Achievements and Steam Cloud saves.

Now I know what you're thinking, Achievements are worthless... to an extent they are, but they're also good markers for genuine achievements... how else can you prove you collected every Thermos or Manuscript page in the game? In this GoG version I don't see the point in hunting for the Thermos'... they served no purpose before and even less now.

Steam Cloud saves are also brilliant, I never have to worry about losing my progress if my SSD fails.

Why on earth would you want to prove to anybody that you collected certain videogame items? Don't you have other things to brag about? Not trying to offend you or anything but i'm genuinely curious.

I'm not sure what you mean by "prove you collected every..." but the inernal stats allow you to keep track of all of that stuff if that's what you mean.

The only thing missing form the game that I care about is DRM. That's enough for me to grab the game. The rest I don't personally care about. If it's a concern for others, there's always the Steam-saddled version.

agreed, the draw here is the DRM free. But if someone wants steam achievements and steam cloud (which i do appreciate it btw). But for me, having a DRM free version out weighs all other concerns.

granted I have bought Alan Wake on GOG yet (I bought it on steam when it was released) but had it came out at the same time of steam, I would have gotten the GOG version.

I never said Steam achievements, I said achievements... GoG or Remedy could implement their own ingame achievements

As for why I want to collect achievements and why the internal stats aren't good enough, because those get wiped if I change the system.

I should point out, the lack of those items weren't a dealbreaker for me, I still bought on GoG and I'll get over it (since Achievements ARE worthless, they're just fun to try and get some of the more challenging ones, such as finish an area in under a certain time)... Did anyone else play Goldeneye on N64? Did you unlock the cheat codes? Those were achievements, they weren't called Achievements, but they were still Achievements.

Being able to download and run the game appears to be missing as well...

You can always backup your config file and move it to new system once you have installed the game on it.

But that's exactly my point regarding the Steam version... it backs up that config and your saves for you automatically.

I'm not saying I'm disappointed with purchasing the DRM free version, I did it purely to support GoG/CDPR as they're the best developers and distributors on the planet, I just hope soon they can offer more than what Steam does.

In these regards, in order to "offer more than what Steam does", they possibly must "do" what Steam is doing. Something that many people(myself included) are interested in moving away from, and not to. Alan Wake is apparently selling shockingly well. Perhaps (speculation) because this is the first PC edition that isn't tied to Steam, and now those people not wanting a Steamworks title finally have access to one in a format they can get behind. I find it almost alarming that Steam is so ingrained in PC gaming that loosing out on one or two rather insignificant perks of their service, means some people are feeling ripped off by a lesser game.

Achievements are something that, if people are going to demand, should be supported by the game makers in some independent fashion, by tracking internally or broadcasting them in some common, multi-platform format that various game clients could agree on. In this case GOG is absolved of responsibility, because it is ultimately up to the developers to provide that feature set and anyone could create a game launcher application that lets you review achievements.

If there can be no common format for such things then the expectation demands that all retailers implement their own client software that is incompatible with everyone else's. Which really just makes a royal mess of PC gaming for no good reason. At which point I start wanting non-client tethered options for games - like GOG. Essentially I wanted Alan Wake stripped of every trace of Steam, which is what I got.

Cloud saves seem like a nice idea. I agree that manually doing it is not ideal. Figuring out how to do cloud saves that are in keeping with GOG's philosophies has been discussed a couple of times like here
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/an_idea_for_gogcom_cloud_saves

I think it could be done in some way (even unofficially), but it will likely require some syncing app that only works with "approved" games, and might even risk save data if poorly implemented. There may be legal stuff involved too.

Agreed, I'd like to at least see Achievements integrated into the game that can then be stored with the save data, or integrated with it's third party DRM (Steam, GFWL, etc)... that way there could be achievements in games done by GoG that wouldn't require a third party application.

And if a respectible cloud backup service could be offered by GoG, even if it's an app that does like you said and just backs up the data of the save folder via the GoG downloader (an app that can be set to run at startup)... Alternatively I might just configure Dropbox to do it.

In my posts I have never been trying to say GoG needs to be more like Steam (and if I did I picked my words poorly)... there are just a few services that needs to be implemented, some that fall to the developers, and others that fall to GoG to offer

As it stands, I don't feel ripped off for picking GoG over steam for Alan Wake despite the two lacking features in my original post, because I'm supporting the company that deserves my money, and the features I desire aren't beneficial to the game experience, only nice to have.