Ah yes, there are "free" Steam games all around the net... just at this very moment. So i dunno who got in mind "Steam cured piracy"... this is a joke, i assume.

However... we can argue that PC gaming in general has become more popular... so this was as well helping Steam in the long run. I can not say if it was the case "because of Steam" or just because of a in general lucky development "playing in their hands". Most likely the truth is something in between.. many factors was playing a role and of course... Steam was offering a lot of convenience while at the same time receiving a lot of important support from the industry... on a level other platforms did not get.

Well, publishers in the end only truly care "sales" and they got different strategies doing so. One of the things almost no publisher want to miss is "publishing it on Steam" because it will automatically reduce their sales... on a platform with a nowadays monopolistic dominance.
Steam got a backup plan for almost everything, but clearly no backup plan for "consumer rights". Those rights has always been "enforced" by external instances, which is indeed sad.

>But Crysis flopped becaude of piracy!
Weren't all of Crysis's sequels made available through Origin, anyway? I remember reading about the Doom devs talking about piracy being comparable to their sales, I think in numbers? But that didn't stop them from releasing banger after banger until the bangers stopped coming because id is a Ship of Theseus. Verdict: Deal with piracy, its not going away no matter how many service problems Gabe invents.

>But le winter and summer sales!!
It's ok. Back in the days when steam spawned, you could trade in your games with other games, or you could sell a game as used and someone else bought it, at a lower price than buying a new copy. There were already options to buy games on the cheap. On the flipside, you didn't end up with a 500 game library that you're not even sure how to untangle. Verdict: Meh.

>But le updates!!
I'm a PS3 owner. Early PS3 games, those from like 2006-2009, barely received updates if any at all, few received several. You could have downloaded PC game patches and installed them in minutes because they were just a few megabytes and rarely ever showed up. The era of games receiving multiple big updates hasn't started yet, and maybe the oldest example I can think of is Minecraft from 2009, but in fairness the updates are themselves well-crafted experiences that double as marketing for the Number 1 best selling game. Verdict: stop whining.

>But le disc drive!!
At least if you broke or lost the disc it is your fault. Not so much if the launcher shuts down, taking all your games away with it. If you hated it so much, a no-CD was one Google search away. Verdict: Meh.

Final verdict: First world problems! Try having a low end PC instead for fun.

So everyone should just accept Steam's domination, no questions asked and praise Gaben? Other companies want your data too and the easiest way is to use your own thing instead of a 3rd party.

Regarding Dragon Age Inquisition - it did have a physical release on PC (which I bought), consisting of 4 DVDs, but had to be activated on Origin.

Otherwise, agreed. Roughly 2012 or so was when digital started becoming the norm.

Steam was actually the reason my pirating activity spiked like never before. Until I found GOG that is.

Fewer launchers and storefronts would be absolutely fantastic, but alas. I'm sure it has something to do with data harvesting and/or attempting to get players to buy something else while on that launcher. Very annoying to have that garbage come up every time.

That all being said, GOG should be catching up and closing the gap at some point. As a general rule, game functionality and preservation are vastly superior in GOG, and it's always been good to me on that front. Steam on the other hand has the quantity and the experimental stuff, not to mention the extensive community tools and features. Galaxy client is terrible by comparison. So, CDP has their work cut out for them. Get Galaxy in parity, somehow. Tall order.

Double post, ignore

Short guide on how to play FF7 DRM free along with some background is now written:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/good_games_that_are_available_drmfree_but_currently_are_not_sold_on_gog/post118

Yeah, highly recommend you read about Valve/Steam's history before praising them as the "saviors" of gaming. I dont mind steam but what annoys me is the idea that all game developers/publishers are bad and abuse their customers except Steam/Valve when they are just as villainous.

Who introduced MTX into gaming? Valve.
Who mainstreamed DRM and destroyed physical for PC gaming? Valve.
Who has to be dragged kicking and screaming to allow refunds for games? Valve.

