6 ms·
The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an
by c3534l 9y ago
The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn't going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different platforms on their computer. And certainly no one wants to have different platforms offer different games that can only be accessed from that platform. But of course the gaming industry has an entire business model built on exactly that: console gaming. It's kind of a miracle that Steam even exists and people are going to be very resistant to replacing it with a completely fractured system of owning PC games.
- cptskippy 9y agoGOG links to your Steam Account and will add games to your library that exist in your Steam Library. It only does this for participating publishers but it's still an effective way to copy your library.
- c3534l 9y agoWell, I guess that explains why people like GOG and hate Origin.
- kuschku 9y agoGOG also has no DRM'd games, at all. It's truly amazing, and if possible, I always buy from them.
- kbart 9y agoYes, GOG is the only place I buy games from. I don't want to have spyware installed on my PC in a form of DRM or be able to play games only while connected to Internet, so I don't use Steam at all.
- kuschku 9y agoAgreed, some DRM solutions are so bad, they’re worse than simple spyware – for example, Sony’s DRM Rootkit in the past.
- kbart 9y agoDRM isn't even worst for me, I can always use a fresh virtual machine for a game and wipe it out afterwards, but constant Internet connection requirement totally kills it, as I don't have time for games often and these rare moments I play something is usually on a laptop when I'm on vacation out of town with no reliable Internet connection. GOG is great, I can buy, own and play a game whenever I want, wherever I want and expect it to be playable many years in future, even when official servers are long dead.
- kuschku 9y agoYes! The most interesting part is that I bought the collectors edition of some Ubisoft games back when they were released, the DRM servers were shut down, and now they won’t work – but I bought them on GOG again, and the GOG version, without DRM, works just fine.
- AlphaSite 9y agoorigin has something similar. Letting you activate old games on their.
- zingmars 9y agoNot exactly. Quite a few EA games on Steam will give you a license key that can be activated on Origin. In some instances they might use a generic key that might not activate, but you can ask Origin Support to activate it on Origin for you. The hate for Origin was mostly hate for EA's greedy practices and some privacy related stuff that came out when their client was released.
- cptskippy 9y agoI have found that Origin and Ubisoft's thing scan your HDD and add their Steam games to their respective libraries.
- always_good 9y agoWell, GOG also gives you an executable which is rare these days. You can click and drag it onto your friends' computers for a quick LAN party or to let your girlfriend play alongside you on a airplane. I never hated Steam more than the time I was on a 18 hour bus ride only to find out Steam wouldn't even launch if it decided it needed to check for updates and you had no internet connection. And there was no way then to play the games you paid for. If a game you want is available on both GOG and Steam, it's almost irresponsible to get the Steam version. Oh yeah, on that same bus ride, I found out that .azw-formatted ebooks are locked to a single Kindle. I'm ready for GOG Books.
- cptskippy 9y agoOrigin does it as well but only with EA games. Ubisoft does it for their abomination as well.
- watwut 9y agoThe best thing about GOG is that I am actually able to find interesting games I did not knew they exist before there. Discovery on steam is atrocious.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoDiscovery seems good on Steam to me - shows games your 'friends' have and are playing, search by tags/keywords, stream of game suggestions you can work through, easy to browse library ... what's it need extra IYO?
- watwut 9y agoI would prefer games I might like instead of those my 'friends' (virtually non existent on steam and those who are having different preferences) have. I am mostly unable to find puzzle games that are not rpgs nor adventures. No matter what I do I see same most popular games I don't happen to be interested in.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoLike Portal, World of Goo, Talos Principle? Or are those too RPG/adventurey? Seems most people want puzzles in a context, rather than just raw? If I go to search and put "puzzle" I get pages of puzzles and can choose a tighter genre to narrow it down. If I go to Portal 2, say, I get "more like this" (Qube looks interesting). What's your best puzzle game?
- StavrosK 9y agoReally?! Oh wow, how did I not know this? Thank you!
- ThatPlayer 9y agoIt's more of a promotional event they have once in a while. https://www.gogwiki.com/wiki/GOG_Connect https://www.gogwiki.com/wiki/GOG_Connect has a history of games and dates. If you miss the owning that game on that then, and remember to check the website, you miss it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y agoBut GOG has weird standards for what it will and will not allow on its store. Yatzee had some game he made denied, and Zachtronic's Opus Magnum was also denied.
- Feniks 9y agoGOG still does curation. Valve used to decide what got on their store too but they opened the floodgates for any old crap. Mind you Valve still has a policy against porn. Lots of games still have to link to uncensored patches.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoNo one wants a game that requires a "platform", they just don't realize it or care enough to boycott over it.
- dleslie 9y agoGamers love relay servers, NAT punching, automatic updates, matchmaking, friend lists, achievements, community forums, screenshot sharing, streaming and more. Gamers love platforms and what they provide at least as much as they love games themselves.
- pjc50 9y agoI think it's only possible to say this now the most hated platform, GFWL, is dead.
- Feniks 9y agoThis. Nobody will ever leave Steam now because they lose their library and social media. Steam is a lot like Facebook, leaving Steam for the competition would be like deleting years of your life.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoThose are all features a platform should provide. Nothing about those features require that the game itself becomes unavailable should your Steam account be disabled or if Steam disappears, or that the game cannot be moved to another PC based platform. Creating a platform that allowed for/encouraged that would be a serious competitor to Steam in my opinion.
- dleslie 9y agoNothing? Steam provides these features in order to maintain the network effects; losing the library exclusivity would be a crushing blow to that strategy.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
- lifeformed 9y agoI wonder if you could write a wrapper over Steam (and other services) that allows the same benefits of them, but lets you have your own store too. You'd have a launcher that could launch any game on your computer, whether it's on Steam or GOG or Itch or your own service, and a global storefront that merges them all (and prioritizes yours). Would that even be legal?
- AlphaSite 9y agothere have been plenty of meta launchers, but the social aspect and mods, etc are much more important than that and are never provided.