Cheat Code Central - GOG & Abandoning DRM

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Cheat Code Central has a short article from one of their editors about abandoning DRM , and using GOG instead of Steam. So what do you guys think?

Here's a confession for you: I don't use Steam. In fact, I refuse to. Besides only having a medium-powered laptop that can't handle much of anything available for consoles, I am also staunchly opposed to DRM. I'm sure Valve has only the best of intentions for their customer base and consumers in general, but DRM is DRM. If I buy something, I want to own it. I know that's an antiquated notion in 2014, but that's just how I am. Luckily, that's where services like GOG come into play. If I'm going to buy digital, I don't want to have a mandatory online connection just to play.
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More information.
 
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I don't mind Steam, honestly. In fact their workshop is a reason good enough to use it on some games.
GOG has inferior patching system compared to Steam, but while Steam preload has to be on C: if the client is installed on C:, GOG preloads can be put anywhere. GOGgalaxy will also be fine with me.

But uPlay and Origin DRM clients have to die. They're as bad as GFWL which is already dead. And persons who said these three clients should annoy players should get sacked and never let back to gaming industry. That'd be Ubi CEO, EA CEO and dunno who blessed the crap thing on Microsoft's side.
 
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I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but I'm talking about the DRM that makes things worse for customers than pirates (used to be that real customers had to have the original CD in place to play, while pirates didn't). But having said that, given the choice I prefer Steam over GOG. Steam provides a lot of features I like, which outweigh whatever cons it has.
 
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wolfing said:
given the choice I prefer Steam over GOG. Steam provides a lot of features I like, which outweigh whatever cons it has.
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Same here. Between the quick auto updates and workshop for small mods it's by far and away my favorite platform. And on a side note, does this guy not know Steam has an offline mode? I've never had an issue playing games when I don't have internet. Also, I'm pretty sure you can burn your Steam games onto a CD and play.

I also avoid Origin and Uplay like the plague except on the very rare occasion they have an exclusive I really want.

Edit: So the burning to CD allows you to play a game you don't have installed provided you're on a computer that has connected to Steam online at least once. Not the same as a physical game for sure but I can only think of a few times this requirement would be a huge inconvenience.
 
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Steam is ok; I could see having major complaints if I ever had a serious customer issue given that their support is zip (actually worse than zip; it is outright bad). Gog has extremely good customer support but lack a lot of games. Compare to uplay steam is a blessing. If UBI goes bankrupt in a year or two it is their own freaking fault. Their platform sucks; their support sucks and their ....
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EA is middle ground; the bioware shit dlc (and frequently offline servers that disable your dlc) is really crappy. But most of the full games play ok on origin (mind you i only have about 3 games on uplay and 6 games on origin so my experience is somewhat limited). Oh also for all the complaints about EA their support is acutally not that bad - not as good as GOG but actually decent (better than steam and ubi - and i would actually rate steam support below ubi).
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I can tolerate EA (but not really bioware dlc authorization server - dragon age origin for example my DLC keep being disable as their servers frequently go down - no clue about mass effect as I have no mass effect DLC).
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Anyways a big thumb up to GOG. Btw I don't have a passonionate love for steam but as drms go it is the least problematic I've used and when I realize how bad things could be if the gaming world was run by uplay I'm actually happy with it.
 
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My biggest problem with steam is that you don't own anything you buy. If steam closes up or goes out of business you could easily lose access to all of your games. Despite the rumor, there is no official word from Steam that games would be playable in that event. I challenge anyone to find it. In fact, if you read the EULA it pretty much says they can do whatever they want and you don't own squat.


Now I know in the short time, that Steam getting sold or going out of business is probably not likely, but long-term it is a real possibility. The video game industry is anything but stable and most of the companies from 10 or 20 years ago no longer exist.

As a collector and player of old games, the prospect of losing my games is to much.
 
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I love Steam. It's auto-patching features, having all the games in one place, easy community access, etc. It's great.

That said, I definitely look forward to GOG Galaxy, too. I hope they have a lot of similar features that Steam does. I will then use Galaxy for older games and Steam for newer stuff. Best of both worlds.
 
