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GOG v Steam

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Oscar - 30 December 2016 02:05 PM
SoccerDude28 - 30 December 2016 12:28 PM
Oscar - 30 December 2016 04:37 AM

I don’t blame the developer at all. It’s a decision to release an unmistakably buggy game, but with that must go the consequence of accepting refunds for a game clearly not fit for purpose. That is Steam’s responsibility.

And they already do that. Full refund for up to 2 weeks, if you put less than 2 hours into the game. What is their alternative? To give you as much time as you want to figure out the game is broken? How many people will abuse this?

Very few. GOG is the evidence. And look, let’s be honest - if they wanted to get a game for free, piracy is always an option. People who buy games do so in good faith and merchants should return that trust.

Even GOG does not allow you to return a game before jumping into many hoops. I had a game not working properly, and after tons of exchanges with customer support, I just gave up. They give 30 days, IF you have exhausted every avenue with customer support.
Steam gives you 2 weeks for any reason, no questions asked.

Look, there is nothing I would like more than to have a DRM-free Steam, but let’s be realistic- it’s not going to happen. I completely agree with you that pirates are pirating Steam games (and can probably bypass almost any DRM thrown their way), but publishers still feel more at ease if the game has some form of protection. That is why newer AAA games like Call of Duty, Watchdogs 2 or Fallout 4 are not available on GOG. I don’t know if they have done their research that showed that DRM affects sales or what, but they are not going to jump on the DRM-free bandwagon anytime soon. Steam is DRM done right - the best DRM soultion available right now.

As far as merchants returning the trust of honest buyers like yourself, well look at it from this perspective. When you purchase from a big chain store like Target or Best Buy, they have cameras everywhere in the store to watch for shop lifters, and they have those beeping devices that beep if you haven’t scanned an item. Some even have people waiting at an exit to check if what you bought matches your receipt. Does that mean that people buying from these stores do not do so in good faith? Most are, but we still have the few weeds that ruin it for the rest of us. The way I see it, Steam is a little like that, but digitally.

     

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rtrooney - 29 December 2016 06:55 PM
Mike the Wino - 07 July 2016 11:49 AM

I recently purchased Maze: Subject 360 Collector’s Edition on a deep Steam sale (I think I paid $2.99 for the CE?), and have really enjoyed it so far. I’m not here to review it though. Instead, I’ve got an observation and a couple questions.

Casual game CE’s purchased on Steam seem to be only sort of collector edition-ish. The bonus content is there, but often times the in-game strategy guides are not. Like this game. The button to bring up the guide is present, but when I click on it a panel pops up, but it’s blank….no guide! I have also purchased other CE’s on Steam that had the guide, and still others that the button for bringing up the guide (which should be available) isn’t even part of the game interface.

Does anyone have an idea why the strategy guides are included for some CE’s purchased on Steam, but not others? The Steam help section for Maze lists BFG as the official customer support site, which leads me to believe they (BFG) licensed Steam to sell it, so why wouldn’t it be the same version as that sold at BFG?

The above comes a post made in the Casual Games thread. In which case, it would seem that some (casual) games distributed to Steam are different than those distributed to the normal casual distribution channel, BFG. So that would seem to take it out of the developer/publisher choice, and, at least put some of the blame back on Steam.

Regarding the earlier Barrow Hill 2 example, I think it was perfectly obvious that the developer was using Steam early adopters as Beta testers. Which is despicable considering the Steam refund policy. Which is another reason why I dislike Steam.

But I am also liking GOG less and less. Don’t know what to do when it comes to playing Good Old Games.

I’m sorry I didn’t see the quoted post, but the strategy guide for Maze 360 is up on Steam. It’s just not in-game. You can navigate to it through the page for the game, where thing like discussions and news are. Big Fish may not have been able to include it as an in-game option, but it is there.

