I do not like Steam at all.

I have had my Steam account since 2004.

Larger catalogue of games, not depending on arbitrary curation

VR support

Many, many games available for cheap. Oh, and no need to twiddle your thumbs, hoping that an update will actually be released.

this is wrong. You can post in the forums without owning the games. What you cannot do is post a review without owning a game.

The only thing is that in the forums you get a tag if you own the game, so you can see if the poster own the game or not.

No need for any concerns about that. You cannot completely remove a game license from your steam account. It works as some sort of additional to hiding - it removes the game entry from the library, lesser the overall game count on your account and that's it. You can always restore the game on steam using an auto-processing support form.

For instance, this method allows you to apply a license for Death Stranding Director's Cut that you wouldn't be able to activate if you already have a basic version of the game. You remove Death Stranding, activate Director's Cut, and then restore the basic version and have both versions in your library.

It works & has the latest version of games.

I have never purchased a game on Steam with my own money, which means that my account there is still a limited account. You need to spend $5 or more on Steam to have your account upgraded from a limited account to a full account.

One of the things that I am not able to to on Steam as a limited account user is post on forums. Maybe there's some forum on Steam that welcomes limited account users, but none of the ones that I have looked at will allow a limited account to do anything more than look around. No posting for me.

nearly everything is better than gog

What do I like about Steam:

Overall, I actually do not like Steam.

But some things about Steam I am pseudo-coerced into liking simply because there is no other option, namely:

- Steam has almost all high-quality premium games on offer for sale, whereas GOG usually releases, at most, 6 - 10 high-quality premium games per yer, and no more than that.

And aside from those releases, GOG is almost always under a massive drought, wherein they are only releasing low-quality indie games, and a few mid-quality AA games, during those periods, with those periods being most of the time.

- Steam has functional & viable multiplayer, whereas GOG does not. Galaxy-only multiplayer is a Ghost Town that makes multiplayer-based games never worth buying on GOG unless they have Crossplay with Steam, which 99.9%+ of the time, they do not.

- Steam games are almost always fully-featured with 100% of their content intact, whereas the GOG versions of those same games are frequently stripped-down and have content butchered out of them, i.e. multiplayer, Achievements, online coop (some GOG games maintain multiplayer but it is "local coop" only whereas Steam has online coop), missing updates (often which remain missing forever on GOG), missing DLCs, missing soundtracks, etc.

- Many high quality games are simply never going come to GOG, most likely, so the only choice is to buy them on Steam (or other stores) or else never to experience them at any point in one's life-time, i.e. Dark Souls 1-3, Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2, etc.

- The few times when high-quality games do come to GOG, it is almost always many years after their original release date, only after they have become old & stale and obsolete, and so GOG customers don't get to experience those games while they are new and fresh and while the communities behind those games are at their highest points.

What do I like about GOG:

- the games are DRM-free (sometimes, but not always), they offer offline back installers (sometimes, for some of the games' content, but not always and not for all of every GOG game's content) and they go on sale for quite cheap most of the time.

- Galaxy 1.2.67 is a very good client software (although I hate all later versions, and I'm going to be really mad if & when GOG ever disables the good version).

Other than that, there are not many other things that I like about GOG.

Steam

I like the ease of use of Steam Workshop content, the multiplayer support for most of the games, and vast amount of games both old and new, DRM and DRM-free even.

I don't like Steam launcher dependencies on Chromium, their forum mechanics, removal of games for various reasons, different region policy (not talking about pricing but availability of games), no selection for different payment options for some regions (e.g. Russia)

GOG

I like that launcher is optional, and that GOG is sill in business with their DRM-free approach.

I don't like games de-listing, ancient forum engine, sticky reply notifications, AI bot support, anything remotely related to politics (the store should be as neutral as possible for everyone, even the *bad* people), constant SPAM attacks, some region restictions (different countries might not see games, e.g. Germany, Japan), people hitting down rep for not liking alternative opinion even if there is no such button left ;)) As far as I know the links should not be posted due to "advertising" restrictions. Unless every user says how they love Steam above everything else, I think we should be fine ;)

That's not always true. Try posting in the Steam Friday the 13th game forum without owning the game, for example. You cannot do so (or least, if they changed it now, then that still used to be how it was for several years).

Steam gives devs many powers to censor users from being able to expose how their games are shovelware ripoffs, which is exactly what happened with the Steam forum for that game.

Yes, the restrictions are still there.

You only buy licenses here and on steam you never owned a game. Even with physical games. You can preserve games you have on steam and gog not that much of a difference. Well with denuvo its a bit different but i avoid this games

Their review section is well stocked with user reviews.

Their video previews for games are also downloadable last I checked (if you want to store it offline).

I think its a good place to check what users think of a game before purchasing it here.

Just a couple of days ago I went to play Divinity: Dragon Commander (with achievements) and discovered Street Fighter VI. If not for Steam, I might never have learned of it since I don't play or care about fighting games. Now, I am thinking of getting a PS5 just for that.

Steam contributed a lot to the democratization of gaming. When we had to buy physical copies of even PC games in my youth, 75-90% sale was unheard of. If I spent $60 on a game, I wanted to defend it from criticism or else I felt like a chump. Steam sales really opened up the horizon for a lot of gamers who cannot afford to buy a bunch of games at full price. Now, not only could they afford to buy, they could read what people from all over think of the game at the moment they make the buying decision. They can even find out how many people play. What Steam did for accessibility will always balance out in my eyes their role in popularizing DRM.