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Phc7006: it confirmed that most of its business model nowadays is to sell steam keys,
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Psyringe: Are you sure? When I'm looking at the catalog, only about 15% of items are sold as Steam keys (even less if you don't count DLC). GG keeps offering Steam-free versions of many games even though customers are constantly asking them to go "full Steam". If the publishers decide to release a game Steam-only or to discontinue a non Steam.version (as recently happened with Crusader Kings 2), they have no choice but to sell that version (or none at all).

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Phc7006: If I remeber well, they offered a compensation ( a rebate during one year). A bit later, they had a similar issue with Borderlands ....
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Psyringe: Not quite. The Bethesda and Borderlands issue was the same thing,
On the first point, It's just my feeling. Of course, from their point of view, they haven't much other option than to follow the publishers, and that means that many newer games offered are Steam keys. And, true enough, that corresponds to what many gamers want. But that means that GG is to some extent, subject to Steam's considerable gravity field. With Paradox now going all out for Steam-only releases, GG lost yet another of its distinct features. Admittedly, that's Paradox's doing, not GG's. Still, why would I then buy from GG and not from Steam ?

On the second point, for customers, a repetition of a bug twice over about 5-7 days still looks weirder than a single occurence. Now errors happen ,and in the end, my problem is more with those massive, deeply discounted, sales than with the errors that happen during those periods. It surely encourages short-term spending, but it's not clear what the medium / long term effect will be on creativeness and innovation.
The "Steam" thing annoys me a lot, but I can't really blame GG for it. That's mainly the fault of the people who keep demanding Steam keys and publishers who aren't stupid follow through. I blame the younger generation who basically knows nothing but Steam. When eventually they get fucked over by Steam it will be too late. And I mean when Steam eventually for whatever reason abandons ship or when the 100s of games you have bought and work under one or more of the current OSes no longer work on the next generation of OS, you still have a computer and OS perfectly able to run them but Steam application no longer runs on "obsolete" OS. (ie what happened years ago with Windows 98. Or when you for whatever reason lose access to your account/banned. Only this time Steam is huge compared to then and the results will be funnier.

Or the hordes of people getting all excited about SteamOS. Basically their complete dependence on Valve.
Then again, most of the same people swear by Google like they are GOD so, oh well....good thing GOG is still around I guess and PS4(retail discs) is here to stay.

One thing I do blame GG though is the whole situation with PATCHES. When the game is a Steam title or a very very very old title (Xcom from 1994 etc) which is now released fully patched, everything is ok. If not, you are many times screwed. Examples include Borderlands (you want to buy the DLC? LOL, you want newer patches? LOL), WRC1 (it's up to the developer!) and many other games where every platform it has been released out on has patches for, apart the GG version.

Glitches I can tolerate, delays I can understand although not like. But releasing games without patches being either available for them , then that's not acceptable for me..

As for Paradox and their whole show of the finger to customers buying their games DRM-Free, they should start the good fight for DRM-Free games with Stardock...LOL Another hypocrite of the gaming world.
Post edited December 26, 2013 by trusteft