Hey, so for some time now i had this problem… I have been buying games from both gog and steam… No drm option is good on gog but there are some festures missing from what steam has, for example being able to buy games from trading cards… What should i do? Focuse on buying games from gog and if there isnt a game then buy it on steam? Or maybe just buy games on steam?
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Check both, if the game is available on both, then I will get it on Gog.
If not, Steam it is!
I have a few games I enjoy so much that I have bought them several times, including on both Steam and Gog.
An example, back in 2004/2005 I bought Unreal Tournament 2004 on CDs, then when I found it on Steam a few years later, I bought it there as well as I wanted a modern installer, finally I found it on Gog without DRM yet another few years later and bought it there as well.
I love that game and wanted the best installer for it, especially without DRM.
Fun fact, Unreal Tournament 2004 has a native Linux version on the retail disks, you will find a bash install script in the root on one of the CDs
This is the reasonable way.
I feel you do this quite nicely. Personally I think if I had bought such an old game already on physical media decades ago, I’d just pirate it now. I can see the argument though that GOG (or Steam for that matter) delivers tweaks that make old games work on new hardware though, so that is worth paying for. Guess it all comes down to pricing, I wouldn’t be willing to pay full price for just a patch that makes it work on current systems.
I have never really pirated games myself, I was always far too worried about malware to do it.
Though, when dad was traveling in Asia back in the early 2000s he used to come back home with a shitload of games/software which most had a folder called crack in the root of the CD…
Occasionally I will prefer Steam to take advantage of Steam matchmaking
I’m going to go against the grain here and say I primarily buy from Steam. A lot of indie games don’t require Steam to run to play them and for the games that do, it’s not hard to bypass. I just like having everything in one spot where I can redownload to other devices when needed, and I can have cloud saves for bouncing between my PC and Steam Deck. Also, if I nuke my OS for a 3rd time this month (changing distros), I won’t have to start over on the games I’m playing.
Heroic Games Launcher works on Steam Deck, and syncs your achievements and cloud saves to GoG. The biggest downside to GoG is it requires you to use the Windows/Proton versions of your games for cloud sync to work.
You can’t buy games from Steam.
You can only license them for private use, subject to a change in licensing terms or disappearance of the game from the platform at any time.I agree to everything salve that once you license a game, even if it is taken out of the store, will still be available in your library.
In my case: Outrun 2006: coast to coast and Castle of Illusion (remake).
But they can take it away, if they want to. They just haven’t done so yet. Unless you own DRM free installation media, you don’t own a game. Steam has been relatively low on the enshittification scale so far, but there is no guarantee that this will never change. Once Gabe is out and the beancounters take over, it’ll go the way of all corpos.
Technically yes, and probably if Gog did the same we would have time to download it before they removed it out of our libraries.
But I was thinking: what happens when we die.
The games will be transferred to the great SSD in the sky.
Buying a game on Steam gets you the same perpetual license for your copy of the game as it does on GoG (the same as any software). The difference is Steam’s DRM (requiring the Steam Client to run the game). AFAIK Steam have said in the past that they have a plan to remove it if Steam shuts down.
Here’s a video that lays it out in detail as to what game ownership means amongst other things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw.
The big question about all this stuff is how far companies (both game and non-game software) can push their “you don’t own your software” agenda before facing a significant legal challenge and what the outcome of that legal challenge will be.
The difference is you can download and keep the installers from gog and back it up yourself. Gog just acts as a store front and download service. You always keep it. It’s the only true form of software ownership. If you had your steam account removed right now, some games you have installed would no longer launch.
Some games you have bought on gog would also not launch if the publisher decides it. Not all gog games are DRM free.
OTOH, some games have no DRM on steam (not even the steam DRM), and can be kept on your machine forever.
Neither option is a silver bullet for DRM free games, even if way more are available on gog.
Every gimmicky feature on steam is fluff to lock you into an ecosystem. Buying steam games for achievements for example is really silly.
Truth is if you care about a sustainable games industry, then drm free and maximising developer cut is the right choice.
Choose the option that gives the developer the biggest cut, like itch or directly, and just use a launcher aggregator to manage it from one place like heroic launcher or playnite. I personally use gog for most but will use an alternative if it supports the dev better.
For linux support steam is king. Getting gog games working is a bit of an obstacle. Gog really needs to get a linux native client to remove the barrier of entry.