     
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A thing about the Steam refund policy that I’m not sure it was talked about is that the refund policy of 2 weeks/2 hours is for refunds with no questions asked.
You can still get a refund with more hours of play time from a game, although you probably need to jum through some hoops with the Steam support to accept the reason. The most notable case is a large number of people getting refunds for No Man’s Sky with dozens of playtime because of some bugs that only showed up later.

     
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notanumber - 30 December 2016 06:06 PM

I’m sorry I didn’t see the quoted post, but the strategy guide for Maze 360 is up on Steam. It’s just not in-game. You can navigate to it through the page for the game, where thing like discussions and news are. Big Fish may not have been able to include it as an in-game option, but it is there.

And I am sorry too.I’m just not sure how having to jump through hoops to get what you thought you had bought results in a satisfactory buying experience.

     

For whom the games toll,
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rtrooney - 30 December 2016 11:11 PM
notanumber - 30 December 2016 06:06 PM

I’m sorry I didn’t see the quoted post, but the strategy guide for Maze 360 is up on Steam. It’s just not in-game. You can navigate to it through the page for the game, where thing like discussions and news are. Big Fish may not have been able to include it as an in-game option, but it is there.

And I am sorry too.I’m just not sure how having to jump through hoops to get what you thought you had bought results in a satisfactory buying experience.

I’d hardly calling it jumping through hoops. I’m just refuting the statement that Big Fish is selling a game on Steam that is “altered” from the one they are selling. It’s all there, folks.

     
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I never said that Big Fish was selling games on Steam. I would doubt that very much. If anything Steam is a Big Fish competitor. Now if, for example,  ERS Games is selling Steam a different version of their games than they sell to BFG, that’s a different thing entirely.

     

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Ok I know I was tooting Steam’s horn, but last week I got an issue that made me rethink the whole Steam vs GOG thing. For some reason, Steam had a bug that affected some accounts, rendering them unable to access any uninstalled games on your Steam account. I tried to contact their customer support, but their customer support page was a circular loop that took you from one link to another until you got back to the starting page. I was so frustrated that a company that makes 100’s of millions (maybe even more) on this service won’t even allow me to send their customer support a message. So now I am really iffy about Steam.

I always felt that because Valve was a small independent company, that they are one of us, one of the good guys who cares for their customers, but somewhere down the line, I think they have changed. There is a very good article on Polygon recently that highlights how Steam is not healthy for gaming:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive

and it highlights a lot of questionable behavior from Valve more recently.

     
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My 2 experiences with Steam customer service have been pretty poor.

I’ll always pick GOG over Steam if I have a choice.  Their entire ethos seems geared towards customer satisfaction.

I did contact Steam very easily both of those times btw, SC. Unfortunately, I can’t remember how now.  Maybe try just looking at any question to get to the form?

     

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SoccerDude28 - 23 May 2017 12:13 PM

Ok I know I was tooting Steam’s horn, but last week I got an issue that made me rethink the whole Steam vs GOG thing. For some reason, Steam had a bug that affected some accounts, rendering them unable to access any uninstalled games on your Steam account. I tried to contact their customer support, but their customer support page was a circular loop that took you from one link to another until you got back to the starting page. I was so frustrated that a company that makes 100’s of millions (maybe even more) on this service won’t even allow me to send their customer support a message. So now I am really iffy about Steam.

I always felt that because Valve was a small independent company, that they are one of us, one of the good guys who cares for their customers, but somewhere down the line, I think they have changed. There is a very good article on Polygon recently that highlights how Steam is not healthy for gaming:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive

and it highlights a lot of questionable behavior from Valve more recently.

They routinely don’t even read customer support tickets.  They just give a copy and pasted answer even when you specifically describe the issue.  They could not care less.  I was locked out of my account for weeks due to this.  Got copy and pasted answers ignoring my support ticket each time and took a week in between copied answers until they finally read it and locked the account.  The funny thing was that I was simply explaining that I had taken care of the issue I had.  As a reward, they locked me out of my account because they couldn’t be bothered to read a few lines of text.  They are poison.

