We've all seen the bullshit excuses by League of Geeks on why Armello: DRM-Free Edition is as it is, but this isn't the first sign of developers and publishers treating GOG unfairly and turning to Steam as their primary sales location for whatever reason.

Firefly Studios and Team17, for instance, developers who are in no position to be picky with distribution services for their games (considering their "quality" in recent years), leave out several games from GOG, or, in the case of Team17's new Worms W.M.D. title, leave certain extras and even the Linux version exclusive to Steam.

So apart from an army of fanboys who think Steam is the only go-to place for PC gaming, what does Steam have that GOG does not? Why is GOG deemed less valuable? Why does GOG have to negotiate so many games individually while everyone flocks to Steam automagically with their titles?

More buyers, I mean a lot more buyers.

Ah, a rethorical question.

They can get more buyers yet from GOG's solid customer base anyway.

Simply not enough buyers. If you imagine that for some devs it's already questionable whether the extra costs (and there are) for developing and providing support to a DRM-Free version is worth it for a PC version, then consider that even on Steam Linux + Mac users consist of only 5% of it's buyerbase. So imagine roughly the same % of GOG users would buy those here.

Here's a good quote from the AOW3 people about the linux argument, and what GOG is 'missing' there:

Maybe they checked its forum first ? Hah.

I say : HAH.

It's all about money. For developers and publishers, steam is a gold mine if you can get on there because they have so many users. Gog is tiny in comparison. Steam provides development tools for cloud, multiplayer matchmaking, and other things. It's a bit like would you develop a game for Windows or Mac/Linux first? While everyone thinks it should be all of the above, it's really not free and it takes longer, then there are the support and testing costs and time for additional platforms.

Then if you do decide to use gog, and have multiplayer component, be prepared to write your own matchmaking service, otherwise put up with the complaints of gog users. If you try and use gog galaxy client for it, you hear drm complaints. If you have a windows only game, you hear the linux bunch complain. As a dev, I wouldn't even put a screenshot on this site.

drm-free downloads when the industry is moving back towards draconian overbearing DRM (denuvo)

Because Steam offers developers tools to easily manage their games. Patches, MP services, community stuff like achievements, save clouds, and SteamWorkshop. These things often require themselves to be "hooked" into the games. Hence, GOG gets games and patches late because a second version needs to be made to satisfy the DRM-Free rule.

Another reason which was already stated is the simple fact that the most eyes are on Steam. Steam was the first of its kind, and perhaps you don't remember or never used it back when it first popped up in 2003-2004, but it was abysmal. Over the years it slowly worked its way to becoming the #1 PC game stop by attracting people to it with lots of features, goodies and sales. I don't think it started to become known as the best shop until around 2009 or 2010.

GOG isn't seen as less valuable as much as it's seen as extra work. It's a process putting a game on GOG, whereas it's easy and fast on Steam. (Which is something even GOG is aware of, why do you think they're directly competing against Steam now, by copying Steam?)

Then why DRM it in the first place? Pirates are gonna pirate anyway, buyers will buy. We've all seen how SafeDisc backfired after all those years. And Linux gaming can't thrive if nobody makes games for it. Sure, you can use Wine/PlayOnLinux, but native support is more ideal. Then they misstepped by relying on Steam SDKs to begin with. Not only is that a very short-term decision (as using system libraries or, damn, your own) is less in danger of becoming obsolete than a tool made by a company trying to achieve monopoly who can at any given moment cut support for it. The point of Linux itself is developing on your own and/or using assets made by other people who aren't as prone to screwing you over in the long run. Back in the old days, companies used their own servers or big third-party ones alongside LAN functionality for their games. Nowadays, everyone tries to use Steam (okay, Origin and uPlay for the shittiest of the companies) servers and deliberately drop LAN. Even updated versions of Company of Heroes and WH40K Dawn of War did this when GameSpy went down. This is not a feature, this is a bad decision in the long run for the players. What will they do when someday Steam goes down (it's not happening in the foreseeable future, but nothing is ever eternal)? And also, why is that such a big factor? If Blizzard could make a living from multiplayer in the late 1990s (when people were only gradually even getting online at all), so can everyone in this day and age who has the vision.

Also, what does GOG have Galaxy for, then? :P Oh? Isn't basically every title here DRM-free? Yeah, that's just being entitled from the fanboys' side. Again, while native support is ideal, Wine/PlayOnLinux still exist.

I think this video explains it quite well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1nohC9QWjs

GOG is like that DOG who gets scraps from the table.

Single-player, yes. The multiplayer portion can still requires registering the license to an account somewhere. If multiplayer requires Galaxy, people will complain that requiring a client is DRM.

LAN shouldn't need licenses (as real LAN never did), but making accounts on an official website is, IMO, entirely acceptable. Necessary, in fact (coming from experience as staff on a fan server).

Some games require unique keys on LAN play (I think Unreal Tournament is one), even if they didn't check with a central server online.

Ah, forgot about those. They weren't the brightest idea ever, but that can't at all take much space in the source code, so it should be rather easy to comment out (I've even seen some attempts at that). But weren't serial keys rendered obsolete in new games ages ago?