Do you prefer to buy games on Steam or GOG?
Do you prefer to buy games on Steam or GOG?
On the one hand I like GOG because it has no DRM and has better prices (in my country) than Steam and I have the feeling that on the one hand it follows more the open source philosophy than Steam itself, but Steam has helped enormously to play Windows games on Linux, so I haven't really made up my mind.
On the one hand I want to buy on Steam for the convenience, but on the other hand I prefer GOG because (in my country) is cheaper. Which platform do you prefer and why?
To give an example, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is currently $15 on Steam with regional pricing, but on GOG it's worth just $6.
I'm all-in on Steam, but I like that GOG exists and I hope it sticks around.
I prefer GoG and will generally purchase from there as no drm and you end up owning your game.
However their client is a bit shit and has been for a long time (GoG galaxy). You really only need it for updates though.
Steam excels for games with lots of mods/workshop. It just works.
I go clientless with GOG, too - but their download speed was atrocious every time I tried. Steam nails that, unfortunately...
Infuriatingly, steams constant updates and massive start up delays (we have multiple users with different accounts) straight up sucks - we'd be better off suffering the one-off download delays, really.
Cloud saves are amazing, but I try and launch stuff not through steam as its just a slow, bloated old mess I can't stand dealing with (I'm also quite OK with migrating data around computers and keeping it stored safely)
I buy keepers on GOG and then place them on separate drives. On Steam i buy stuff I'm ok with losing. It's one Gabe away from exploitation shenanigans.
I've given up on GOG. No linux client means the whole process of installing/launching games is rather tedious. Also linux game dependencies can be annoying to resolve
Steam on the other hand just handles everything. If it doesn't work at first, it probably will with proton.
I'd love to support an anti-DRM store, but it's tough when there is so much friction when actually playing the games
Lutris makes the Linux experience easier
Sure does, though I hope it keeps improving steadily. I've been donating to their patreon almost as long as it's existed.
For me, Lutris works about 50% of the time with no hassle. The other 50% of the time I get an error during installation that I can't figure out, and I end up using steam or giving up.
Recently it was Diablo 1 that I couldn't get working on Lutris, but got working pretty quickly with steam
Most users complaining about this seem to have been using innoextract or Heroic.
I don't know what those are, but I'll look them up.
The linux dependency thing was "Freedom Planet" , an indie retro sonic clone. Trying to use the linux version through GOG, it took me several minutes to figure out and manually install dependencies (which will remain if I remove the game) and even then I couldn't get sound working.
I shoved the windows binary into steam/proton and it worked like a charm
The heroic launcher is the way to go here. It installs the games in desktop mode and automatically adds them to steam. Compatibility is, for me, the same as if I had installed through steam.
Edit: assumed I was on a steam deck post. On desktop I also use heroic, again, compatibility is great. There's a checkbox to add to steam automatically if you want.
Thanks for the tip!
Have you tried adding installers/clients to steam as non-steam games, so you can use proton?
Works with windows games but not linux native binaries.
So yes, that's exactly what I do for games that I own on GOG but not steam. I actually try lutris first, then steam if it doesn't work.
I prefer GOG, due to being being DRM free.
On Linux I just use Heroic Games Launcher to install the GOG games and launch them. Its just as easy as proton on Steam
Steam, I can install the Steam client without any problems on moat distros, also Valve has done a lot of things to make the Linux gaming better.
Gog doesn't have a desktop app for Linux, they're focused totally Windows so I don't care about it.
If I want "DRM free" games, then I pay for the original version with DRM and then pirate it to play whenever I want.
I do like GOG. All of the games are free of DRM but they still don't have a fucking linux client. So I refuse to use them. At least Steam natively supports Linux and even improves the linux gaming experience for everyone.
But I believe gog lets you direct download any of the games. No client necessary.
Except you might want a client, both to keep your games in one place, and for extra features it can provide (like cloud saves and updates) - and if you're on Linux, you're excluded from that kind of stuff on GOG.
You can directly download your games from GOG inside Lutris, no additional software needed. Same thing for Heroic Games Launcher.
Having an open protocol to get your games is way more important than a dedicated client, because it goes against the kind of artificial market fragmentation we see in the Streaming world with every service having their own dedicated client (times the number of platforms they support) instead of people being able to just have one client for everything.
IMHO in some ways the experience with GOG games in Lutris is superior to that with Steam games and the Steam client because Lutris doesn't get in your way when all you want is to play the damned game, whilst Steam always fires up the full client and at times even forces you to wait for an update to complete (and in Linux it can get pretty bad because of cached "shader translations" being downloaded, and those can be pretty massive for certain games - for example over 1GB for Borderlands 2) before you can even start the game and even defaults to starting the Steam client on the shop-front and the user has to figure out where in the client configuration they can change that if they want otherwise.
I can see your point, but it's a pretty weak reason if at all valid, IMHO.
That's not really my problem with GOG. It's the fact that they seem to be ignoring Linux. If they are that unwilling to make a Linux client, then I also don't want to use their platform.