Unfortunately, most of the masses never have problems, and so just figure that it is a wonderful system.  People tend not to care until they are personally affected.  One click and you could lose access to everything and there is absolutely nothing you could do.

     
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darthmaul - 23 May 2017 08:53 PM

Unfortunately, most of the masses never have problems, and so just figure that it is a wonderful system.  People tend not to care until they are personally affected.  One click and you could lose access to everything and there is absolutely nothing you could do.

It is a wonderful system, with some serious flaws. Lack of customer support or a sensible procedure to reverse lockouts as quickly and painlessly as possible are big issues - it seems Valve are keen to dominate the market but don’t feel the responsibility of that position. When things go wrong there’s not much in place to mitigate problems - but most of the time it works, and works well.

GOG are great for older games, and I’ll tend to pick up classics there. For newer games I’d lean towards Humble or Itch - that way I get a Steam key for convenience, but I also own the game elsewhere if anything happens to Steam (and sometimes there’s a DRM-free download as well). I rarely buy anything directly on Steam these days - only if something’s very deeply reduced or that’s the only place I can get it.

     
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Total Posts: 2704

Joined 2004-08-02

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darthmaul - 23 May 2017 08:53 PM
SoccerDude28 - 23 May 2017 12:13 PM

Ok I know I was tooting Steam’s horn, but last week I got an issue that made me rethink the whole Steam vs GOG thing. For some reason, Steam had a bug that affected some accounts, rendering them unable to access any uninstalled games on your Steam account. I tried to contact their customer support, but their customer support page was a circular loop that took you from one link to another until you got back to the starting page. I was so frustrated that a company that makes 100’s of millions (maybe even more) on this service won’t even allow me to send their customer support a message. So now I am really iffy about Steam.

I always felt that because Valve was a small independent company, that they are one of us, one of the good guys who cares for their customers, but somewhere down the line, I think they have changed. There is a very good article on Polygon recently that highlights how Steam is not healthy for gaming:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive

and it highlights a lot of questionable behavior from Valve more recently.

They routinely don’t even read customer support tickets.  They just give a copy and pasted answer even when you specifically describe the issue.  They could not care less.  I was locked out of my account for weeks due to this.  Got copy and pasted answers ignoring my support ticket each time and took a week in between copied answers until they finally read it and locked the account.  The funny thing was that I was simply explaining that I had taken care of the issue I had.  As a reward, they locked me out of my account because they couldn’t be bothered to read a few lines of text.  They are poison.

Unfortunately, most of the masses never have problems, and so just figure that it is a wonderful system.  People tend not to care until they are personally affected.  One click and you could lose access to everything and there is absolutely nothing you could do.

Yeah you nailed it, that’s what happened to me except, they had a bug in their code that affected several users. It was a small portion so it probably didn’t show up in their analytics, but still a considerable amount judging by the number of threads opened in their forums. The bug was tied to a user account, so if you had 2 people using the same computer under different accounts, one can access steam and one can’t. I tried going through their customer support page, but there was no option that led me to submit a ticket. Other people managed somehow to submit tickets, but they got generic answers from customer support to check their drivers, reinstall steam etc…

People started getting desperate so they started tweeting Valve directly and posting on their facebook page. Finally, in one of the threads that I was following, one of the Valve engineers said now it is working. Aftr a day of radio silence, they responded. No appologies, no thanks for your patience, nothing… People seemed to drink the cool aid again saying yay tahnks Valve, but for me, it just opened my eyes to how easy you can lose access to hundreds if not thousands of dollars invested in your steam account in a blink of an eye, and there is barely a thing you can do about it. I also was thinking that because my situation affected several users, at least there was enough commotion to force them to do something. What if the problem was isolatd to my account, then what? At least with GOG, I can talk to their customer support. In the worst case, a game doesn’t work and you lose your investment on it, but if my account gets locked, I have a backup of all my games there on an external harddrive, and i can still play them.

     

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