I must say my personal experiences with GG support were less than impressive. During Christmas all major DD service ran out of Batman AC keys (or the ones provided weren't working). It took Steam a couple of hours to replace them. I got mine from GG about two weeks later.

And their installer mechanic isn't really working for me. Either you make it GOG style, one installer DRM free or you use a proper client. Their "middle way" has the worst of both. Especially if a game has many DLCs, GG is a massive pita. You would guess that a company with close ties to paradox would want that their offering the best version of a paradox game, but whoever thought that 20 different installers for HOI 3 were a good idea should be shot....

I'm only using GG for Uplay/Origin/ Steam titles anymore.

First you have to play them all. Before this no bonus is not necessary.

But as a small bonus I bow my hat to you. :)

That's very unlikely to have anything to do with GG support though, but rather with the publisher's decisions. You can bet that GG informed the publisher about missing keys ASAP, just as Steam did. If the publisher then decides to send keys to Steam first and put GG on hold, then there's not much that GG support can do.

Of course, you can say that both things amount to the same effect for the customer, and that you'd rather buy at the service that the publishers apparently prioritize when keys are missing. Granted.

On the other hand, missing keys are - in my experience - a very rare problem that only affects new releases and specific popular sales. Out of 570 games I bought at GamersGate, only one had ever a missing key. And that was a game that Paradox had given out for free to participants in a survey, and the key wasn't even necessary to play it, just to register it at Paradox' forums.

I don't really see the problem actually. For 99% of my games, the effect you mention simply doesn't occur, since I have just one installer - and I prefer GG's way of giving me control over my games to Steam's approach of controlling most things for you. For the few games that have lots of DLC, I don't mind spending a bit more time installing themn, it's something I do only once, after all. And I often use mods, and research those before installation anyway (and I found installing mods much easier when I'm in control instead of some client trying to tell me which files I should have and which I shouldn't).

As a person that has no problem to make liberal use of cracks and piracy I don't really have any "steam controls my game" issues. So far Steam service has done exactly what I wanted. If there would ever be a problem with how Steam handles a game, I would simply crack it and be done with it. No point loosing a lot of the services Steam offers due to some potential problem in the future. I control my games, always have, always will.

And the "publisher giving keys to Steam first" sound a bit to much like epileptic trees to me. It fits nicely into the "Steam is evilz" narrative, but I don't buy into that.

I know that this works for you. :) For me, it doesn't. It's important for me that it's under my control whether my games remain functional, and that no events outside of my control can suddenly render them unusable. If I have to resort to illegal methods to secure this, then why should I pay legally for it in the first place? If the legality of my collecton weren't a concern for me, then I could download thousands of games right away. The whole point of buying them instead is to keep my collection legal (and to reward those publishers and distributers who let me keep control of my purchases).

It's true though. Doesn't have anything to do with "Steam being evil", just with Steam being the biggest fish in the pond. Publishers will usually piss off other distributors before they risk pissing off the big one. GamersGate actually prioritzzes key problems AFAIK (though that could be a recent development).

Well, you could argue the point of a "digital collection" in the first place, but that is up to everyone himself. I pay for my games because the devs deserve it, not because I feel any legal obligation or like how they are lined up in my browser.

How I play them is my thing. And "pirating" a game you own the license is from the point of copyright just as legal as the "copying the game from the installer cache" method that many do with GG games. But talking about legality in the field of videogames is always a two edged sword as most gamers have a very liberal view on what is legal and what not. Especially if they think they "are in the right". Not to mention that this is pretty much terra nova in many aspects. But I'm certainly not letting the sheer possibility of illegal behaviour from an big company against me let me choose the bad service. So far Steam has done nothing to piss me of, which I can't say about GG (or GOG for that matter, but I have a higher standard for GOG).

But I also use cars and eat meat. I don't let "what if" scenarios control my behaviour.

To be honest, if your concern are the devs of any game older than 3 years, then the logical course of action would be to download cracked versions of the games for free, and support the devs with donations for current projects. Not that I'm recommending that (I would actually recommend against it), but it would actually give something to the devs, who usually don't see a penny of any purchase done after the initial sales period.

I disagree, but I know that a solid case can be made for your position as well ... let's agree that the legal situation of copyright and copy protection is still very volatile. ;)

Apart from the legal issues, there's one other important difference though: security. I can install and play my GamersGate games with their regular, official files, even if GamersGate tanks at some time in the future. I don't need any cracks from dubious third parties, and don't need to worry about malware infections. In your case, you'd have to rely on those dubious sources (and I can tell you that large numbers of Steam players looking for ways of playing their suddenly unusable product would amount to a field day for malware spreaders).

Again, that's something that might not be important for you, but for me it does make a significant difference.

Do you have insurances? ;)

I don't know, perhaps I'm too old and have seen too much crap that I've never expected to happen, but over the years it has become quite natural for me to consider "what if" scenarios when planning my actions, and I don't consider it a bad thing. ;)

I pay for games, because it's easy today.

I buy a game on steam, because I won't have to fuck with installing, downloading patches, cracking, finding cracks for patches, etc etc. It takes forever. Buying games on steam (or any other distrib. platform) is more convenient than piracy for me. (unless there's some invasive DRM included, then I just don't buy)

I'm too lazy to download pirated game, that will be updated, cracked etc etc.

I pay for a good service, that's it.

You're taking me way too seriously - my exaggerated comment about the number of DLCs etc was mostly in jest; although Psyringe is probably right as to why I'm left with this impression. There might not be that many games that needs to be activated on Steam in total, but quite a few of the ones I've been interested in has been. I'm not saying that at all, although I disagree with the catalogue size being relevant; is Deli de Luca bigger than McDonalds for instance? I haven't checked, but I suspect not; regardless of menu size. Yes, I like being pendantic =P I think you're right - it's only human to defend what you value, even when it's not needed, pragmatically speaking.

Personally, I like the fact that GOG is a (reasonably) small player. To continue using McDonalds: I'm not too fond of junk-food, even though there's obviously a lot of profit in it because so many people either don't care or actually like it. Sometimes McDonalds is just right, though, depending on the current situation. I'm no business man (I'm a developer) but I'm not sure I entirely agree with you. One of the "rules" I've picked up about business is that you always need to expand - or reduce - your area of business; staying put means going out of busines eventually. I don't have the numbers to back this but it seems to me that GOG is releasing old games at approximately the same rate as before, while adding new(er) games as well as indie titles. To me this looks like expansion and not a shift in business area. Which would indicate that GOG isn't just making money on their "old" business model, but enough money to expand into new areas without losing the existing base. Of course, at some point it might be prudent of them to reduce the area, and that might be the area of older titles. In that case, GOG will more or less be reduced to a GG/Steam/Origin etc clone with an interesting history. IMO. I'm not telling you anything like that, nor do I think anyone else here is. I bought EU3 (Chronicles bundle) on GG myself (and Grimrock on GOG for that matter), but I think you're comparing apples and oranges here. EU3 was released in January 2007 while Grimrock became available on GOG this year in April.

We can't say anything for sure without access to the real numbers, although I wouldn't be surprised at all if GG has larger revenue streams than GOG. In fact I'd be quite surprised if they didn't. It's kind of a moot point to me, though. The relative size doesn't matter (to me) as long as GOG is - or will be - big enough to land deals with more publishers/developers so that they can release even more titles.

</rant>