steam has some good deals but some of there methods frankly suck balls some dells yes but i hate the fact that you cant run anny of the games they have without the client wich pisses me off cus im offline 3/4 of the time

You have never in the history of computers and software, owned any games or other software, you have only licensed their use in the limited fashion the EULA of that software allows. You only own software if you created it from scratch yourself. When you buy a game, the only thing you get ownership of is the box, the manual and the disk the game came on, but not the game itself. Digital distribution systems like Steam (and GOG) don't even give you ownership of that little bit.

Well... technically speaking, all game licences are terminable. I just yoinked out a random EULA, and there is a paragraph about termination.

It's simply that such a paragraph was not practically enforceable back in the day. Now? It's a simple flip of a switch (if we discount piracy for the moment).

Well, you don't own Steam games then. When you take into consideration that LOADS of people are playing their rented games on Steam and you can have enjoyable playthroughs and chat with them on a game that cost you less than ten bucks, it's not so bad. I say if you use it, leave it for cheap games you can enjoy in multiplayer with friends. Buy your big, single player experiences that you want to tweak and play forever elsewhere (wait long enough and they might end up on GOG anyway).

GOG, however, cannot - and they say as much - remove your access to your games. When you buy, download, and archive games, you can use them however long you wish, even if your account is disabled for some reason or GOG itself is shut down. Steam can do that (however unlikely it is).

If we're talking about real life here, and not some stupid EULAs. Just make a backup, and you'll be owning any game, no worries. ;)

Very true. The most GOG could do is remove your ability to re-download the games and if you didn't bother downloading and backing up all your GOG games before something like that happens, it's your own fault. It still doesn't change the fact that we don't actually "own" these games in the same sense that you can own a physical good, we're just allowed to use them.

Ah yes I see, sorry for my assumption. You're absolutely right though, I certainly wouldn't want to have a billion clients running on my computer. I guess you can't entirely disregard Steam nowadays even if you choose not to buy from them, what with all these Steamworks games released/being released. While I cannot (nor would I want to) hide the fact that I like Steam, I don't like this whole Steamworks thing. I mean, I enjoy having the perks of certain aspects of Steamworks, but to have those games REQUIRE Steam is not a good thing for end users or the market, since the more people forced to use Steam this way, the more power they have in this industry. I (and I'm sure many many others) like the choices we have over where to buy our games and how we choose to play them, and Steamworks isn't helping that at all.

May I ask what's wrong with the offline mode?

It asks for an update? It calls home every now and then? It doesn't allow you to keep being offline if you have been for a long time?

Yes, but the terms are slightly different. From GOG you're allowed to use them until your account's disabled/removed, GOG closes, or you lose your files, whichever happens last. On steam, you losing the files isn't part of the equation at all.

Save for a couple completely open licenses (WTFPL, and possibly BSD), GOG's as close you can get to owning a piece of software as a mere customer/user.

Not according to http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1719532

You may say the mode might be buggy or maybe not exactly easy to use, but I'm pretty sure for the majority of users you can stay offline for months at a time without anything bad happen.

I can assure you it is not that way. ;)

I've certainly had problems on my laptop where I've fired up Steam somewhere where I don't have an internet connection and it wouldn't let me play because there was an update available. The offline mode is buggy.

I certainly have been able to stay offline for at least a month, I used to run Steam via Wine on an offline Linux laptop all the time. IIRC, offline mode does require you to re-connect every 30 days or so, but otherwise, you should be able to stay offline. I say "should" because there are certainly plenty of reports of people who for whatever reason are unable to make offline mode work. I've been lucky enough to not have any problems with Steam whatsoever, not just offline mode or on Linux, but everything else about Steam and on Windows as well.

That being said, I still have some level of discomfort about the "worst case scenario" with Steam that everyone seems to fear so much: what happens when it goes away? Let's be honest, it really is not a question of if Steam ever goes under, it's a question of when. I don't for a second believe anything like that will happen tomorrow, but 5, maybe 10 years from now? Very possibly. I then have to ask myself if paying for these games with the expectation that in 5 years time, I might not be able to play them anymore is worth the expense. When it comes to full-price, brand new games, absolutely not; those games were already not worth the price they charge for them, no matter how good they are. However, the one day only and weekend sales, special package deals, etc., frequently worth it. I look at those prices as a game rental with a minimum 5 year return date. I will totally get my money's worth out of something like that.

Cons : Too many dickheads ( HLM , crusaders , fangirls and cheerleaders ) on the Steam forums .