TomNuke: Very true, my friend. I've pointed that out here before also, but people here ignore truth and reason. Downvote away, kiddies.

So let me guess, this guy had their account deleted to do inactivity? because at some point I got an e-mail from Ubisoft stating that my account was going to be deleted because of long periods of inactivity. My reaction? Don't give a shit, and ignored the e-mail like I ignore all Ubisoft games. So my account is probably deleted also. No one should worry about something like that if you're active, pay attention to your e-mail, or are just not doing things that might get your account locked. I was actually glad Ubisoft deleted them for long term inactivity because it saves me the trouble. I know I'll never buy something from them again, and if I really want to I'll just make another account. Big deal.

But it is sort of a pick your poison kind of deal here when going with DRM-free or DRM. A DRM-free store is at much higher risk of just shutting down. I mean, look at GOG, and the financial troubles they've had over the years. That's never going to go away and it's only going to get worse unless something very unexpected happens. Stores like Steam don't have those same questions about their future, but you have potentially DRM issues to deal with.

If you're willing to ignore titles with Denuvo in them then Steam and it's DRM is relatively benign. And there should be no fear of Steam going anywhere, and those games will be available for you to reinstall as you desire.

GOG you're getting DRM-free games, but the stores existence is always shadowed by a huge question mark. Is it going to be around in the near future? Sure, you can back up all your GOG games, because they're DRM-free (most Steam games are also) but maintaining your own backups is not an ideal situation at all. It's actually more inconvenient than anything else.

Backing up hundreds of GOG games is going to be costly and time consuming. If you want to do it right you'll need at least one backup of your backup. You'll have to ensure that the life of the hardware is maintained. Not fun. The other route is that you could pay for online storage, but again, that means you're going to be paying out of pocket monthly / yearly for that backup.

So is GOG actually better? Maybe, depends on the person. Sure, it's more pro-consumer for being DRM-free, but if the store isn't around because of that then what does it matter? Everything you've bought has now become a headache more than anything else.

You could argue "well, if my GOG library back up fails I can just easily pirate the games again". Okay, sure, but the same could be said for Steam. Every game on Steam, with the exception of some Denuvo titles can be easily pirated also. Steam's DRM is tissue paper and isn't an issue, and most games on Steam are already DRM-free to begin with.

So, again, it's a pick your poison type of deal here. GOG is always going to in an uphill battle, though. DRM-free is already a big strike against them when it comes to their library of titles. They can't exactly just support DRM either, because that would just make them a worse Steam with a sketchy future.

Honestly, I don't even feel comfortable buying on GOG anymore, because I don't think it's ever going to get better. They're not magically going to get big name games. The Japanese game selection is always going to be bad, and I really have doubts about GOG's future.

TomNuke: Very true, my friend. I've pointed that out here before also, but people here ignore truth and reason. Downvote away, kiddies.

So let me guess, this guy had their account deleted to do inactivity? because at some point I got an e-mail from Ubisoft stating that my account was going to be deleted because of long periods of inactivity. My reaction? Don't give a shit, and ignored the e-mail like I ignore all Ubisoft games. So my account is probably deleted also. No one should worry about something like that if you're active, pay attention to your e-mail, or are just not doing things that might get your account locked. I was actually glad Ubisoft deleted them for long term inactivity because it saves me the trouble. I know I'll never buy something from them again, and if I really want to I'll just make another account. Big deal.

But it is sort of a pick your poison kind of deal here when going with DRM-free or DRM. A DRM-free store is at much higher risk of just shutting down. I mean, look at GOG, and the financial troubles they've had over the years. That's never going to go away and it's only going to get worse unless something very unexpected happens. Stores like Steam don't have those same questions about their future, but you have potentially DRM issues to deal with.

If you're willing to ignore titles with Denuvo in them then Steam and it's DRM is relatively benign. And there should be no fear of Steam going anywhere, and those games will be available for you to reinstall as you desire.

GOG you're getting DRM-free games, but the stores existence is always shadowed by a huge question mark. Is it going to be around in the near future? Sure, you can back up all your GOG games, because they're DRM-free (most Steam games are also) but maintaining your own backups is not an ideal situation at all. It's actually more inconvenient than anything else.

Backing up hundreds of GOG games is going to be costly and time consuming. If you want to do it right you'll need at least one backup of your backup. You'll have to ensure that the life of the hardware is maintained. Not fun. The other route is that you could pay for online storage, but again, that means you're going to be paying out of pocket monthly / yearly for that backup.

So is GOG actually better? Maybe, depends on the person. Sure, it's more pro-consumer for being DRM-free, but if the store isn't around because of that then what does it matter? Everything you've bought has now become a headache more than anything else.

You could argue "well, if my GOG library back up fails I can just easily pirate the games again". Okay, sure, but the same could be said for Steam. Every game on Steam, with the exception of some Denuvo titles can be easily pirated also. Steam's DRM is tissue paper and isn't an issue, and most games on Steam are already DRM-free to begin with.

So, again, it's a pick your poison type of deal here. GOG is always going to in an uphill battle, though. DRM-free is already a big strike against them when it comes to their library of titles. They can't exactly just support DRM either, because that would just make them a worse Steam with a sketchy future.

Honestly, I don't even feel comfortable buying on GOG anymore, because I don't think it's ever going to get better. They're not magically going to get big name games. The Japanese game selection is always going to be bad, and I really have doubts about GOG's future.

TomNuke: "GOG you're getting DRM-free games, but the stores existence is always shadowed by a huge question mark. Is it going to be around in the near future? Sure, you can back up all your GOG games, because they're DRM-free (most Steam games are also) but maintaining your own backups is not an ideal situation at all. It's actually more inconvenient than anything else."

TomNuke: "Backing up hundreds of GOG games is going to be costly and time consuming. If you want to do it right you'll need at least one backup of your backup. You'll have to ensure that the life of the hardware is maintained. Not fun. The other route is that you could pay for online storage, but again, that means you're going to be paying out of pocket monthly / yearly for that backup."

Orkhepaj: You are right,
there is a higher chance to lose your gog drm-free games than steam games, the whole store could collapse very quickly

I wonder what the laws permit, I think you can download games you own, I can't see why it would be pirating.

I haven't seen much improvement here. It feels like an old motel/restaurant slowly decaying because owners just take out the renovation money.

TomNuke: …snip

nightcraw1er.488: I use freefilesync, this can evaluate the contents of two drive and show the differences/copy just what is needed. It makes keeping backups a lot easier and less time consuming.
Another important step is to be organised from the start, it’s easy to start organised than try to redo later on.
Once organised you can script a lot of it.
My backups I tend to leave running overnight so really takes up very little time. Organising them collection software though I have a whole thread on that!