Firstly thanks for trying a Steam competitor. Its the first step in actually having competition, someone willing to try the other product.

As others have mentioned, it used to be GoG's Quality Assurance slowing thing down, but now most Devs can roll out their own patches, so in this case its the Devs being slow.

But for why use GoG.

For me, my games are a family resource. Just like our DVD's, console games and books. Steams DRM gets in the way of that, big time. Have a library of 100 games, play 1 and the other 99 are unplayable on other machines. Yes there are ways around it, but I shouldn't have to jump through hopes to play the games I've bought.

Also If I die, all my games are stored and duplicated across or 2 NAS boxes, so my family can keep playing.

GoG Support is usually measured in days, last time I used Steam Support it was 3 weeks turn around.

The Steam Forums are often toxic and Steam Moderators are often worse than the users ( I had one call me a pirate for wanting my kid to play one of the games I wasn't playing).

From personal experience I would say VALVe, as a company, is highly abusive of its position and one of the worse companies I've ever had to deal with. Had it not been for GoG, I'd given up PC gaming.

For 10 years, contrary to almost every nations laws, they had a "NO REFUNDS EVER" policy.

For 8 Years they could change the SSA, and you either accepted or lost your games.
Note: The original SSA allowed me and my wife to play different games from my library on different computers. After 4 years they took that away, I could either take it or loose my games.

They have outright refused to uphold their side of their SSA on numerous occasions.

My impression is that smaller Indie titles tend to get patched sooner on GOG, whereas bigger titles (Indie or otherwise) take longer, and Ashes is a pretty big title with 300k + sold units on Steam. If the game is really popular and successful on Steam I feel certain developers "forget" to send their updates and patches to GOG, given that the consumer base is so small in comparison. It could very well be that some publishers use their release on GOG simply as another way to market their game, to make it even more visible: 'Look it's on GOG as well!'.

Regarding GOG-ers, it's hard to generalize like that. As in any "community" you'll find people with different levels of extremism. There seem to be plenty of people on GOG who use Steam and - Heaven fordbid! - even a console or two.
People are drawn to GOG for different reasons, which has been explored in countless threads before.
Personally I'm here for the older games, not modern ones. I think GOG has better support for these than Steam does.

If I only cared about playing modern games, like AAA-titles, I'd stick with Steam or console to be honest.

As i said earlier - Steam can enforce this, gOg trusts users to do it themselves

The rest has nothing at all (launching or not without client) to do with this part of the conversation (which is about licenses, and the ownership of them, which is exactly the same on Steam as on gOg).

I'm not confusing anything and have personal experience in dealing with IP media licensing for work. "Revoking a license" between publisher and distributor doesn't work retroactively back to every end user who's ever used the store. The publisher can scream and shout "I want everyone who's ever purchased a copy of my product from X store to destroy it because I no longer want to sell new copies to other people via same store" as some T&C / EULA / license change, and it wouldn't even get to court, let alone be laughed out of it because:-

1. The publisher has already agreed that removed games remain in the accounts of existing customers in their contract with GOG / Steam, and changing their mind is simply a breach of contract, and

2. EULA's with stupid / unreasonable demands that contradict national law (eg, First Sale Doctrine, Berne Convention, etc, that do put some limits on what copyright owners can demand after the first sale) do not have any legal merit in general. This is also why they cannot "demand" you be prevented from reselling legal physical books, CD's, DVD's, etc, on Ebay. There is no legal mechanism where a company can retroactively demand the "customers of its customers" destroy their own legally purchased products years after they bought them simply because they don't want to sell the product to new customers anymore. They can pull the product from the market, but they cannot legally demand post-sale "private book burnings", physical or digital.

As I said, when a game you own gets pulled from GOG it remains in your account and you can continue to re-install, re-download and play it to your hearts content. This isn't opinion, it's a basic statement of fact. Feel free to contact GOG support if you require clarification "from the horses mouth".