And just FYI regarding some other misconceptions, when Steam eventually goes down, your library is gone. This is the fate of all online platforms. Gabe's "promise" of DRM-free (if its even possible) will only apply to Valve games. Even most steam users know and accept this so Im honestly surprised this myth is still around. Its why digital only sucks and I hate how gaming and entertainment in general is all slowly moving towards digitalization only. You own nothing and will be happy indeed.

Accepting the possibility that I may be from a mirror universe, Steam killed PC Gaming for me. I used to buy a ton of physical media (retail) games until publishers started making Steam a mandatory requirement for most newer retail games. I only started buying PC games again when GOG materialised. So in my case, GOG saved PC Gaming. Long may they prosper.

I'm not interested in one client to rule them all. I'm not interested in any gaming client.

I just thought of something. The so called "saviors" depend on Chromium so badly, they drop support for older operating systems if they need to update their Chromium to something higher. So, you could say the "saviors" have delivered PC games to Google.

We truly are saved(?).

I'm not sure what is being the issue here. Please clarify:

* Are you saying that Steam games, which formerly did not need a 3rd-party launcher - THAT YOU PURCHASED w/o that new 3rd-party launcher requirement - *NOW* require a 3rd-party launcher in order for you to play them?

OR

* Are you saying that a game you purchased - that does not have a launcher - NOW HAS ONE JUST FOR NEW PURCHASERS - but that you can continue playing you pre-purchased copy w/o the launcher (because you purchased it before the new launcher requirement)?

OR

* Something different?

There were a few games that retroactively added a launcher, XCom 2 (I only have the GOG version so this info is second hand) was one of them and Cyberpunk was another. No, these are not remasters, they really did it...
You cannot launch a game without updating it first on Steam, so if a company decides to add a launcher or anti-cheat, not only you are not notified, on standard settings it auto updates. And if you disable auto updates and know there's a unwanted update incoming, simply cannot play the game. (may be using a older version if available?)

Since a game I used to play silently added Easy Anti-cheat, I learned my lesson and never accepted Admin rights (UAC prompt) from a video game again. Funny that several games from GOG are configured to play as admin.

Let me just add to this "dark age of pc gaming" list, MMO's like Warcraft, EVE or Guild Wars.

HAH!!! Steam did the opposite for me. My ancient gaming computer is not connected to the internet. If I had a dollar for every game I skipped buying because it required Steam either for a one-time activation or required that you be connected to play, I could buy a dozen or so games here on GOG and happily play them without interference from Steam. I grant you that my situation isn't typical, but it's also not unheard of either.

Oh please. Screw automatic updates. I've lost count of how many times there has been a story about an auto-update for a game that broke something, or for Windows that caused more problems than it fixed! Even when I'm using a computer connected to the internet, I disable auto-updates for every program that wants to do them, because I don't trust companies not to break things with initial releases of updates. I wait until an update has been out for a few days to see if there are problems reported with it before I go ahead and do it. Classic example from recent GOG history: they made updates to Dragon Age origins that broke stuff for a lot of players. Now since my gaming system is offline, it didn't affect me, but had it been online it still wouldn't have affected me because I would have seen all the problems people were reporting and would not have let it update.

EDIT: I'm probably older than a lot of people on this forum, and the number of times I've heard people proclaim that "PC Gaming is dead" is starting to get ridiculous. If "PC Gaming" were a character in a game, it must have collected a lot of extra lives considering the number of times it's been killed. The gaming industry as a whole is larger than Hollywood and the music industry combined, and has been for years now. PC Gaming has always been a part of that. Maybe not the largest part, but always a significant part.

Yea, because having 200 physical games that are not tied to your account at all is just as convenient as having 200 games in your Steam account. Oh no, it isn't. What if you have to move to another house, city, country, or continent? Or who knows what else could happen to those physical games by accident. You need to stop acting as if Steam could just go down forever at any moment.

I should quit but I don't know when to quit

Besides, I like how you cherry pick one point in my entire post and attack that. Either agree or disagree about each point in the post, or don't. Until you do that I'm not responding to anything you say.