By the time Steam "goes out of business", the likelihood of you caring about your 40 year old games from a different time in your life (with different priorities) is fairly remote. In my case, I've long since come to terms with the fact that, while it's quaint to have a game sitting on the shelf or on the hard drive, my chances of actually playing a game diminish more and more with each passing year.

I like Steam for its convenience, both in terms of the one-stop library and installations, as well as the auto-patching. I prefer it over GoG for newer games for these reasons. But, for older games, I stick with GoG for Windows compatibility as well as the bonus content (soundtrack and art).
 
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Drithius said:
By the time Steam "goes out of business", the likelihood of you caring about your 40 year old games from a different time in your life (with different priorities) is fairly remote. In my case, I've long since come to terms with the fact that, while it's quaint to have a game sitting on the shelf or on the hard drive, my chances of actually playing a game diminish more and more with each passing year.

I like Steam for its convenience, both in terms of the one-stop library and installations, as well as the auto-patching. I prefer it over GoG for newer games for these reasons. But, for older games, I stick with GoG for Windows compatibility as well as the bonus content (soundtrack and art).
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I play games that are 20-30 years old all of the time and I can tell you that virtually all the companies that made them are gone or have been bought out. Steam going out of business in the next couple of years is a remote possibility, but you never know.

I think it is far more likely that they get bought out. Gabe isn't getting any younger and he might want to cash out. EA, Ubisoft, or Microsoft etc would love to purchase steam and would then have control over your entire steam library.
 
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Playing 20-30 year old games is not the same as buying a game and still playing it 20-30 years later. If you do the latter, more power to you; I prefer to move on ;)
 
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TimtheTaxMan said:
Steam going out of business in the next couple of years is a remote possibility, but you never know.
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Do you have an idea of how much profit Steam makes? Good god, the possibility of them shutting down in the next couple years would be below zero, if that was possible.

IMO, it's actually more likely that you'd lose your games with GOG than with Steam. All that needs to happen is GOG going out of business (this is the easier part) and then you also losing your local copies of your games via some kind of catastrophic fire, series of disk crashes, theft/vandalism, or an act of war.
 
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Stingray said:
Do you have an idea of how much profit Steam makes? Good god, the possibility of them shutting down in the next couple years would be below zero, if that was possible.

IMO, it's actually more likely that you'd lose your games with GOG than with Steam. All that needs to happen is GOG going out of business (this is the easier part) and then you also losing your local copies of your games via some kind of catatrosphic fire, series of disk crashes, or an act of war.
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Steam going out of business is not as impossible as you might think. All it would take is all the big publishers to decide that they wont be using steam any more to force you onto their distribution platforms. Or maybe in Windows 9 Microsoft forces all windows compatible software to authenticate through their own system and shuts steam out. Gabe seemed pretty concerned about that or something like it, which is why we saw this huge push toward linux.

I agree that it is not likely in the short term, but neither is my house burning down, but I still buy fire insurance. Like I said above, the video game industry is one of the least stable there is.
 
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Steam's DRM is so harmless and unobtrusive that it's not worth discussing unless you have a telephone pole lodged in your nether regions.

Buying a game on GOG doesn't guarantee there will be no DRM - there just won't be any of THEIR DRM on it. Companies can still require you to login and/or jump thru other hoops that are DRM.

TimtheTaxMan said:
I play games that are 20-30 years old all of the time and I can tell you that virtually all the companies that made them are gone or have been bought out. Steam going out of business in the next couple of years is a remote possibility, but you never know.

I think it is far more likely that they get bought out. Gabe isn't getting any younger and he might want to cash out. EA, Ubisoft, or Microsoft etc would love to purchase steam and would then have control over your entire steam library.
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Yes. You should form opinions and how you roll over wild fantasies and complete zero-fact speculation.

It's equally likely that GOG folds or gets bought out. Maybe even more likely since they don't have the same type of community setup. If you're going to make up fantasies you may as well make them plausible.

Plus, I'm sure you could actually do some research to see why gaming companies 20-30 years old get bought out or disappeared.

Back in those days so many companies making games were basically owned by publishers/corporations and so were the games they created, and they went under because they couldn't make money selling their games, and they didn't sell their games, because they never owned them, the publisher/corporation that only cares about money sold the property.

These days it's far more likely for non corporate slave game creators to not have this problem. Indie teams are more common, crowd funding, massive exposure thru Steam without having to do a ton of marketing, early access thru Steam, better coding tools, better distributed work conditions (working from home/remotely), etc.