For me GoG serves a role that Steam does not, basically selling older games that can't be had anywhere else. DRM-Free is inconsequential to me as I have never had an issue with DRM inpacting me and I've been with Steam since 2005. I look at the two stores selling to two different markets almost. My needs as a gamer go beyond GoG because GoG doesn't sell all the titles that I would play. For example, currently I'm playing 3 games that are in my Steam library. NBA2K17, Bionic Commando Rearmed and Orcs Must Die. None of these titles (plus many many more) do not exist here. I go where the games are because my 1st priority is and always will be the games first.

I've no idea what license you think you're arguing about. If you think EULA's in GOG games give games publishers the right to demand GOG destroy legally purchased content on a whim and then demand that GOG demand that you destroy offline installers or become a hardened fugitive then I suggest you actually read one as I have a GOG EULA.txt in front of me now and it doesn't remotely confer what you claim.

A license is a two way agreement and as long as you haven't "materially breach this Agreement" (exact words) typically involving IP theft (piracy, reverse engineering, creating derivative works, stealing content, etc), or abuse (eg, abusing others members, cheating in multi-player games, hacking servers, etc), there's zero right for them to "revoke" anything without it instantly turning into breach of contract. About the only exception is if the game itself involved stolen content, ie, if you bought the GOG equivalent of a sh*tty Steam Greenlight "asset flipped" Unity Engine Personal Edition 'game' that used stolen content from another game, GOG may well be able to force delete that from your account. But that isn't really the point being argued. "I've taken your money but changed my mind and decided you can't play my game because I don't want you to but I'm going to keep your money" is not only not an enforceable EULA, it's basically fraud.

Rather than continue the circular off-topic argument, just ask GOG or any solicitor specialising in IP law to clarify things for you, as you seem to believe "a software license" trumps national copyright / business law. It doesn't.

Maybe in the UK. But definitely not in Germany. Here the supreme court was quite clear: you own what you buy unless a user agreement that you accept BEFORE the purchase says something different. Steam puts that in the user agreement, that you only rent their games. So that has validity in Germany because you accept the user agreement when signing on. GOG's user agreement doesn't say anything about only renting their games. I.e. if you live in a country with decent laws, the games you buy here are yours to keep. Not to modify or re-sell, of course, but to play, no matter what happens to the publisher.

Lesson for today : GOG and online are not yet suitable for mating.

Or when you have no internet gigs left and Steam breaks your X-com and makes it unplayable until you patch it, for an expansion you don't even have, then my friend, you will understand.

The OP is saying that the Steam DRM is fine. It's not. He's wrong about that.

On the other hand, he does have a point about how some devs need to stop treating GOG customers like citizen-class citizens by delaying and/or just not ever releasing patches for GOG versions of their games.

But the second point still does not make the Steam DRM okay. It will never be okay, and therefore GOG will always be superior - until if/when GOG abandons their no-DRM policy.

I LOLled. lol lol lollety lol. :)

I didn't downvote the OP (in fact I upvoted after I saw Wishbone mention about it; I didn't see any "downrated" icon in the OP's message though?), but I have to say his original message had a bit of a condescending tone, as if only some weirdos and Steam-haters would prefer GOG over Steam. But that's ok I guess, I often use the condescending tone for a dramatic effect as well, it spices up things nicely.

DRM-free is everything to me. Especially when my neighbouring country can block off Steam when a particular game is potentially religiously offensive. Won't be surprised if my country follows suit since racial and religious harmony is often encouraged here.

At least with GOG, my games are playable when the internet goes down, and does not need a client to run. The only "DRM" stopping me from playing my games is the lack of electricity.

Move along, citizen.

Steam's DRM is fine, for him.

Steam's DRM for most users, most of the time is transparent.

Its a bit like asking a White, heterosexual male if they've experienced sexism or racism. It is highly unlikely they'll say yes, but that doesn't mean there isn't problems with the system, its just doesn't affect them directly.