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Comment on Do you prefer to buy games on Steam or GOG?

A long time ago I finally pulled down my Jolly Rogers and stored my eye patch, due to GoG, since one of the biggest gripes I had with games (all the way back to the 90s) was the DRM in the official bought versions and all hassle and problems it caused (but not in the pirated ones, which made them a superior product) and GoG’s principle since the very beginning was “No DRM” and they never wavered on that.

I also have the practice of downloading my games and keeping local copies, since a long time ago as due to professional experience, I’ve long been aware that if you don’t have it in your hands you risk losing it for some stupid reason and now the problem is yours (are you really willing pay what it takes to take it to Court?) whilst if you do have it and they want to take it from you, it’s up to them to justify it in a Court of Law. I would say the various instances of shops closing and taking the user’s entire (supposedly bought) collection or even just shops outright taking eBooks and films from the collections users had hosted with them have more than proven my point.

I did eventually also got Steam and bought some games from them up until the point when a game I bought would work and they refused to refund it (because I only got around to try it out more than a month after I bought it), at which point I stopped buying games from Steam (curiously, when I moved to Linux I tried that game out again and under Linux it works), but with Steam I’m always wary.

Anyways, my GoG collection is many times the size of my Steam collection. I’ll always favor buying a game from GoG over Steam if available in both and a game only being available in Steam makes it far, far less likely that I’ll buy it.

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Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

GoG’s principle since the very beginning was “No DRM” and they never wavered on that.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but they did, most of the claims there are petty but the fact that GoG allows games that use EAC anti-cheat for single player is damning evidence that they are not “DRM free” like they claim.

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- Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  In almost all of those 25 cases the main single player game is available directly without the need to be online or have Galaxy and the “online” requirement is an incentive to register with them or use Galaxy - not nice and probably very frustrating for gamers with an Achiever or Completionist mindset, but those games will still work 2 decades from now when those servers are long gone, even if missing access to some cosmetic items.
  
  Mind you, your point is well taken and that is worrisome.
  
  It’s still nothing compared to Steam’s requirement of being online to at the very least install and first start of the game (so in 2 decades time when the Steam client doesn’t support any version of the OS supported by those games, they will be unplayable) and how due to Steam themselves having heavilly promoted amongst developers the tight integration of game features with Steam cloud, a dependency on Steam servers is very common even for Indie games, whilst almost all of the AAA stuff comes with their own additional (i.e. on top of Steam itself) sign-in to accounts on the maker’s own servers in order to play the game.
  
  The whole industry has been enshittifying and Steam has actually promoted that kind of shit amongst Indie game makers.
  
  But yeah, GoG letting some of those through is not good and them actually having pushed for Galaxy-only content in some games is pretty bad.
  
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  - Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I agree that most of those are non-issue, which is why I specifically pointed at the EAC one.
    
    It’s still nothing compared to Steam’s requirement of being online to at the very least install
    
    This is a requirement everywhere, you need to be online to download the installer from GoG. And before you say you can backup the installer you can also backup the installed game on steam so they’re equivalent.
    
    and first start of the game
    
    Nope you don’t. This is game dependent, and many games don’t require it. I have several games that I backed up the folder and run them, some of which I’ve even copied to computers without steam to play in multiplayer lan mode with the games on Steam.
    
    (so in 2 decades time when the Steam client doesn’t support any version of the OS supported by those games, they will be unplayable)
    
    As long as Steam still supports Linux, and because of the strong backwards compatibility there (especially on wine) you will still be able to play them. If Windows breaks backwards compatibility with current GoG installers you’ll lose your GoG collection just as much.
    
    and how due to Steam themselves having heavilly promoted amongst developers the tight integration of game features with Steam cloud, a dependency on Steam servers is very common even for Indie games, whilst almost all of the AAA stuff comes with their own additional (i.e. on top of Steam itself) sign-in to accounts on the maker’s own servers in order to play the game.
    
