Steam: here’s a platform. We know some corpos won’t release games without DRM, so here’s our in-house solution that’s non-intrusive, but if you don’t want to put DRM in your game, we won’t force you. Want to include a backup installer? Cool. No worries. Oh you don’t have solid internet? That’s cool, if you get the games installed somehow, you can use offline mode indefinitely with no issues, sorry it took us so long to work out the bugs.
Epic: YOU MUST YSE OUR SHITTY DRM FOR ANY GAME RELEASED ON OUR PLATFORM, AND YOU MUST BE ONLINE AT ALL TIMES OR YOU CANNOT PLAY THE GAMES YOU PURCHASED.
Every single one of those requires a connection to your Steam account to install. On GOG I can download the installers for my games and then use them whereever and whenever I want. That’s impossible with Steam.
Many of those allow you to copy the files freely and move them between computers, even to computers that don’t have Steam. Hell, I played Half-Life on my Linux handheld yesterday, and I didn’t install it through steam. Just copied the files onto the SD card, set up a script to bind the controls, and launched the game.
Now, I’ll concede you must initially sign in to get access to the files, just as you must sign in to download installers on gog.
I use both often though. I play a lot on the aforementioned Linux handheld, and you can port pretty much any DRM-free game to it. Most surprisingly work better using the Steam version than they do the GoG version, though that is likely to be down to the handheld and not anything the stores are doing.
Steam: here’s a platform. We know some corpos won’t release games without DRM, so here’s our in-house solution that’s non-intrusive, but if you don’t want to put DRM in your game, we won’t force you. Want to include a backup installer? Cool. No worries. Oh you don’t have solid internet? That’s cool, if you get the games installed somehow, you can use offline mode indefinitely with no issues, sorry it took us so long to work out the bugs.
Epic: YOU MUST YSE OUR SHITTY DRM FOR ANY GAME RELEASED ON OUR PLATFORM, AND YOU MUST BE ONLINE AT ALL TIMES OR YOU CANNOT PLAY THE GAMES YOU PURCHASED.
GoG: What’s DRM?
GoG: Linux who?
Lutris / Heroic: got your back bro
Good thing Linux supports Valve’s Proton compatibility layer…
🔥 🔥
Itch.io is also underappreciated in this sense too
Wait, you can’t play Epic-games while offline?
Honestly, you might be able to these days. I haven’t interacted with the Epic app in years though, and you couldn’t last I tried.
❤️ Gaben
Have you used Steam in, well, ever? It’s literally impossible to release a Steam game without DRM and always has been.
https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
Every single one of those requires a connection to your Steam account to install. On GOG I can download the installers for my games and then use them whereever and whenever I want. That’s impossible with Steam.
Many of those allow you to copy the files freely and move them between computers, even to computers that don’t have Steam. Hell, I played Half-Life on my Linux handheld yesterday, and I didn’t install it through steam. Just copied the files onto the SD card, set up a script to bind the controls, and launched the game.
Now, I’ll concede you must initially sign in to get access to the files, just as you must sign in to download installers on gog.
I use both often though. I play a lot on the aforementioned Linux handheld, and you can port pretty much any DRM-free game to it. Most surprisingly work better using the Steam version than they do the GoG version, though that is likely to be down to the handheld and not anything the stores are doing.