I’m rather new to digital distribution; I had left pc gaming after 2006 because I had a pretty shoddy PC. On December of 2011 I bought a decent notebook (ATI Radeon HD 6630m, i5 2.4Ghz, 6GB Ram) and got into PC gaming again.

I started after Christmas with steam (A friend recommended it) and as time went by, I got irritated with DRM and joined GOG a month ago. With the help of GOG I discovered more digital distribution systems but I think there must be more, can you guys illustrate me pleasez(Give me a list and summary of them)? Right now I know of:

The ones I like:

Steam: It’s not too bad, but I’m sick of the client.
GOG: Pretty neat, I’ve got most of my childhood games here.
Humble Bundle: This is madness, I love it (“You suggest the price”, how can this work!)

Others

Beamdog: I’ve only got BG: EE here but I already hate it because of overhauls lack of professionalism, I won’t use it again.
Indie Royale: I just knew about this one today, I haven’t tried it out still.
Origin: I haven’t tried it out.
Desura: Same as above.

Gamersgate: Semi-big DD. They have many games that are DRM-free, though there are also games that have conventional DRM and some that are Steam keys. They have a cash back rewards system, but the cash that's gotten back isn't actual money, but Gamersgate 'blue coins'. Pretty decent.

Also Gamersgate installers come with built-in DRM, but there's a way to circumvent. Ask around if you want to find out more.

I only use GOG, Gamersgate, and have recently acquired my first Humble Bundle(gifted...) No Steam...

I use Steam for new big-budget games, it works well for patch and DLC distribution.

I use GOG for old games, archival copies with no DRM and complete.

I use their own website for indie games, or the bundles, to support the creator directly and get them DRM free.

Obviously there are exceptions to this, like some of Amazon's DRM free stuff and Origin for EA games.

I wouldn't call them DRM, it's just not a handy standalone executable like GOG gives you. To the OP, they way it works is when you download a file from GG, what you're actually launching is a downloader. When you launch that, then it'll download the actual game contents. But you can hold onto those contents so you don't have to do that again.

Indie Royale is owned by Desura

Also, Humble Bundle now has its own webstore (humble store), from which you can buy indie games. These are not pay what you want.

There is also Indie Gala/Gala Store

Origin is exactly the same as Steam but made by EA and with a different selection of games. Desura is similar in that is has a client that you launch and play games through. There is also GreenManGaming which has a function to sell back games to the site for credits that can be used to buy other games. This isn't available for all games because of install limits and other DRM. Here are some others that haven't been mentioned, but I have yet to try them:

Gamefly
GetGamesGo
Indievania
IndieCity
Impulse

GOG of course is quite spectacular, but we all know that. It was founded with the idea of selling those great games that may have become hard to find, and fixing them up to work properly on modern machines.

DotEmu is very similar to GOG, and was actually around before GOG started. They too focus on fixing up and selling old games, but have a better track record for language support and (for better or worse) are more flexible with their price points and regional pricing. They also sell emulated games and games for platforms other than Windows/PC.

Humble Store is less like a retailer and more like a service to help developers sell games themselves. The developer gets an unusually large cut of the profit, and all games you buy through Humble Store are added to your Humble Bundle account. You get multiple channels to receive your game (HTTP, torrent, Steam) and multiplatform support whenever its available - it's almost too good to be true for all parties involved.

Desura is a marketplace for just about any developer to sell their games. It's easier to get onto than the other services which means you get a great variety of games there. They make it easy to interact with developers, provide a vaguely Steam-like client for convenience, and also make standalone installers available for most games for those who would rather not use a client. I'm continually impressed with Desura.

Green Man Gaming lets you buy games, play them, and then sell them back for credit on your next game. Not everyone's cup of tea, but a rare example of how DRM can be useful to customers.

Steam, quite honestly, always seems to be causing problems for me in one way or another, so I'm not too fond of them. However, they have arguably the best catalogue of any game distribution platform. The fact that they sell major AAA games and independent games side-by-side has blurred the line between them and and this - along with their skilled marketing of the games that they sell - has been a blessing to the games industry. lowyhong's not referring to the trampoline downloader - he's talking about the fact that after downloading a game you still need to connect to GG every time you want to install it unless you (a) crack the encryption (not hard - it's just a bitmask) or (b) intercept a temporary unencrypted .exe file (which is also quite easy once you know the trick). But let's not discuss this any more here - this subject is the destroyer of threads ;-)

Yeah, but if you elect to hold onto them the downloader encrypts the setup file. This is DRM.

There is a thread on this forum about DRM-Free games on Steam. If those qualify, then so does GG.

Maybe you should give Steam another shot - the client has minimal effect most of the time.
After you've launched the game once you can simply right click on the Steam icon and pick the game that you want to play.
In addition, if you don't want to have Steam running in the back you can simply create shortcuts to run most games whenever you wish and exit Steam when you're done playing.

Well, it's definitely DRM. It's just DRM that's so poorly implemented that it's trivial to bypass it. So it ends up being DRM-free in the end, but only due to ineptitude rather than design. At the moment GG turns a blind eye to the whole temp folder thing, and hopefully they will choose to remain inept in the future.

Welcome to GOG!

You mentioned that you have made some humble bundle purchases. You should be aware that a nice subsection of indie devs are starting to use a humble bundle widget to sell DRM-free (usually, if not it's a Steam key) copies of their games. When you buy a game through the widget, you don't get to set your price, but the game is added to your Humble account games list with any of your previous bundle purchases. We have a list of games sold with this widget:

https://secure.gog.com/en/forum/general/humble_store/page1