I’ll be that guy and say that I do prefer buying from GOG, going as far as paying more money in doing so, so the issue isn’t really ‘friction’ but ‘mfs don’t bother offering on GOG’.
My hate for drm has only grown over the last two decades, and so I’ll get stuff wherever I can that isn’t plastered with it. But it’s not even a rounding error in comparing the number of games available of steam vs GOG. You’d have to go so far out with zeros that you fall off the page before encountering a positive value (0.00000[…]00001%). Which is upsetting and frustrating, since the other option is steam or piracy. And I do like rewarding developers for their work, so that leaves one option basically all the time.
Indeed, and now what GoG is pursuing stronger Linux offerings I may shop there more, but Valve had contributed more than just a shop and launcher. The Linux work with Steam Deck and Proton has been invaluable.
In terms of straight numbers, isn’t Steam’s large “advantage” there it’s offering of independent, mostly unregulated games from small time devs? Are those really using drm? Even if there are, I don’t really think most users are choosing Steam over GOG for access to “Asset Flip #57354”.
Itch is exclusively indie devs, afaik, but since Steam started their Greenlight initiative, the number of games released per year has rocketed up. 2012, the year Greenlight started, only 441 games were released on steam. Two years later in 2014, almost 1500 games were released. 2017 released 5600. 2021 released 10,200. And last year had over 21k. How much of that do we think is really DRM’d, AAA published software?
There are games on Steam that don’t have DRM (since it’s not a requirement from Valve). The most prominent examples I can think of are games from Toby Fox and Klei Entertainment.
I’ll be that guy and say that I do prefer buying from GOG, going as far as paying more money in doing so, so the issue isn’t really ‘friction’ but ‘mfs don’t bother offering on GOG’.
My hate for drm has only grown over the last two decades, and so I’ll get stuff wherever I can that isn’t plastered with it. But it’s not even a rounding error in comparing the number of games available of steam vs GOG. You’d have to go so far out with zeros that you fall off the page before encountering a positive value (0.00000[…]00001%). Which is upsetting and frustrating, since the other option is steam or piracy. And I do like rewarding developers for their work, so that leaves one option basically all the time.
Indeed, and now what GoG is pursuing stronger Linux offerings I may shop there more, but Valve had contributed more than just a shop and launcher. The Linux work with Steam Deck and Proton has been invaluable.
In terms of straight numbers, isn’t Steam’s large “advantage” there it’s offering of independent, mostly unregulated games from small time devs? Are those really using drm? Even if there are, I don’t really think most users are choosing Steam over GOG for access to “Asset Flip #57354”.
I thought the small indie devs were mostly on itch?
Itch is exclusively indie devs, afaik, but since Steam started their Greenlight initiative, the number of games released per year has rocketed up. 2012, the year Greenlight started, only 441 games were released on steam. Two years later in 2014, almost 1500 games were released. 2017 released 5600. 2021 released 10,200. And last year had over 21k. How much of that do we think is really DRM’d, AAA published software?
There are games on Steam that don’t have DRM (since it’s not a requirement from Valve). The most prominent examples I can think of are games from Toby Fox and Klei Entertainment.
I’d love to see this as an official tag on the store page.