While I agree you with in principle - the official support is not the same - I don’t think the two processes are as far fetched from each other as you make them out to be.
I have ‘offline installer’ backups for a few of my drm free steam games, for which I basically downloaded the game, zipped up the game directory and that’s that. Now I have an equally portable game as the gog installers.
The big difference is that you need to run the steam client to initiate the original download in the first place, and that’s definitely a difference in quality of life - no argument there.
Steam purposefully pushed and pushes for there to be unecessary hurdles in installing and running the games customers buy from them, which do not benefit their customers but do benefit Steam, and which did not exist in most games before Steam (“offline” installers was the default way to install games until the Steam Store).
They don’t do it in a nasty way that tries hard to stop people from finding workarounds to that, so some customers will then find hacks to work around such obstacles, and hacks by definition are not supported and in this case do not work reliably for all games.
Steam not tightenning it down as much as they can and thus there being ways around it for some games, doesn’t make it any less true that Steam has a policy of trying to get the games that they sell to have an unecessary reduction of customer freedom that does not deliver anything to the customer, and that they don’t disclose which games do and which don’t so that the customer can’t easilly make an informed decision on that factor.
(Compare it to how GOG does make available GOG Galaxy which will does deliver the same core positive features as the Steam App, such as automated updating, but doesn’t actually force customers to use it at all for any game. Personally I installed the thing once, looked around, uninstalled it and went back to downloading installers)
My problem is with that policy of trying to limiting the freedom to use the product, for Steam’s benefit and in a way that doesn’t benefit customers in any way form or shape, even if it’s done via the soft sales push to developers/publishers rather than leveraging their dominant market position as a game store to force it on developers/publishers, together with some purposeful obfuscation in the games listings so that customers when buying don’t just start favoring games not crippled with those freedom limitations.
No matter how Steam makes it happen, ultimatelly what customers get from Steam is “likely crippled, might be able to hack my way around it for some but I don’t know which” games., which compares negativelly with GOG who have a policy for all games of being “guaranteed not crippled in this way or similar”.
It makes total sense that this then reflects on whether as a customer I’m willing to buy or not a game from Steam and even in being willing to pay a bit more for a game which is guaranteed to not come purposefully crippled in the way most Steam games are.
“There’s an easy undocumented workaround that works for some games” doesn’t really alter the reality that Steam is purposefully set up to keep customers tied to Steam for things where there is no need for customers to be tied to Steam. Steam could’ve moved towards a model like GOG were customers use their app simply because it’s convenient, nice and delivers desired features rather than because they have no other option than use it, but Steam haven’t moved to that model.
Mind you, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t buy from Steam, I’m saying that they should be well aware that Steam is trying to sell them products which have had some features purposefully crippled for Steam’s benefit and to force customers to use the Steam App, and if knowing this those people are still fine with it, then it’s their choice.
Well that, how that is not reliable and requires specific knowledge to do, how most people don’t know how to do it because it’s not at all advertised and how all that is an anti-feature negative to customers and which doesn’t at all need to be there.
But yeah, I definitelly tend to ramble on and on (and on, and on, and on …).
While I agree you with in principle - the official support is not the same - I don’t think the two processes are as far fetched from each other as you make them out to be.
I have ‘offline installer’ backups for a few of my drm free steam games, for which I basically downloaded the game, zipped up the game directory and that’s that. Now I have an equally portable game as the gog installers.
The big difference is that you need to run the steam client to initiate the original download in the first place, and that’s definitely a difference in quality of life - no argument there.
Steam purposefully pushed and pushes for there to be unecessary hurdles in installing and running the games customers buy from them, which do not benefit their customers but do benefit Steam, and which did not exist in most games before Steam (“offline” installers was the default way to install games until the Steam Store).
They don’t do it in a nasty way that tries hard to stop people from finding workarounds to that, so some customers will then find hacks to work around such obstacles, and hacks by definition are not supported and in this case do not work reliably for all games.
Steam not tightenning it down as much as they can and thus there being ways around it for some games, doesn’t make it any less true that Steam has a policy of trying to get the games that they sell to have an unecessary reduction of customer freedom that does not deliver anything to the customer, and that they don’t disclose which games do and which don’t so that the customer can’t easilly make an informed decision on that factor.
(Compare it to how GOG does make available GOG Galaxy which will does deliver the same core positive features as the Steam App, such as automated updating, but doesn’t actually force customers to use it at all for any game. Personally I installed the thing once, looked around, uninstalled it and went back to downloading installers)
My problem is with that policy of trying to limiting the freedom to use the product, for Steam’s benefit and in a way that doesn’t benefit customers in any way form or shape, even if it’s done via the soft sales push to developers/publishers rather than leveraging their dominant market position as a game store to force it on developers/publishers, together with some purposeful obfuscation in the games listings so that customers when buying don’t just start favoring games not crippled with those freedom limitations.
No matter how Steam makes it happen, ultimatelly what customers get from Steam is “likely crippled, might be able to hack my way around it for some but I don’t know which” games., which compares negativelly with GOG who have a policy for all games of being “guaranteed not crippled in this way or similar”.
It makes total sense that this then reflects on whether as a customer I’m willing to buy or not a game from Steam and even in being willing to pay a bit more for a game which is guaranteed to not come purposefully crippled in the way most Steam games are.
“There’s an easy undocumented workaround that works for some games” doesn’t really alter the reality that Steam is purposefully set up to keep customers tied to Steam for things where there is no need for customers to be tied to Steam. Steam could’ve moved towards a model like GOG were customers use their app simply because it’s convenient, nice and delivers desired features rather than because they have no other option than use it, but Steam haven’t moved to that model.
Mind you, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t buy from Steam, I’m saying that they should be well aware that Steam is trying to sell them products which have had some features purposefully crippled for Steam’s benefit and to force customers to use the Steam App, and if knowing this those people are still fine with it, then it’s their choice.
And I generally agreed with you above.
But from my reading you just spent 9 paragraphs simply to restate
Well that, how that is not reliable and requires specific knowledge to do, how most people don’t know how to do it because it’s not at all advertised and how all that is an anti-feature negative to customers and which doesn’t at all need to be there.
But yeah, I definitelly tend to ramble on and on (and on, and on, and on …).