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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Support GOG. what they’re doing is great.
Support Steam. what they’re doing is great.
Maybe, try to keep it roughly even. Or buy based on your whim. They’re both great.
Depends. I’d love to say go with GOG whenever possible but they have some utter shit in their store. Like, old versions of games with bugs that were patched years ago or just plain don’t work. Dragon’s Dogma where online is completely broken comes to mind. So, I guess find out which version is the best on a game-per-game basis? I realize how much of a fucking non-answer this is and I’m sorry to have wasted your time.
GoG. You actually own the game. Like you used to with discs
No you don’t. Their ToS are very explicit about this. You’re buying licenses, just like on Steam.
If you read the TOS for the vast majority of games you will read that you have also purchased a licence, not ownership, of the game.
I primarily use Linux, and since GOG doesn’t have a native Linux version, it’s just much more convenient to use steam
ITT: a lot of people talking about “owning” games on GoG.
Call me old-fashioned, but if you can’t sell it or share it then you don’t own it. Valve does a much better job of communicating what you are actually paying for in my opinion.
Steam is also just a great client. It handles inputs better than anything else I’ve tried. The Linux support is incredible. Remote Play is incredible. The store experience is pretty great. Mod support through the Steam Workshop is great- I always sigh and roll my eyes any time I’m looking into missing a game and find that I need to download random files from a GitHub page or NexusMods.
I have a Steam Deck, and yes I’ve done my share of tinkering and customization under-the-hood with it, but at the end of the day the experience straight out of the box is still my preferred way to go. I’ve seen all these “replacement” UI’s out there people have made and like… It’s really great that it’s possible. It’ll help make sure that the hardware is supported for a long time after Valve has one inevitably moved on. It’s great for times when I want to dive in and tinker with something. But for actually playing games? The stock Steam Deck experience is still the way to go. Everything just… Works.
I hate DRM, but I appreciate how Valve at least identifies games with DRM. There’s a lot of games on my wishlist that regularly go on sale for ridiculously low prices, and I routinely check to see whether they have removed Denuvo yet. Those games usually just aren’t on GoG at all. Sonic Frontiers? Not listed- if Sega ever decides to stop paying Denuvo for that game then on Steam I will see that the next time it goes on sale (I might get an email too since I follow an anti-Denuvo curator, it I’m not 100% sure about that). On GoG it’s just… Maybe I’ll happen to see it featured on the front page as a new addition at some point?
GoG advertises themselves as a carefully curated platform, and that’s not what I want. I want to be able to see all of the games available, have information about them conveyed in a trustworthy and consistent manner, and make my own informed decisions. I admire what GoG does, and I have a handful of games from them, but I don’t think their overall offering compares favorably to Valve.
Of course there’s price. Sales happen on both platforms and it’s good to compare price histories. But even then the MSRP’s and the % discounts are usually standardized across platforms by the publisher with little difference across platforms (unless you’re using a Nintendo device lol).
I buy from Steam because of the excellent Linux support, and Steam input.
I buy from GOG because I like owning my games and I like preserving good old games.
Every time I buy a game I make a choice based on those criteria.
I don’t like owning games twice.
The choice isn’t always easy, but that’s OK.
You can get the steam Linux support and steam input by adding your gog games as non steam games or using heroic or lutris or the like. It usually works pretty well.
If the game in question is an old game that “needs” a mod to run like vampire the masquerade bloodlines then choose gog.
Or if its important the game be on your machine with no drm etc then choose gog.
Else choose steam.
How does one buy games with trading cards? I have tons of them
You sell them on marketplace, then for those you get your currency on steam wallet, then with that you can buy games. You can also sell other inventory items as long as game uses steam inventory
Somehow I seriously doubt that anyone would want my cards, and don’t know what prices to set. Oh well.
Well there are 2 plugins for setting card prices, steamdb and steam enchanced. They both allow you to set card prices to price that will get bought quickly. Also there are many people who buy them to finish their card collection
Buy on gog if it’s there. Buy on steam otherwise. Keep a pirate copy handy either way.
If you own it on GoG you don’t need a pirate copy - just save the offline installer.
You might want a pirate steam copy if it’s one of the games that isn’t properly updated on gog, which is unfortunately common with newer (2016+) games
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
Steam can turn on a dime and we have seen what they can be like suspending the accounts of dead older brothers and letting developers abuse their customers. GOG is fundamentally free.
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.Same as GOG.
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.Well, I didn’t know some games on gog had drm, but seemingly a vast majority of them on gog are. I hope they start labelling them. Either way, gog usually makes it a mission to point out you don’t need a launcher to play gog games. A huge number of steam games will not launch without their steam integration or drm check working. Speaking practically you get a clear choice to keep your games when you buy them on gog. On steam not so much.
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.
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.
If it’s single player I go gog. If it’s multiplayer and there’s at least a 5% chance my friends will get it then I go with steam.
