Lol, same as Steam, but with a selection that is extremely limited.  And with controller compatibility issues.  And limited OS support.  And takes longer to patch games...

😀

Yeah, I use GOG almost exclusively for old games, since they go extra mile to actually certify/enable them to be playable on modern hardware, which is not always the case with Steam.

But for everything else, yeah, Steam is just way more convenient, and I see that getting even more convenient in the future, with more devices getting support for it.

I wouldn't say "extremely" limited.

The have a selection of currently over 7000 games / game collections (DLCs excluded).

Only a fraction of them are from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s; over 2000 games are of the last decade and over 3500 games are of the current decade:

Most of the games of this century are indie games, but they also have some very good new AA + AAA games, f.e.

• Clair Obscure: Expedition 33
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Baldur's Gate 3
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
• God of War
• Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Silent Hill 2 Remake + Silent Hill f
• Control
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 + 2
• A Plague Tale: Innocence & Requiem
• The Talos Principle 2
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon

 and of course Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3.

Yeah, that's the nice thing about GOG games... you can be sure that they are DRM-free.

On the other hand: thousands of Steam games are also DRM-free, even if Valve doesn't advertise that. The SteamWorks tools aren't mandatory, every publisher can release its games DRM-free, if they want to.

Probably Steam has more DRM free games (at least 10% of over 100,000 games) than GOG (currently ~7250 games)

You can play these DRM-free Steam games by starting the executable in the game folder of the path "Steam/SteamApps/common". 

Yesterday I was curious and spent the day checked the first 500 titles of my Steam library, if they run without Steam (going by folder name, so starting with numbers, then starting with "a").

For that I switched to new windows user account where I am logged out of Steam.

The first result: over 200 out of the first 500 tested Steam games booted without any problems and I was able to start the single player game.

Some games (f. e. all games of the "Amnesia Franchise") even have a dedicated "NoSteam" executable in their folder:

Many classic PC games on Steam are running in a DOS-Box or via an old ScummVM version... those games are of course DRM-free.

ScummVM has constantly expanded the list of supported classic games (mostly DOS and Windows games, but also a few Amiga, C64, Mac and even PS1 versions). I have a lot of classic games which I bought on Steam before they got ScummVM support... in most cases, I can simply copy those Steam folders, start the newest version of ScummVM and add those games to my ScummVM library. Steam versions usually get recognized easy by the ScummVM client because they are so popular. Many of those games run even better on the newest version of ScummVM than on Steam settings.

ScummVM has also the advantage to have clients for A LOT of systems/devices. For example, I love to play old point&click adventures on a tablet (iPad or Android)... I remember playing the (still PC-exclusive) "Sam & Max Hit the Road" in 2005 on my PSP via ScummVM while having our own USA road trip; also "Day of the Tentacle" and some other LucasArts classics.

Ah, thanks for the analysis. So yeah, I was aware that many Steam games are DRM free, but there is no real way to find out, is there? I did go to the Amnesia Rebirth store page after reading your post, and I see no indication. So GOG remains the way to be certain, it is DRM free.

The dedicated Steam-free binary is a good idea, I keep it in mind if I ever want to make a game (I am a programmer, not an artist, so every game of mine would suck, but I think it could be an interesting programming challenge).

As I am on Linux for a long time already, ScummVM and DosBOX were already my friends to keep the classic games of my youth alive, these emulators work great on Linux.

Fair.  I should have said day 1 games are limited.

GoW hit 2 years after Steam, FF7 3 years.

I suppose of there is an old game on my wishlist I haven't bought yet, decent chance it could be on GoG.

Yeah, unfortunally there ain't a "DRM-free" tag in the Steam Store... it's all trial & error to find such titles.

There are a few lists/discussions to find, which ran out of steam very fast (pun intended): 

• https://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_steam/page1
• https://steamcommunity.com/groups/drm-free-and-client-free-games/discussions/0/5456682769561852541/
  
  

I also don't want to waste another two weeks of my precious(?) lifetime to check 100% of my Steam library.

This would be a great use case of RPA (robotic process automation)... maybe I'll write a script someday which starts one Steam game after another, makes a screenshot after a minute (from the error message or from the game menu) and closes the game (if still open).

Then I'll only have to check all screenshots after a few weeks. But this method wouldn't be perfect... in some games the errors only show up, after starting the campaign / single player mode. So the RPA would have to be KI-assisted, so it recognises and activates the correct menu option and waits another minute before taking the screenshot. It also should have the ability to skip intros before the main menu of a game is shown.

It means to pay to the producer/owner/publisher for it and having it working 100% offline primarily ad-infinitum, and also for local multiplayer if it has. By definition, online multiplayer aspect its on only temporary(some years) by nature of the tech(servers).

It means I can buy it, play it, and one day play it again regardless of future events as long as I don't erase the data or lose the physical media.

That's why I wasn't happy with the announcement of Nintendo Switch Online, because the service could shut down one day.