To be fair, Steam/Valve shouldn't be the one that judge the quality of the game, it should be the customers by voting with their wallets.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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GOG.com is a DRM-free games and movies distribution service that is part of the CD Projekt Group. GOG.com is also a "sister" company to CD Projekt Red, developers of the Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077.
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While I agree there are people who still buy those crap, so gotta put this here:
And they'll enjoy the game or refund it, since both options are incredibly easy to do.
Of course but I meant people who buy for buying's sake, for +1 on the badge.
There are also some cases you cannot refund after 14 days, happened to me once.
Who the fuck cares?
It's true, but so are those that run things. Billionaires, politicians, CEOs, they are all.
What a complete and utter idiot this piece of crap is.
nice slur you got there.....
However they've banned games without reason many times. Wanting to be a broad marketplace is fine, but I just wish they were either committed to the bit or went back to curation because they had a higher density of good games back in the days of Greenlight.
Agreed. Open publication, as opposed to gatekeeping publication, is desirable for creative expression in society.
Just imagine how many great works never saw the light of day or reached completion because publishers didn't bite. Obviously the internet and digital media broke this dynamic to a degree, but I'm sure it's a significant amount.
I would guess that he's looking for a response to someone pointing out that Steam has a larger game library than GOG.
Like, he's gonna say "yes, but a higher proportion of the excluded games aren't good".
Ah yes, the market will decide. And famously, the market has always been good at deciding.
No, I think that's bullshit. I think Valve should curate more of their games. I don't think they should allow Nazi trash and fucking hate crime simulators on their platform.
Steam has more trash than games nowadays. I wish they never stopped curating games. At least to some degree even if not fully.
No one likes a devil’s advocate.
Didn't Gabe say this like 15 years ago?
Piracy is not a price issue, it's an availability issue. Steam makes it so easy to just... buy a game.
I'd argue that ease of use is a major component of quality.
this, valve did not make those games. So the quality of steam is the ease of use
I mean, it's true that there are lots of games sold on Steam that aren't great games, but that doesn't hurt me much.
There are lots of products on Amazon that aren't that great.
There are lots of websites on the Internet that aren't that great.
As long as I can get to the stuff I want, all good.
EDIT: I think that a better selling point for GOG than that it excludes more not-good games is that the offline installer model can survive GOG going down.
Or maybe that GOG gives you control over updates. There are ways to do this with Steam, but it's not an intended mode of operation, and some people, like heavy Skyrim modders, where an update can cause major breakage, really want control over when they update.
If the dev isn't a bastard they can make different versions available through steam. Rocksmith found the last shred of decency in their body after breaking cdlc and put the previous version up. Outside of that, yeah it can be rough.
The publishers can do it via uploading beta branches, but there's also a way to tell the Steam client to fetch old versions independently of that. I remember it coming up specifically with Skyrim, because updates broke a lot of modded environments, and it takes a long time for a lot of mods to be updated (during which time people couldn't play their modded installs).
searches
https://steamcommunity.com/app/489830/discussions/0/4032473829603430509/
The download_depot Steam console command.
The above link is about Skyrim, but also links to a non-Skyrim-specific guide that talks about how to obtain manifest IDs for versions of other games.
But, yeah. It's really not how Steam's intended to be used, and I imagine that hypothetically, one day, it could stop working.
There are also IIRC some ways to block Steam from updating individual games, but again, not intended functionality.
searches
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3205995441631274440/
If you specifically want control over game updates for some game, then GOG can be a major benefit for that.
One concern I have is that games can be purchased
Oxygen Not Included, for example, was purchased by Tencent, which added data-mining. Fortunately, in that case, Tencent was open about what they were doing, and allowed players to opt out
if they let Tencent log data about them, they could "earn" various in-game rewards. But I could imagine less-pleasant malware being attached to games after someone purchases IP rights to them and just pushes it out. Can't do that with GOG, since there's no channel intrinsically available to a game publisher to push updates out (unless the game has that built-in to itself).
searches
Not using Kagi anymore? What have you moved on to?
DDG mostly. I'm not unhappy with Kagi on any particular technical aspect, but I'm not happy about the fact that I learned that it was operating out of Serbia (it was often listed as being based in the San Francisco Bay Area; this appears to actually be a residence of the founder, not where the employees and offices are). I'd be much more comfortable about them getting in practical legal trouble if they wound up retaining data after saying that they don't if they were operating in a US or EU or something legal jurisdiction. I posted about it to !kagi@programming.dev a while back.
If they moved operations to the US or somewhere like that, I'd have no problem using them.
Thanks, good to know. I split between DDG and Kagi, not entirely happy with either.
I miss the old google.
Valves competitors love to complain. Compete or don't, the whining is lame as fuck.
That's specifically what he's aiming to do.
GOG has a new owner and CEO and he's read the room in gaming journalism. He needs to make sure people understand that this isnt some Embracer Group buyout situation, and he's doing that by specifically targeting Valve's shortcomings:
- DRM and questions of ownership
- Contracts starting at a 70/30 split
- Censorship of adult content
This is exactly what competing with Valve looks like. They just need to stick the landing.
Gog has one fantastic advantage over their competition. You buy it, you own it forever if you download the installer.
At least for me that's the thing that counts. And the reason my money only goes to gog.
... If it requires an installer, then it it not your forever. That's one hostile take over away from losing your ability to play a game
@Jarix @leave_it_blank offline installers (what you get from GOG) are forever. Ask my library of archived GOG installers.
Mea culpa. I mistook installer for launcher
@Jarix oh, that, yeah. GOG is currently in a decent position because it has a launcher, but it's basically a “thin layer” on top of APIs that allow anyone to download the installers (plus some services to manage those installations). As long as the underlying APIs remain accessible, it's fine. (This is e.g. how lgogdownloader allows one to archive their whole library for offline installation.)
Can you please elaborate on that? The GOG installers work offline so as long as as you keep your downloaded installer around and an iso of the OS it’s compatible with, it’s yours forever by my definition. But would love to hear your take on this.
Shit sorry, I hastily replied and confused installer for launcher. Mea culpa
I’m trying to buy around 50% of my games on GOG and the other 50% on Steam.
Clearly the ease of use award goes to Steam, especially on Linux.
Gog is still okay thanks to Heroic but it is a commitment with no background downloading on Steam Deck and slow downloads.
I guess we, gamers, only have to make sure that Valve still has competition so that they can’t just turn evil.
For now, I really appreciate how Valve is supporting Linux and I appreciate how GOG understand that we want to own our games and play them forever.
GOG, please make a Linux version of Galaxy.
I dunno, some of the games I've bought on GOG just aren't very good either. Especially stuff on gog that isn't good old games.
Gog added daikatana to their library the same day they changed their name from good old games they have absolutely no fucking room to talk.
I didn't quite follow, do you mean Daikatana is so bad they didn't add it before because they were called ‘good’ but not anymore?
More of the coincidence that they did the two things on the same day. It was like they were proving something.
GOG didn't become dumpster fire.