When Valve makes a change to Steam that you disagree with your choice is to give up using Steam, and your purchased games, or just accept it and continue. Steam is proprietary software: it gives unjust power over user’s computing. Even good people are not immune to the temptation to use power for themselves at the expense of others. While Valve have done a lot of good, indeed are the best, no one is perfect. I don’t understand why you think it has no potential to become a lot worse.
GOG doesn’t contribute to Proton AFAIK, and doesn’t offer amazing QOL stuff like Steam Input. But what you buy from them is yours forever, assuming you sensibly back it up yourself. So “best we got” is debatable depending on what you value.
My “best we got” was in regards to the potential to become a lot worse because of shareholder pressure. Given that CD Project is a publicly traded company, GOG is much worse in that regard than Steam.
I fully agree that GOG, as it currently is, could be the better product for you depending on your values, but its defenses against enshittification are objectively much worse than Steam’s*, and that’s all I was talking about.
*That is, until Gabe dies, I guess, who knows what’ll happen then
Ah, I see. That’s a fair point, and yeah I do worry about GOG’s potential for enshitification. But knowing at least my past purchases will not become shit is some small comfort.
When Valve makes a change to Steam that you disagree with your choice is to give up using Steam, and your purchased games, or just accept it and continue. Steam is proprietary software: it gives unjust power over user’s computing. Even good people are not immune to the temptation to use power for themselves at the expense of others. While Valve have done a lot of good, indeed are the best, no one is perfect. I don’t understand why you think it has no potential to become a lot worse.
Nobody is talking about “no potential”. Just “a lot less potential than any other option out there”, and that’s currently the best we got
GOG doesn’t contribute to Proton AFAIK, and doesn’t offer amazing QOL stuff like Steam Input. But what you buy from them is yours forever, assuming you sensibly back it up yourself. So “best we got” is debatable depending on what you value.
My “best we got” was in regards to the potential to become a lot worse because of shareholder pressure. Given that CD Project is a publicly traded company, GOG is much worse in that regard than Steam.
I fully agree that GOG, as it currently is, could be the better product for you depending on your values, but its defenses against enshittification are objectively much worse than Steam’s*, and that’s all I was talking about.
*That is, until Gabe dies, I guess, who knows what’ll happen then
Ah, I see. That’s a fair point, and yeah I do worry about GOG’s potential for enshitification. But knowing at least my past purchases will not become shit is some small comfort.
Right, that’s definitely an important thing, that at least with gog, you can defend yourself against that possibility.