Amen, assuming by "the same" you mean market percentage.

LOL

I'm holding you to that

can just people get a long haha.

but everytime that something is meant to kill another thing never works.

how many mmorpg die with the label of being the wow killer

how many console fps were labeled the halo killer and then nothing.

The steam killer will happen when it merges to something bigger, who probably bought GOG 2 years prior

welcome to GOG!

After a day of hard work (gaming) reading such posts brings a smile to my face.

Does Valve even sell on anything that's NOT Steam? That'd be a massive stretch, brah.

Yep.

It's okay to have wet dreams about Steam being dethroned but they will remain dreams.

And can people please stop making threads about "steam killer" or "steam being dethroned" or anti steam.

There is an over saturation of steam hate on this forum.

Steam is here to stay and be number one digital distribution site for games. Get over it.

Want to support gog? Throw your thousands or dollars at it.

Steam - if it dies - will be the death of itself.

It would take a really big shift in mentality for DRM-free to overcome DRM, and it will take a whole lot of work for gOg to make a better client that remains optional. That ain't happening any time soon.

But it's cool if you appreciate this place over the other. Or vice verse. Pluses and minuses over both approaches and every consumer will hopefully make an educated choice. Eventually.

As we've been through a few times it seems unlikely that GOG could ever do full MMOs because how could an MMO be DRM free? Unless it's one that lets you host your own server without having to have an account...

Such a shift in mindsets is coming - albeit slowly, very slowly. What we have are two problems.

The first is that recognition that DRM is perhaps not such a good thing is something that is not going to come en masse. There won't be some collective realisation that DRM is bad. It has to be a personal experience. Everyone gets bitten hard by it eventually. So many people claim that DRM is no problem for them personally, until it strikes home.

I guess it's like raising a child really. You keep telling them not to touch the stove, but only once they've touched it does the message strike true.

The question lies in how people react to this experience, which brings me to the second problem, namely that some people are 'addicted to Steam', either because they are too lazy to buy from and log into other service providers for their games (ironically, most of those people are the sorts that praise the PC as being an "open system" as opposed to the "closed environments" of the consoles). or because they really do have a mindset that involves some kind of religious devotion to Steam. We've seen here a few times recently on these here forums that some people were pissed that the codes with the video cards were for GOG only, cursing GOG and praising GabeN the almighty.

Well, the Galaxy client and the new social features certainly need a lot of work, but I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the underlying structure of what GOG has going now. You can use the client à la Steam or you can download a standalone installer. If the game uses the Galaxy API, they can pack in a "Galaxy lite" client that asks for your user name and password or lets you play offline, and then remains unobtrusively in the background. Simples.

It's a USP that's really not to be underestimated, especially when you consider that it would be hard for Valve to implement something similar on Steam retroactively. Even if they retroactively enabled offline installs for Steam games and disabled the DRM mechanism, many retail Steam games and Steam backups are still missing essential data, and many licensing agreements prevent Valve from implementing such features for older games.

From what I read (I'm not a Steam user), there are some big conveniences that come from that store. While it might be called laziness I think some of it is also that the consumer simply wants to play the games without having to fiddle with manual downloads and installations, updates, etc.; if this wasn't something people wanted then there wouldn't be any particular reason for Galaxy. With the exception of a couple features, the proposed Galaxy client doesn't seem to be much different than the Steam client. I think a lot of potential customers will look at Galaxy and say, "Oh, welcome to six years ago."

Anyway, that's why I think Steam itself will need to screw up badly in order for gOg to make a big gain in market share: DRM aside, Steam has a mature client that seems to be very convenient for the customer who simply wants to play games. Combine that with the enormous catalog and that's a tough nut to crack. For many, that's enough for DRM to be only a side issue, if it's an issue at all.

What I do think gOg has going for it is exactly the DRM-free nature of the store. There are many people out there who have no idea what it all means, and when they find out they may not care. And why should they: so long as they have a reliable internet connection they may never feel firsthand the drawbacks. As you say, they'll need to get burned before it sinks in. But it is a trickle, and as long as this store remains a good, easy-to-navigate, and reliable place to avoid DRM then DRM-free will grow.

We'll see how it goes. Even if Galaxy eventually becomes all they want it to be - and still fully optional (it damn well better be optional) - we can bet that the Steam client will also be undergoing advancements. Steam as a store is evolving, as well, as we've seen with the recent and unpopular plan to sell mods, and also the addition of a refund policy. Along a similar vein, gOg has the refund policy, but it also upset a lot of people with regional pricing. So both stores can make good policy alongside unpopular changes. Might turn out that gOg someday make a blunder that relegates them to permanent back-marker status.


I do wish gOg luck and success in this (not undoing Steam, but simply getting better) but unless they make a huge leap and Steam really blunders, I can't agree with the OPs premise. Besides, as others have pointed out, competition is a good thing. Hell, for now that's one reason why we're glad that gOg itself is around: it's NOT Steam. Someday people might be saying the same thing with the parties reversed: thank goodness for Steam, because it's NOT gOg.

Anyway, it's good for the consumer and the industry in general that both stores exist.



Kind of a funny thing, too, is that some folks think of success as being gOg dethroning Steam. Well, that's certainly one measure. But there are many others - lesser in scope - that equally qualify as success:

- a growing library
- a library of quality titles, not just any old crap that comes along
- a growing number of developers and publishers, maybe some slowly turning toward DRM-free for at least part of their offerings
- a growing customer base
- long-term growth that doesn't outstrip the company's ability to take care of its customers
- an older customer base that sticks around, presumably because over the long haul gOg treats the customers well
- market share that - at the least - remains steady, and hopefully increases at a sustainable rate that doesn't cause growing pains
- having policies that others try to emulate, the refund policies being an example