    Here’s the thing, they don’t need to promote it, those features are good enough that developers want to integrate them. But lazy developers rely on them which is bad. Some game developers don’t though, it’s not Valve’s fault that a game doesn’t launch without steam, if I submit a game that requires GoG galaxy for offline play It would also not be on GoG’s hands, if it weren’t for the fact that they claim 100% DRM free.
    
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    Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Backing up a previously installed game isn’t even in the same universe as having right there in the main UI of your store the links to download an offline installer: claiming that one is equivalent to the other is just ridiculous.
    
    I can seen you’re a commited fan of Steam and have a tight emotional bond to it, which is fine, just not conducive to having a fair and honest pros-and-cons take about one’s beloved game store in conversation with others.
    
    I’m not really going to dive into a fanboy discussion with you - I’ve made it very clear the one quality of GoG which makes me favour it because I value it more than other things (such as supporting Linux with proprietary solutions) and am not going to like an idiot side with a bloody online store as they’re not my family, they’re not my friends and they don’t care about me any more than they care about any other source of money for them.
    
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HeyJoe@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m only commenting on the Steam refund part. That’s crazy to me, of all places to return games. The most relaxed has been Steam and never had any issues with them. Even if waiting a month, they normally only care how long you played it, which I think is supposed to be less than 2 hours. For comparison, I tried returning a PS5 game and was immediately denied because they claim as soon as the game is launched once they will not accept it back, which is awful.

That sucks they denied you. It really sounds like they should have let you return it.

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- TBi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I bought god of war on sale. Never played it. And couldn’t get a refund because I was outside the window. Shame on me for having adult responsibilities and not knowing that nvidia were going to remove it from GeForce now. :(
  
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- Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I played all of 7 minutes, which was all took to go all the way to starting a game and the game getting stuck in some kind of freeze loop, and then doing it all over again twice to make sure.
  
  People have lives and sometimes they buy games on impulse and only get around to have time for them later, and Steam does have a record of when players actually got around to download the game and even when and for how long they ran it, so the refund clock should start when people actually tried the game or at least when they downloaded it. That refunds rules don’t actually follow logic but instead something else, probably means that such refunds don’t actually exist driven by genuine will for good customer experience but, more likely, because in some countries there is legislation for online purchases that forces refund windows linked to purchasing time.
  
  I had gotten that game very cheaply and only asked for the refund as a matter of principle, and following this I totally stopped buying games from Steam, so funnily enough even with me favoring GoG over Steam for games available in both, at their 30% revenue cut from sales Steam quickly lost in sales many times that refund amount.
  
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  - Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Steam does have a record of when players actually got around to download the game and even when and for how long they ran it, so the refund clock should start when people actually tried the game or at least when they downloaded it. That refunds rules don’t actually follow logic but instead something else, probably means that such refunds don’t actually exist driven by genuine will for good customer experience but, more likely, because in some countries there is legislation for online purchases that forces refund windows linked to purchasing time.
    
    You need to consider that Steam needs to pay the publishers at some point, if they followed that rule that you suggested they would need to sometimes wait years to pay a publisher, which makes it bad for publishers. I believe that 14 days is way too short, and they could easily do 30 days, but at some point they need to send that money to the publisher and at that point refunds are dangerous things. For example, imagine they allowed this and one company released a game which was very cheap with lots of promises, so lots of people buy it, eventually they abandon development so lots of people refund it, and no new sales will come for it, so any refund is a loss for Valve. Also credit cards also have some similar rules and problems, what if the card you bought the game is no longer valid?. This is why Valve needs some rules on time limit to protect themselves from those situations.
    
    All of that being said, the time should be longer, and if it’s an active game that will give them more sells in the future that they can take the money from they should (and usually do) allow refunds over that time limit. It’s strange that yours was denied, I’ve refunded games over a month after purchasing for similar reasons, they did let me know of the policy but proceeded with the refund regardless.
    
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    Don_alForno@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I can get faulty physical goods fixed/refunded by the store up to 2 years after purchase (EU). It’s the store’s problem to get a refund from the manufacturer. The same should be true in case of Valve and a publisher.
    
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