Just gonna say .. my only experience with Steam's customer support was a very positive one. >.> They refunded a game that /I/ fucked up and bought.

Personally my ranking for them are:
GOG
Impulse
Steam
Amazon
My full opinions of these 4 can be found here:
http://zolgar.blogspot.com/p/resources.html

those are the ones I've used, I like the idea of GMG, but haven't seen anything there I wanted, that didn't say 'no returns'.

Don't forget that there is also battle.net for Blizzard's games and honestly, what is there not to like?

As for customer service, here's a little story:
My dad bought me Starcraft when it first came out and I absolutely loved it, so I was playing it on and off every once in a while. Around 2001-2 or so, my brother went to New Jersey to visit a friend of his and as a gift, he got me the Starcraft Battle Chest. Overjoyed.
Anyway, after having moved a few times, I had lost my SC CD, which had the CD-Key on it. I still had my BW CD and case, but that doesn't need a CD key.
Anyway, I had already re-bought SC on battle.net, but I was bored one day so I sent them an e-mail with a scanned picture of the back of the case and asked if I could get a working SC US battle.net key. After a few e-mails back and forth they gave me an extra copy of the game together with a heart warming e-mail.

Say about Blizzard what you will, but this is a prime example of a company respecting and appreciating their customers.

Weren't you just saying you had too many games and had to stop buying so many? Are you asking about sale sites so you can avoid them?;)

Didn't Bansama have some kind of comparison website on this topic? Can someone link it to me please?
edit: ah behold the power of google, found it:
http://didimatic.com/dd/en/about

Nice blog

Most D2D games have some form of DRM, and for games that don't there is a big "D2D DRM-Free" logo on the product page, to the right of the first paragraph of the overview. Kohan Warchest does not have the logo, so you're probably right about the validation.

Awesome link for didmatic, cheers mate :)

Since I haven't seen this explicitly posted elsewhere on the gog forum, I'd like to point out that DotEmu's downloads are non-client mediated, self-executing packages. No need to be connected to the internet to authenticate the download or start/finish the installation, no serial numbers, etc. In case VtM:B is looking good to you...

Apparentlly as DRM-free as GOG is.

Ok, so for those D2D games that have the logo, they do not require any connection to internet and D2D validation servers if I re-install the game into a new machine years from now?

Just trying to make sure that the "DRM-free" logo does not mean "besides the online validation (which is already a form of DRM), there is no additional Starforce etc. DRM in the game".

Sorry for being sceptical, but I don't believe easily the DRM-free claims. Was it Ubisoft that said they will remove the draconian DRM from some of their game if the DRM ever gets cracked, and when it finally did, they didn't actually remove the DRM, but just made it a bit less intrusive (ie. it didn't require constant internet validation anymore, but "just" when you started the game).

Thanks for the comparison. I'd like to have some more details on DRM, e.g. it wasn't quite clear to me in the blog if e.g. Impulse had DRM (ie. requires online authention at any point after you have obtained the game.).

One more reason I don't like these online authentications: I have a Win2000 machine where I was playiing the few Steam games I own (mainly Half-life 1-2 and TeamFortress Classic). Now when Steam dropped support for Win2000, I'm greeted with an error stating the end of support, and I'm locked out of playing my Steam games which would otherwise still work fine on that machine.

Yes I know Win2000 is an obsolete OS, but am I really supposed to buy Windows XP for that old machine just so that I can play those games on it? Can XP even be obtained anymore legally? Windows 7 is far too heavy for that machine. CD-based games still work fine on that machine.

Sometime in the future (maybe when Win8 or Win9 comes out) the inevitable will happen, and some Steam games can't simply be played at all anymore: the Steam client will not let you play your games in the "obsolete OS" anymore where the games otherwise run fine, but then those said games will not work anymore on the newest Windowses either that the Steam client supports. Thus, bye bye for good for those games.

For the purposes of my Blog, DRM isn't much of an issue. I believe that Impulse requires online authentication for installation, and there might be other forms of DRM in some games.

Ok I misunderstood then, because in the blog you mentioned "Steam is/has DRM", so I thought that implied Impulse does not have DRM.

Yes...I just feel like I'm missing out on some deals somewhere! :P

That reminds me, I gotta get Diablo 2 and the expansion, to complete my Battle.Net account. Too bad I don't have the money to upgrade the games to CEs.