windowscentral[.]com/why-im-switching-steam-gog-pc-gaming
Figured this would strike a chord with some folks. ;)
Windows Central - "Why I'm switching from Steam to GOG for PC gaming"
(4 posts) (3 voices)-
Whiterabbit-uk
Games GuruThanks for the links Mikiem, interesting read, but partly inaccurate' and YES it definitely did strike a chord. :)
There are pros and cons for all distributors of PC games, and I'm sure we all have different preferences. I buy games from most of the big distributors, though overall I still do prefer Steam for the many additional things they have added over the last decade. Not only are all your games updated automatically when a new version of the game is released, they have a workshop where you can download thousands of mods for most games that are moddable, not only that, the mods are added or removed at the click of a mouse, making it easy to ensure your game runs as smoothly as possible when you add multiple mods, some of which may conflict with each other. There are too many differences between GOG and Steam to say which I prefer. I do like the non DRM free service that GOG offers and I think they provide a valuable service,; unfortunately the lack of DRM has become limiting as many developers will not sell DRM free copies of their games, so many of my favorite titles, for example the Elder Scrolls (apart from the two free versions), Grand Theft Auto V, the First person Fallout Series; the first two, plus the expansion Fallout Tactics are available via GOG, but Fallout III and IV as well as many other brilliant titles are not and probably never will be available via GOG.
I also have a pet hate that has festered in me over GOG for almost a decade now. Many of the original games that GOG offered before it started to sell newer games I'd already purchased as hard copies when they were released in the 1980's, 90's and early 2000's, many of which no longer worked on my newer computers so were eventually thrown away or given to charity shops. So... when I discovered abandonware sites where you could download virtually the whole of GOG's catalogue of early games totally free (before GOG was created and because the games were no longer commercially available). Using the free DOSBox emulator, the free digital downloads of these games allowed me to play them again on my newer systems. This was great as many of those early games were among my favorite games for example 'Darklands' and 'Men of Valor'. Although abandonware has always been a grey area legally, the original owners of the licenses had effectively 'disappeared', so GOG and a couple of other sites started to track down these licenses owners, offering them cash for the license' and so GOG was born and slowly over a couple of years, all of the decent games that were readily available for free from loads of different abandonware sites were removed becasue GOG and other sites now effectively owned or were licensed to sell the games for the original owners of the licenses. Okay great business sense and I'm sure the owners of GOG have made a small fortune because of it, but I thought it was quite underhand as I saw abandonware as a perk for those who had previously purchased the game. For quite some time I refused to buy games from GOG, but over the last several years I have mellowed and have since purchased a couple of hundred games from them, usually when they were on sale as I still feel the hairs on the nape of my neck bristling when I know I've already paid money for those games previously and usually a significant amount more as game used to cost a lot more back in the 1980's/90's and early 2000's compared to the cost of newly released games today.
With respect to the second link you posted. The comparison table has a couple of comparisons that are wrong, for example it says that game updates are forced on Steam but are optional on GOG, That's not true; you can set game updates to optional on Steam via the settings window. Also, you can import any game you have installed on your computer into your Steam game library and categorize it as with any Steam purchased game. (for example I now have several hundred categories, which helps me find the games I want to play - due to memory issues I can only remember an insignificant portion of my Steam game library; so, having almost 11 thousand games in my Steam library, not counting non steam games, I've been able to add categories to make it easier to find what I want to play.
I know what the game is I want to play, but can't remember its name, so I'll look through my categories, for example it may be a 3d building game, with an open world aspect and a first person theme, with space exploration. i have categories for each of those, so look in the appropriate sections of my library and usually find what I'm looking for really quickly. Or I may just fancy playing a shmup, so look to see what i have available. Works really well for me, though it has taken almost three years to categorize most of my games as many of them have several or more categories.
. Finally, all regions of the globe are priced accordingly, for example, if you compare the price of games across the globe there are significant differences between many of the countries, for example games bought via Russian Federation community members are 80% or more cheaper than UK prices. Some games are region locked, but many games can be purchased from friends around the globe and then gifted to you, so you can enjoy many of the games at much cheaper prices than buying from your own country. As for GOG's original brief, i.e. vintage gaming, to which they say they are unique, this is also not true as Steam have been adding vintage games for several years now.
Finally, the worry that you cannot play games via your Steam client if offline, that's also not true. You can either set the client to offline playing, and can then play your games, or you can play the games directly from the executable, (though not all games can be played this way); also, Valve have said that if the client was to be scrapped or they were to go into liquidation, they already have a way to allow all games purchased via Steam to be played without the client.
Until I heard about the latter I did worry, (though not excessively) about whether it was safe to buy so many games via one distributor because I have been stung in the past when Reflexive Arcade (and other digital distributors) were sold off to Amazon several years ago. I'd already amassed over 900 games purchased from Reflexive prior to 2008 when individual arcade games still cost almost $20 each. They gave Reflexive customers about 3 or 4 months notice to say they had to install and activate any games they had purchased via Reflexive Arcade before the activation servers were to be shut down. What they failed to realise or mention was that each time you upgraded your computer, or wanted to install the game on a new computer, you had to re apply for a new activation code, because each code applied for was tied to the computers CPU and motherboard serial numbers. Thankfully the modding community had created a code generator that has enabled me to install and activate just over 90% of the 900 plus games I'd purchased from them; unfortunately that still left me with almost 100 games that I can no longer play as full versions, some of which were among my favorite games (mainly shmups and breakouts)
Posted 7 years ago #
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