That's not to say games won't still be bought and sold. Lots of successful entities change hands over time. Business is business and money tends to trump everything much of the time.

Gabe and Valve are very successful. Ridiculously so. Steam is a cash cow. Why would he cash out to get more money he'll never spend? Steam is so stupidly successful that Valve can piss away money on silly ideas like Linux-based consoles (in an already flooded console market and to compete against the platform (PC) that made them, which is pretty stupid) and VR toys.

I don't think Steam would have nearly as much traction if it was owned by MS or EA or the like. I'm a MS developer and generally like MS but I wouldn't want them holding my game library and surely wouldn't want EA holding it. MS/EA may fantasize about owning Steam but do you really think people would want to be involved with Steam as much as they do now if either of those owned it?
 
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Voqar said:
Steam's DRM is so harmless and unobtrusive that it's not worth discussing unless you have a telephone pole lodged in your nether regions.

Buying a game on GOG doesn't guarantee there will be no DRM - there just won't be any of THEIR DRM on it. Companies can still require you to login and/or jump thru other hoops that are DRM.



Yes. You should form opinions and how you roll over wild fantasies and complete zero-fact speculation.

It's equally likely that GOG folds or gets bought out. Maybe even more likely since they don't have the same type of community setup. If you're going to make up fantasies you may as well make them plausible.

Plus, I'm sure you could actually do some research to see why gaming companies 20-30 years old get bought out or disappeared.

Back in those days so many companies making games were basically owned by publishers/corporations and so were the games they created, and they went under because they couldn't make money selling their games, and they didn't sell their games, because they never owned them, the publisher/corporation that only cares about money sold the property.

These days it's far more likely for non corporate slave game creators to not have this problem. Indie teams are more common, crowd funding, massive exposure thru Steam without having to do a ton of marketing, early access thru Steam, better coding tools, better distributed work conditions (working from home/remotely), etc.

That's not to say games won't still be bought and sold. Lots of successful entities change hands over time. Business is business and money tends to trump everything much of the time.

Gabe and Valve are very successful. Ridiculously so. Steam is a cash cow. Why would he cash out to get more money he'll never spend? Steam is so stupidly successful that Valve can piss away money on silly ideas like Linux-based consoles (in an already flooded console market and to compete against the platform (PC) that made them, which is pretty stupid) and VR toys.

I don't think Steam would have nearly as much traction if it was owned by MS or EA or the like. I'm a MS developer and generally like MS but I wouldn't want them holding my game library and surely wouldn't want EA holding it. MS/EA may fantasize about owning Steam but do you really think people would want to be involved with Steam as much as they do now if either of those owned it?
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GOG does guarantee no DRM of any kind and rich successful businessmen cash out all of the time to retire.
 
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I hear all the time about Steam's "offline mode", but I've always hated it. If you have a power failure while you're online, your computer shuts down, whatever, and your internet is out...Steam won't let you play your games until you log back on, THEN go to offline mode. And woe to those who buy a game that has to be activated with Steam first if they don't have an internet connection (and these people do exist!).

I don't like contingencies, and I don't like having to ask permission to use something I bought. That's why I buy everything on GOG when I can.
 
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You shouldn't need to go back online to take Steam into offline mode. When I have internet issues in the morning Steam automatically gives me the option to launch right into offline mode after failing to connect to the internet.
 
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Aubrielle said:
I hear all the time about Steam's "offline mode", but I've always hated it. If you have a power failure while you're online, your computer shuts down, whatever, and your internet is out…Steam won't let you play your games until you log back on, THEN go to offline mode. And woe to those who buy a game that has to be activated with Steam first if they don't have an internet connection (and these people do exist!).

I don't like contingencies, and I don't like having to ask permission to use something I bought. That's why I buy everything on GOG when I can.
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Not to mention that off-line mode is only a stopgap for a bad connection, not a way to defeat needing to authenticate online. As soon as you need to reinstall the steam enabled software (from upgrading your pc, doing a recovery etc) you need to go back on-line to authenticate.
 
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Steam is just DRM to me, no matter what you say.
And I don't like playing games via Steam.
And for Larian I made an rare exception to my rule.
 
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