GOG Galaxy on Windows is an awful client so I shudder to think what they would do with a Linux client
GOG, because I don't care about badges and achievements and other trinkets, but I do care about DRM
800 games on Steam, 200 on GoG. I love the DRM free stuff, but Steam has so many great features its on a whole other level to be honest.
+Steam deck and Linux support is a huge positive.
GoG Galaxy is great, but also doesn't have a Linux client, which makes it less convenient. Still GoG has so many gems not available anywhere else that I am willing to split my game library just for the classics.
If ypu haven't tried it, you should try Heroic Games Launcher. Makes it just as easy to launch GoG games on Linux as Steam games
Thanks, yes projects like Heroic or Lutris are great, I use both.
It's just the fact that one of the all time most requested feature on GoG is Linux support for many years, yet its ignored constantly. Its just disappointing.
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 the installers for my games and keeping local copies - which GoG lets you easily do but Steam does not - since a long time ago and due to professional experience I became 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 (and, lo-and-behold, when they have to prove it rather than just update a row in a database to say you don't own it, suddenly it's not worth it for them anymore). 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 and totally getting away with it have more than proven my caution on that.
I did eventually also got Steam and bought some games from them up until the point when a game I bought would not 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). Even without that, with Steam I'm always wary because they have more restrictions than GoG and possession of my games in Steam is theirs, not mine.
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 (even if I pay a bit more for it in GoG, as the way I see it a game for which I can download the installer and keep it forever is a higher value product than one were I have to trust Steam for ever and ever to exist, have a client for my OS and not do any shennenigans) and a game only being available in Steam makes it far, far less likely that I'll buy it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :(
I prefer GOG but not enough to not buy from Steam. And each store has its pros and cons.
As a single player gamer, I love the DRM free nature of GOG, especially for classic games like Rollercoaster Tycoon or SimCity 3000. I have older PCs lying around and being able to play my games on them is very very nice.
On the other hand, updating my game is a chore and GOG Galaxy while cool isn't polished, and very buggy especially only Linux via Wine. I wouldn't even consider online multiplayer games unless it had its own server.
Compared to Steam which works with Linux by default, no Lutris or Bottles configuring to get games to work. Updates are seamless and online multiplayer is built into the client. Let alone remote play, steam families, big picture, and all the other features it does.
My only gripe with Steam is the GIANT question mark on what happens to my games when they pull support. I mean I can't even play my older games any more on my old Windows 7 machine, and its not like Fallout 3 is getting updates.
So my priority is thus: GOG then Steam, if its single player and the price is similar (+-$10). Steam then GOG if it makes sense or I need steam features (I.e. I got Stardew Valley on Steam since my SO has it there too and we can play together). Finally if the game is around $5 get it on either, or maybe both if I like the game.
I mostly buy on steam to have my library in one place (without manually adding games) and the free cloud backup. And the Linux support.
My decision tree roughly follows these steps:
- Steam for games that have an online multiplayer content, because GoG Galaxy sucks ass on Linux.
- Steam for games that objectively run better on Proton.
- GoG for games that support LAN multiplayer.
I used to also prioritize GoG because it was largely DRM-free, but the Luna partnership is putting doubt on that.
GOG if I can, because DRM freeness has to be rewarded as much as possible
whenever possible I buy games from Itch.io as some devs provide Steam keys alongside their source code and packaged versions for most (if not all) platforms which is usually: [Windows, Linux, Android]
First of all there's one huge misunderstanding I see lots of people making, Steam does not enforce DRM, some games on Steam are also DRM free and you can just copy the installed folder to another computer without steam and play them, in fact games that have DRM announce it in their page.
But also some games on GoG have DRM. So long story short, both Steam and GoG sell games with and without DRM, but only one of them tries to bullshit you about it.
I buy from Steam 100% of the time (except for games I get f on Humble Bundles or stuff like that), my reasoning is that the money I give to Valve is being invested in making games run better on Linux, and since I use Linux I have a vested interest in seeing Valve improve that. That being said, if I was in your shoes and games were half the price on GoG I might buy them from GoG, but the lack of an official Linux launcher and no cloud saves is still annoying so some games I might still get from Steam.
Steam. I would 100% buy them on gog if Steams cloud saves werent so damn convenient
Gog has cloud saves too if you use gog galaxy.
Steam. Works on Linux.
I strongly prefer GOG to the point where I often don't buy games that are not on GOG.
That being said, one reason to buy from Steam is steam workshop. So if I want a lot of mods, I may buy from Steam even when available on GOG.
I was all in on GOG 10-12 years ago when they said they were working on Linux support "soon"
After so many years of promises and no action, while Valve pays developers to improve Linux gaming, I'd rather buy from Steam
Prices tend to be similar between the platforms here, though
GOG is pretty great, but Valve and their love for Linux makes Steam my goto. Plus I have a Steam Deck.
