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The new owner of GOG discusses taking on Steam, the devil of DRM, and following in Nightdive's footsteps
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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Pretty cool!
Ngl if Steam ever had a product decay I maybe start buying games on GOG instead.
And the DRM free thing on GOG sounds neat(even if I don't think Steams DRM is that bad its slightly bad ofc)
And GOG should add like:
More video games,Steam workshop equivalent,their own proton/contributions to Proton,GOG Galaxy port to Linux/better Linux support,multiplayer sdk?(like Steam?),etc If they want it to become a good steam competitior.
Steam does allow DRM-free games, it's up to whoever is publishing the game to the platform.
GOG just currently requires it.
Most of the games on GOG are also DRM-free on Steam.
So it's really just looking at prices and other features that is the defining factor. Considering Steam's Linux support, GOG is off the table for me.
oh yeah i forgot about that,ig GOG gives the guarantee that the games are DRM-FREE.
and i assume the dev/publisher chooses what type of DRM to do like Denuvo,Steams own DRM (needing the Steam client),etc
Steam don't disclose it, there's no tag or label on the store page. Which is fucking shitty, either oversight or business decision. So you would never know unless you tried launching the executable yourself, looked it up online or the game was marketed that way.
But yeah, with GOG, you just instantly know.
?
Steam does have warning labels for games with DRM, or at least popular shitty DRM options such as 3rd party launchers.
Example:
We were not discussing that. It's about a label on DRM-free games, marking them as such.
But don't they do it for external drm?
Yeah for external DRM, but if a game has Steam DRM, then there's no official label or warning.
For example, Witcher 3 is DRM-free on Steam, but there's nothing (AFAIK) on the Steam page saying that.
maybe they didnt add it cause
"The DRM is noteable for only protecting against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying game files between friends), and is primarily used by game developers to ensure proper Steam/Steamworks API functionality within their games for legitimate users."
Source
Extremely casual piracy? I suppose fair point.
But now what does each step in the scale mean then. For example what is extreme professional piracy or something.
maybe like copying game files and putting them on sites for anyone(like lots and lots of people) to download?
I donno
Meanwhile CDPR publishes DLC content hosted on a website instead providing a download link to a PDF...
They've got some of those things. They recently added a workshop equivalent, and they've had a multiplayer SDK for a long time. The multiplayer SDK is actually a problem, because it means multiplayer often only works on Galaxy, which is just DRM by another name.
And Steam's DRM was pretty invisible to me until, ironically, I got a Steam Deck. Then I started running into games that needed to be authenticated while I was on a train with no internet.
As long as games stop using shitty Epic Online Services, I'll take GOG's.
The advantage to Epic's is that they offer cross play for free. I'm honestly not sure what the problem is.
Epic Games is a scumbag company :)
And slop company recently
oh thats pretty cool actually,but if the multiplayer SDK is just DRM with a diff name i would rather stick to Steam.
and what games are those,i never had that experience with my steam library(except for only requiring the Steam Client to run). maybe this comes from other drms the game has?
The one that stuck out to me was Metaphor: ReFantazio. It has Denuvo, but the message didn't identify it as such and read like Steam DRM. Dragon Ball FighterZ has no listed additional DRM on the Steam store page, but if I booted up the device offline then tried to run the game, it would refuse to boot until I went online. I ran into it a few other times other than that, but don't recall which games they were. Sometimes it's just an unlucky roll of the dice with when Steam decides it's time to authenticate the game again.
Then there are other DRM schemes, like Ubisoft's and EA's, that are even worse. At best, they require you to explicitly set your Deck to offline mode before traveling; just not having an internet connection isn't good enough.
yeah makes sense its external DRM from Denuvo,Ubisoft and EA these are strict ngl.
and this is why i stick to only Steam's DRM.
Steam's DRM will still lock you out if you're logged out (not in "offline mode" that can only be entered by logging in online and then toggling it). Some games on Steam are truly drm-free and navigating to the executable will start the game without even running Steam at all. It would be nice if Steam exposed which games are truly DRM-free.
Note that native Steam shortcuts will never work without being logged into Steam (in normal or offline mode), because they're steam:\\ protocol links. To play DRM-free Steam games steamless you need to navigate to the actual file or make an OS shortcut to the executable.
oh yeah your right actually.
am also mostly fine with that DRM,but it kinda sucks i cannot run video games that rely on it if i was in a environment where i didnt want the client.
or if i want to use Steam offline i can uhh stay signed in.