas, Saints Row: The Third, Spec Ops: The Line something quite special. For a gamer, missing the opportunity to play those titles because of your stance on DRM is just modern-day asceticism, nothing else.

I don't :( I bought it, and if I didn't, I wouldn't miss anything.

It was just as boring as any other game on Bethesda engine. I lasted for like 10 hours and still can't imagine how anyone could play this game for 100 hours. And there are thousands of them. Ok, the story is decent, at least, but the game mechanics? Combat is so boring it destroyed every enjoyment from this game for me. How on earth people are capable of enjoying this game for 100 hours, when everything you do is "headshot, repeat for eternity", I don't know.

So no, if someone doesn't consider Civ5 or New Vegas a good game for him, it's not ascetism.

I don't check out every game people tell me it's great. I check out only the game I believe are great. Following the crowds' tastes never gave me anything good.

Btw. I'm not a steam boycotter, I have around 400 games on steam, I just wanted to point that out.

But people who boycott Steam will have never have the possibility to make that decision themselves. They are cut out of a big chunk of the market. And as they cannot test those games, there claim that all those games are bad is invalid.

Is it really DRM-free? I couldn't tell so I never bothered to buy it. I wish the App Store would simply indicate which applications are DRM-free somewhere on the product pages.

Well, obviously. It's a given some simply won't enjoy the game, and that's fine. But that's also why I called those games "special". I personally consider them the best experiences I've had in gaming in years, but even if they aren't your thing, it's clear these are not your average run-of-the-mill releases.

Parallel: I personally thought The Dark Knight Rises sucked balls. But I still admit it was something special.

Besides, how do you know you won't enjoy the game if you don't try it out? On paper, SR3 doesn't sound like my kind of game at all, but then I bought it and saw it was fucking awesome (and there really is no other way to put that).

Well, for me it was the story and the atmosphere. As an oldschool gamer I can swallow a lot of bad mechanics or graphics.
Yup, SR 3 was my biggest surprise in years. It was the glowing praise of the GOGers that played it which made me get it. (I knew Spec Ops was special because I knew the dev, otherwise that would have gotten the "Holy Crap!! Award".

But man... Such mechanics as this are meant to be forgotten. I can play Crystals of Arborea or Ishar with combat as simple as that, because i know it was eons ago. And the combat in Fallout 3 and NV is like 70% of the gameplay. My travel towards New Vegas (this is when I stopped playing) was pure misery. The story was fine, but again, I can't stand Bethesda's talking heads dialogue engine. I think Mass Effect franchise spoiled me good with their dialogue scenes.

True. I do believe that in business, what most people like is generally good. If it sells, people like it and want it, it's good.

But it's not the smallest reason to check it out by me. I never was a guy who needed to check "what the fuzz is about". Mostly, because I was disappointed after, many many times. Like this Intouchables movie, everybody's jizzing their pants around, but it's just a decent movie with cliche story.

And if for somebody's DRM is a big issue, the enjoyment of a great game could be far far worse. My friend for example has only one game on steam. And he started to hate this game, not steam, because steam client sometimes launches for like 5 minutes, especially when his internet connection is slow.

I don't think you have thought what you just said. You cannot reverse engineer the video of a video game. Streaming means you only receive a video of the games according to your input, there is nothing to reverse engineer there.

It's a bit surprising that there aren't other tools that have an overlay. It's probably a bit more difficult if the tool isn't that tightly integrated but I heard it is possible for example in connection with Teamspeak.
http://addons.teamspeak.com/directory/plugins/overlay.html

But I agree that this is probably not as comfortable.

I guess most people don't try a game out, they just buy it if it is cheap enough because the screenshots looked nice or the reviews or the advertisement speak were interesting or friends recommended it or it is a genre they like anyway. For example the reason I started playing Witcher. I liked the setting and I heard Witcher sold a lot and it was on offer.