I love gog, and have gone through a similar shift for any games that I can.
However, I hate to point out that, GoG does in fact have some games with DRM, even though they make a big deal of the fact that they are an anti-DRM shop, and they get away with it buy pretending the definition of DRM is different to what most people think.
E.g. I recently bought Worms WMD. You need a Galaxy account to play. I'm not even sure you can cross-play with Steam, I think you can't. Without it, the game is crippled. I would not have bought it if I had known.
Not all of the games on GOG are DRM-free at this point. Some require GOGGalaxy, their version of the steam client.
I went through a frustrating refund process after learning about this after making a purchase.
I've spent literally about 20 times more money on GOG than Steam, for this very same reason. And although I haven't actually found myself in that situation, I'm willing to pay a little more if that grants me absence of DRM.
This is all a load on nonsense for me..
I'm a PC gamer and I like gog. I'm very happy to buy aything on gog becasue they trust me. They do not waste time with DRM and I do not support DRM, its unnecessary and impractical.
Steam is pretty DRM free. Games have Steam integration which checks if your account owns the game, but they don't attempt to prevent tampering like true DRM does. If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games.
GOG also bans third party DRM software. It's great, but big publishers don't like that which is why GOG is mostly indie.
I've bought many many games on GOG for years because of this. Lately, GOG games come in installers made out of 20 or so parts which take ages to download manually. The only real way to download their games is by using their GOG Galaxy Client. Not that much better than Steam, which on the other hand has fantastic Linux support, while GOG can't be bothered to port their GOG Galaxy client to Linux.
Luckily Lutris allows me to somehow compensate for GOG's lack of interest in Linux, but still, I feel they really do not care about the DRM thing.
I love GOG but GOG galaxy is a clusterfuck and their library is made up of mostly (very) old games (go figure) ;)
I bought The Witcher 3 on steam just because it's better with updates (GOG had so many TW3 updates issues, I got a GOG key from NVIDIA as a Titan X owner and it was just fubar).
Steam is also a social platform, most of my friends are on steam which is their biggest competitive advantage which makes most other platforms kinda pointless as a platform DRM free or not.
On the other hand, many games (by number at least) on Steam do not have any DRM and you can back up the installed files as easily as you can back up a GOG installer. Many more games only need Steamworks which is easily bypassed.
Meanwhile Valve is actively working on making Linux gaming better (which I care about) while GOG/CDPR can't even be bothered to port their own games or their store client.
Nowadays it's very hard to own a game. Unless you buy on services like GOG, which offer DRM free installers. You don't really own your games on Steam or Origin and they can remove your access at any time without a warning.
Steam also allows DRM free games, it's probably just not very popular with game developers.
One advantage of GoG is that they seem to actually care that old games on their store are actually working on new Windows versions, while on Steam it's more or less a gamble (at least you can return broken games though).
Sure, but GoG is a relatively new player and an exception in the market. Not to mention the vast majority of those games have had DRM removed by GoG, they originally shipped with it - including Cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher games where this was done to prevent pre-release leaks.
Games much, much older than GoG used to have various ways of doing DRM, though to be fair some were laughably easy to bypass (codes printed in the manual and such).
The beauty of GOG is in its similarity with Steam, but without the DRM. Much like Steam, they just don't sell games, they provide added value in their (optional, and I hope it stays optional) GOG Galaxy client, their community, things like that that do appeal to people.
I always saw Abandonware as a necessary evil, flagrant copyright violation when the copyright holder has zero interest on their property, but GOG and such are a good alternative. Not only the games are sold at reasonable prices and put under rather regular sales, but avoiding DRM does make sharing significantly easier.
I don't like stores that proliferate DRM. GOG has the right approach about it. They simply don't allow DRMed games in their store and actively work with publishers to dispel their messed up DRM mentality.
However, I hate to point out that, GoG does in fact have some games with DRM, even though they make a big deal of the fact that they are an anti-DRM shop, and they get away with it buy pretending the definition of DRM is different to what most people think.
E.g. I recently bought Worms WMD. You need a Galaxy account to play. I'm not even sure you can cross-play with Steam, I think you can't. Without it, the game is crippled. I would not have bought it if I had known.
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