Adventure Gamers - Forums

Origami - 21 September 2016 12:04 PM

You are French alright.

What’s that supposed to mean? What does his nationality have anything to do about this?

I love both. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
GOG Pros:
- GOG is obviously DRM-free.
- For the most part, games on GOG work.

GOG Cons:
- Very slim library compared to Steam’s.
- Much more draconian in accepting indie submissions.
- If a game doesn’t work, they won’t refund you right away. They make you jump into many hoops. I get it - they have to do that because the game is DRM-free and customers can abuse the system- but it still is annoying.

Steam Pros:
- Library lives everywhere. Auto Updates.
- Much larger library compared to GOG’s.
- 2 week return policy of any game you buy on Steam, regardless of the reason.
- Main reason for resurgence of indie scene. Steam Greenlight is a democratic way to choose which indie game makes it on the Steam service, and from what I have observed, if your game is semi-decent, it will make it on the service. GOG have very weird rules about what makes it on their service and what doesn’t. Many good games like COWCAT’s are rejected because it is not a “perfect match for our users”. Well, his game is a good match for me, and I am one of their users, so what criteria are they basing this on?
- Main reason for resurgence of many niche struggling genres. Just look at the number of adventure games, Tactial turn based strategy games, flight sims, etc.. sold on Steam, and being created these days.
- Really cheap sales of a large chunk of their library.
- Integrates very well with a lot of third party websites like Humble Bundle, Indiegala, Bundlestars, etc… Because of this integration, you can buy games on these services for filthy cheap as part of a bundle, and you get Steam keys for them.

Cons
- They don’t test the games on their service like GOG does. You can buy a game on Steam, and it might not run on your system. This is especially frustrating, when there is a known bug in the game that affects pretty much most modern PCs. I wish they would pull out these broken games from their store. This is offset a little by their 2 week return policy.
- It uses DRM.

As you can see, Steam is DRM done right, and if you are going to have DRM in a service, Steam is a blue print of how to do it. I really don’t understand people’s hate towards it to be honest.
GOG is DRM-free, so you can’t beat that from a consumer perspective.

My Strategy is that I usually buy games on sale, on whichever service it is cheaper on. Seeing that Steam has much more aggressive sales, my Steam library is 5 times that of GOG. If a game is on sale on both services, and it is the same price on both, I go for GOG because it is DRM free.

rtrooney - 20 September 2016 09:12 PM

It comes pre-loaded with DOSBox settings, and once the download is complete, you are pretty much set to go.

Old games that run only on DOSBox are usually also pre-loaded with Dosbox settings on Steam.

Karlok - 21 September 2016 07:31 AM

In my experience some older games work better on GOG. Noctropolis is one example. I wasn’t the only player that couldn’t see text in the Steam version. The problem could be solved, but I couldn’t play fullscreen anymore. I didn’t see anyone complain about this problem at GOG, so I took a chance and bought Noctropolis again. Text visible. Same computer, same everything. I don’t understand these things, but there it is. Another example is my beloved The Last Express. The Steam version doesn’t have the marvelous credits. Why? I don’t know.

Yeah, this to me is the most annoying thing about Steam. The reason for this is that GOG has a team of QA people testing the game before putting it out on their system, and Steam doesn’t seem to have that. It is offset a little by the fact that you can get a full refund for a broken game within 2 weeks of your purchase, but that still won’t help you in actually playing the game. I partially blame developers for this as well as Valve. I mean if I am a developer, and I have a working copy of my game on GOG, why don’t I just put that same copy on Steam instead of a broken one? common sense right? Are they so lazy that they can’t update the Steam version with the working copy or is there something else going on there?

COWCAT - 21 September 2016 12:48 PM

Karlok - 21 September 2016 12:45 PM

giom - 21 September 2016 12:21 PM

Origami - 21 September 2016 12:04 PM

You are French alright.

What’s that supposed to mean? What does his nationality have anything to do about this?

LOL!

Origami is Dutch. Which has everything to do with what he said. I’m not kidding.

 

Maybe that French people are always complaining? That might be true

The stereotypical French is known to be very proud and to have a sense of superiority. Anyway, you took it with good sportmanship. I hope your game does well. I might check it out.

Also Giom is French. Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken offense. Calling it.

COWCAT - 21 September 2016 12:36 PM

I should also mention that Visual Novels are constantly rejected on GoG because they don’t consider them “games”.

Yeah, the lack of visual novels is my personal peeve with GOG.com that I mentioned before. But whether they refuse to sell them because they don’t consider games is not something I am inclined to believe. I have seen topics about it but no official statements from GOG.com themselves. Aside from the game Bird Story that you mentioned they also sell that pidgeon visual novel and the recently released sci fi bartender visual novel(don’t know the names from the top of my head)

Personally I speculate on Steam having exclusive deals with some of the publishers or the lack of interest from the publishers side to have the game distributed on GOG.com

@Karlok. Yup, one of my nationalities is Dutch.

If I really want a game I will buy it from wherever it’s available from (legitimately of course!).
I prefer to buy DRM free from GoG if possible but have bought a lot of games from Steam with the confidence that hopefully the Steam site will endure for future re-downloads should I wish to replay on a different system.

COWCAT - 21 September 2016 12:48 PM

Karlok - 21 September 2016 12:45 PM

giom - 21 September 2016 12:21 PM

Origami - 21 September 2016 12:04 PM

You are French alright.

What’s that supposed to mean? What does his nationality have anything to do about this?

LOL!

Origami is Dutch. Which has everything to do with what he said. I’m not kidding.

 

Maybe that French people are always complaining? That might be true

I mean if I am a developer, and I have a working copy of my game on GOG, why don’t I just put that same copy on Steam instead of a broken one? common sense right? Are they so lazy that they can’t update the Steam version with the working copy or is there something else going on there?

Yes, there’s some laziness. But we have to do two versions each time there’s a new version (DRM Free and Steam), otherwise you just can’t take advantage of any of the Steam possibilities (achievements, cloud saving…)

For the latest update of Demetrios, I had to do no less than 16 builds! (demo/full version, Windows, Mac, Linux, Drm Free and Steam - combine these all together!) This is a lot of work. It takes me almost a day of work to do it and test them all.

That makes sense for newer games, but the newer ones actually work (for the majority at least). The problems are usually in older games. Lots of those don’t even support Mac or Linux, and I am very doubtful they support the Steam features you talked about.

@Cowcat

I have appended my previous post with an indirect question also aimed towards you regarding the lack of visual novels offered by gog.com

I’m usually not proud, more the opposite to be honest… I just become bitter when I hear about GoG, because of this whole situation :p

It was a joke ofcourse playing off of the stereotype. I don’t know you personally so no way for me to know if you are a prideful person.