I can agree to that. :)

My first disillusion with Steam was buying a retail boxed game and realising that it required a Steam account.

While I understand that the GOG forums need at least one Steam bashing thread active at all times, or else the entire universe will explode, in my view Steam has if anything been steadily improving, at least in the ways that actually matter to me. Back when I started using Steam in 2011, you had to be online just to play the games you'd already downloaded. They got rid of that lovely little feature relatively soon after, and thank fuck for that. They also brought in the trading cards, which are essentially small amounts of free store credit with every game (or large amounts, if you get extremely lucky). Best of all were the refunds. That made everything a thousand times more consumer friendly. I don't use it to keep up with new releases or find new games, so the absolute dumpster fire that was Greenlight and its successor(s) whatever it/they may be are nothing more than an amusing, yet thankfully irrelevant shitshow. Steamworks is about as benign as DRM can possibly be, and even if it were a problem, there are no shortage of ways to get around it. Really, the only substantially bad thing I could say about it is that the sales aren't what they used to be, but I can say the same about pretty much every digital distributor.

No one other than yourself is forcing you to buy anything on that platform.
So you're not forced, it's your own conscious choice.

I still do that. Regularly buying boxed games that require Steam. And as long as everything works, it's fine with me. I haven't bought a single game through Steam directly, but I will still rather buy Steamed boxed games than pure digital.

Some people might be afraid of the looming thread of Steam having control of their games but if they start doing something retarded or restricting access to the games I own, I will not hesitate a single second and torrent every single game I have on Steam whenever I need to. As long as there is the backup of torrents (which will most likely be forever) then I have no worries.

I believe the user is implying that the game(s) they purchased were exclusive to Steam, as a lot of games (and even entire publishers/developers) are, thus leaving Steam as the only way to play that game.

That was exactly my point.

I'm just here for the games bruh. Ya know at the end of the day, some people just wanna play Skyrim/Rocket League/Civ VI/Fallout 4/name a game that is only on Steam.

I've heard a lot of different reasons why people hate on Steam. Because Valve won't make Half Life 3 usually isn't at the top of the list.

You havent even mentioned one thing that you dislike about Steam. Valve doesnt make games and neither does GOG or any other competitor.

As much as I dislike Steam I still feel like they are making significantly less anti-consumer decisions than GOG.

What are the most recent bad changes Steam implemented? The chat/friend overhaul? It's bad but nowhere near the aberration that GOG became.

As I'm migrating my games to a new computer, I have to make these two constatations :

1° GOG installers are really well done. I love how transparent they are about keeping saved games, for instance. Uninstalling many games from many sources, and the GOG ones are the most consistently hassle-free.

2° Oh how SHIT it is to re-download huge Steam games instead of simply reinstalling them from GOG's once downloaded backup files.

So yeah, seriously, all these Steam games, I wish I had them on GOG instead.

Wait, Steam and GOG aren't the same thing?

No wonder I can't use this Witcher code over there.

10 years a steam game player, also a 15 year wow player but am unsubbing in april just got disalusioned with wow. every game platform has its faults some more than others formyself i say live and let live at the end of the day we are all gamers

Ditto,
At best I tolerated it until it became intolerable.

I would love to see more AAA games but what about https://fckdrm.com ?

This.