GOG for sure. Wish it had a native Linux client tho :(
When its cheap, I sometimes buy on GOG, but its almost always more expensive than Steam in my region, even before accounting for bundles, which is how I buy the majority of my games. It also doesn't help that most of the games I play aren't on even GOG, when I do go to look, discoverability isn't great, and I've had some issues with GOG's support in the past (nothing major, just a pain compared to Steam).
I do like the Idea of GOG, but with developers/publishers generally being uncooperative with publishing off-Steam, and GOG just missing too many features anyway, I can rarely justify it.
I buy games on Steam for the achievements. Honestly, if it wasn't for Steam achievements, I'd have never made the switch from pirated games to buying them.
Why pirate games at all? I never understood that.
If games (or movies) are too expensive or not good enough to buy, why download them at all?
I havent paid to watch films or TV shows in decades. No subscriptions, no buying or “digital renting”. No massive amount of DVDs to keep around No risk of some company removing the licensing from the provider which subsequently means I cant watch it.
Ill never stop sailing the pirate seas
If its available on both, GOG. Always. Even if the game was $15 om gog and $6 on steam.
I play them through steam with Proton. It's tedious installing and adding the games, and updates are a similar manual process as installing them. But, I want to support DRM free software.
Edit: From the comments here... Hm, maybe it's not a well known thing that you can run gog games on steam w/Proton?
Is it just adding the game as external game on steam and then configuring it with the correct proton version etc?
Sort of. It might be a good idea to see what the mentioned Heroic Launcher does. What I do is tedious and cumbersome.
Edit: I tried Heroic Launcher. Use that. It's exactly what I wanted. Ignore what I've now placed in the spoiler.
spoiler
- Download all GoG install files for a particular game, and place them in some folder.
- "Add a non-steam game" from within steam, for the installer executable, with the corresponding working directory ("start in").
- Run the "game", with the proton compatibility mode enabled.
- After installing, change the entry from 1., to point to the game executable (you'll have to search for it), and corresponding working directory. It should be somewhere in
$HOME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/
PS: Surround all paths with double quotes. Both the
TARGETandSTART INfields. The working directory is almost always the directory that the executable is in.When updating a game, it is sort of the same story. Download update files. Change the entry to run the update. Update. Change the entry back.
I'm sure there are better ways to do this. So I'll probably check the Heroic Launcher. I remember trying similar things in the past, and I wasn't all that happy with it.
Is there a guide on how to do that?
https://lemmy.world/comment/11978050
Though consider other suggestions like Heroic Launcher and Lutris. I cannot vouch for them, but there is certainly a better way than how I do it.
Steam simply due to the convenience and already having a ton of games there. Steam sales are nice too of course.
GOG is awesome, but more for older games or for games I want to play at a LAN. Like the good old days where you hang out with friends, throw a CD (or now USB stick) their way and ten minutes later you're playing together.
You can add games to Steam to use proton so where they came from doesn't matter. You can also use Proton forks and bypass steam altogether - much of the underlying tech is Wine; proton is a patched and optimised version of Wine not a stand alone Valve product. Its great what they've done but it is still a collaborative open source effort.
As for which store, I go on price and sometimes go with GOG even if more expensive because of DRM, and sometimes Steam because of the convenience of the workshop.
I don't think it needs to be any more complex than that - these are company's taking your money for the same product. Its kinda pointless being "loyal" to a retailer - its more important to focus on value for money and quality of service for each purchase.
I love GOG, and support GOG, especially when it comes to nostalgic old PC games... but... I love steam achievements, I love the Steam Deck, and I love seeing my gaming stats, like top 10 games played and such. So I default to Steam.
Usually Steam. I like the idea of GoG, but a lot of the time if you want mods you're basically forced to buy it on Steam because of the Workshop. Also, I kinda like having everything in one place.
Mostly Steam, but if I get a hankering for an old DOS game I'll check for it on GOG before taking a boat out. Because GOG has it preconfigured in DOSBox when you buy it.
Basically in the same as you, but Steam is cheaper in my country, and I have a larger library of modern games there thanks to Humble Bundle and friends gifting me games there
steam if multiplayer, since i have the client open all the time so it can update. I liek to have GOG handle single player experiences if possible and offered. though its really for me pricing, and generally speaking, 3rd party stores give me the better deal for steam keys. (not like g2a or anything, but like humble and shit)
GOG is usually my first choice, mainly because its a european company and because of DRM. But I also try to not buy all of my games only on one store. You never know when it suddenly goes to shit and then all your games are trapped in that store.
I prefer Steam because of cheaper games in my country and because of service. All those reviews, tutorials and mods matter.
Anywhere but stream. Their support system is awful in that there is no way to escalate issues outside of calling them out on social media and hoping the bad press catches someone’s attention.
Sounds like you had one specific issue, which escalated to this level.
I'm on steam for almost 15 years, had issues with refunds, serial keys, hardware support, account issues and steam deck hardware replacement. Every time they resolved it in a friendly and professional manner within hours.
I'm not saying your opinion is invalid, but stating things like, they are only reachable via social media is a huge exaggeration at best.
If I ever purchase games, it do be Steam.
Steam bcs it's way easier for me to get a giftcard from my local store