My general policy is to buy stuff from GoG that I will likely want to replay in the future and prioritize Steam for anything that I primarily play with friends (as that’s the main advantage of Steam for me). If it’s neither, I’ll default to GoG.
I don’t buy AAA games, so YMMV, but I buy my games almost exclusively from GOG and Itch these days. I have loads of games on Steam, but now the DRM-free aspect is most important to me. If something is only on Steam, I may still buy it if I can confirm that it’s “DRM-free” (e.g. bypassable Steam check) there, or if it’s so cheap that I won’t mind losing it. As honest as GabeN and the Steam team seem to be, I’ve been shafted enough times already.
The one drawback I see for buying on GOG vs buying on Steam (which can also be kind of an advantage depending on your perspective) is updates. Steam seems to let publishers push updates out whenever they want. While a few publishers do actually seem to forget about GOG, I have read comments from a few different developers (in response to complaints from customers) that they had sent their updates to GOG but were stuck in an approval process. It appears that the GOG team manually tests every update before putting it up for customers, and there’s a large backlog for a small team, so it can be several months before a patch gets through.
I’m grateful for GoG’s manual testing process. But the forums often full of users blaming GoG for treating them as second class citizens for always late at push out updates, without seeing their efforts. Sometimes it’s indeed several months later than Steam, like Manor Lords. Sometimes developers do seems to abandon their GoG version altogether, like Hellish Quart. It sometimes feels like a vicious cycle to push users away.
I’ve been a Steam only buyer for a long time. There are so many cool features and extra stuff, most games work out of the box, and they’ve been putting in a lot of effort on the linux scene with proton and the deck. But even despite all that, I’m starting to move to GOG. The sad truth is that you don’t own any of your games on Steam. I’ve been having more and more games be removed from my library, and games that either just don’t work or are “updated” into something worse. Not Steam’s fault really, but GOG is much more consumer friendly and I actually get files I can use and keep forever, no required updates or DRM. I really like Steam, and am having a hard time leaving it, but GOG is just the better choice from a long term and consumer ethics perspective.
I try to go GOG first, so I can keep the installation kits offline. There are however a lot of good indies on Steam, and few of these ever get ported from there. Steam workshop is also fantastic and doesn’t really have a match on other platforms, and unlike GOG they provide good linux support. Also worth noting that some of the old games on GOG are inferior to their steam counterparts ( see Commander Keen for example ). So yes, I’d say both are good, but maybe prioritise GOG first.
I buy on gog if it’s available there. Because no DRM is a great thing for simplicity’s sake for me. With that said, the experience running gog games, even with Heroic, on SteamOS is rough. But so far that hasn’t been enough to change my behavior.
I used to prioritise GoG but now I just use Steam for the Linux support personally. If that’s not important to you it mostly comes down to whether you mind the inconvenience of multiple stores.
Something like heroic or bottles fixes this issue and gives you more agency to play it your way.
The only black-and-white rule is: if you’re buying an older game you should always buy it on GOG. No exceptions. There’s too many retro games on Steam that won’t even launch on modern machines, and beyond that GOG is typically very good at including fan made patches and fixes into their versions of old games, ensuring older games actually work and are just plug-and-play.
Not always true unfortunately. iirc saints row 2 was capped at 30fps on gog but not steam, and FEAR still installed the DRM software but was just patched to not use it. Don’t know of any other cases like those tho
F.E.A.R. was eventually fixed. I’m pretty sure only the multiplayer.exe. still has DRM. I played it recently including the expansion and it was just fine.
I love gog for being able to download and own the game. I have about 10x more games there than steam. It’s a bit more hassle integrating them with the steam deck than steam is though.
It’s ok to use all the different stores.
Personally I use Steam for anything that has online functions and/or early access and GOG for everything else. Also I will buy direct from the developer (eg something like Software Inc) if I can but that option is getting harder to do.
Just whatever’s easiest. If you really hate DRM they get it on gog, if you don’t mind it, get it on steam.
I buy most co-op (“always online” like Darktide or Helldivers 2) games on Steam (, …) since they’re often not available on GOG
For single-player, I prefer to wait for it to be on GOG. Sometimes it’s on release, other times it takes a few months (Expedition 33) or years, but I have plenty enough backlog
