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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I use a decision tree to determine which platform to buy from, by going down this list and selecting the first platform that fits my requirements.
- Steam: If the full game is on there, buy. If the game needs an extensive patch to provide all the content, buy from another platform.
- itch: If the full game is on there, buy.
- GOG: If the full game is on there, buy. If the game needs an extensive patch to provide all the content, buy from another platform.
- JAST USA: If the full game is on there, buy.
- DLSite: If the full game is on there, buy.
- DMM: This platform is annoying to buy from since they dislike foreigners. If the full game is on there, buy.
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.
Heroic keeping all your GOG games up-to-date is a revelation, and it can keep the GloriousEggroll proton fork up-to-date where Steam can use it too. Fixes the most serious irritations of GOG-on-Linux right there, no reason not to prefer it over Steam (if they have it).
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.
Honestly, it depends on you, what matters to you more.
For their stance on DRM free and game preservation, Id buy from/support GOG every day of the damn week.
Problem is, that I’m from a third world country, with recent and very high inflation. Dollar is way too expensive here. (With a gov tax on converting the local currency to dollar on top of that 🤮)
So the above + regional pricing means I’m stuck to Steam + piracy.
If budget is tight, I’d say, stick to Steam. Otherwise, go GOG
Well for me price isnt a problem since for me on both platforms games cost similiar, gog for me is local buying though
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.
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.
Occasionally I will prefer Steam to take advantage of Steam matchmaking
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…
Depends on if it’s a game I’ll also be playing on the Steam Deck and not just on ny desktop. There is heroic launcher, but I prefer the Steam Linux experience.
You can just put the game into Steam after install, works great.
I like that I dont have to bother going into desktop mode with Steam games compared to heroic launcher.
Early access titles and games with workshop support i get on steam - EA titles have the tendency to not update timely on GOG, and i take workshop support over stuff like mod.io or manually browsing and downloading any day. Otherwise i prefer GOG.
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 prefer Gog. I don’t need cloud sync, I just want to download the installer and start playing. I hate the idea of needing a really heavy launcher like steam to play my games. I play via Lutris on Linux. DRM-free is important to me as a principle. I also happen to prefer Gog’s UI when shopping around. I keep steam around for games I bought before I made the full switch to Linux and the occasional game that is not available on Gog.
GOG is great, but it would be silly to buy fighting games on there, for example, since it doesn’t have any infrastructure to support their multiplayer.
Similarly, if trading cards or achievements are detrimental to your enjoyment, stick to Steam.
I stick to Steam for the most part because 95% of my library is not on GOG.
I personally buy from GOG almost exclusively, but it really depends on you. If Steam features are important to you, use Steam. If what GOG’s doing with DRM is important to you, buy from GOG.
Can’t you continue buying games from both? And use Playnite or something? Or even just GOG Galaxy which has the ability to import your games from Steam and run them?
Whichever is cheaper.
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.
