What are the benifits of using Steam?

Hello Everyone,

I have been using a pc as my main gaming platform for a year now, and have been using steam. In fact I've used steam as my primary games client; often prioritizing when possible over other alternatives. Today, however, I decided to pre-order the Witcher 3, and with Logan preaching about his dislike of DRM, I have become undecided as to which platform to place my preorder with. This brings me to my question of what are the benefits of using a DRM client vs a non DRM alternative and vice versa.

Steam is just an organized way of, well, organizing your games, but if they go bankrupt then they will take all your games with them. DRM free is like having the CD.

With a DRM client (Like Steam) you must be signed in to play the game, Unlike GOG (Good Ol' Games) which once you purchase the game its yours (No if, Ands, or Buts,) you can put the game on a flash drive and put the game on any computer you want and you can play the game (as long as it has the horsepower) while with steam you aren't allowed to play the game unless you are signed into steam (however this shouldn't be discouraging you can play the game if you aren't connected to the internet.) you'll just be playing the game in (Offline Mode) the reason a lot more people use steam is cause there is more variety of games compared to G.O.G also the constant deals are worth it lol. GOG has deals but not as much as steam does. also in this day of age you're expected to have internet lol so in a way the DRM shouldn't effect you as much.

Be your own judge & do what you feel comfortable in using. Steam imho is just fine. Yeah it probably on-sells all our meta-data but it works, is a convenient games hub, has good sales occasionally and has cross-platform support. The only thing keeping me having windows is that some games aren't linux friendly. Steam will no doubt address this in the future.

Other platforms like origin... hmmmm kinda like rough dunny paper, dont want to use it but kinda have to sometimes.

The benefits are convenience, organization, community, Steam sales, easy streaming to other devices, and library management across devices. It's just easy to deal with. However you are locked due to their DRM. I prefer GOG for this reason but use Steam a lot as well. 

It depends what non-DRM options you have. Probably the main difference you could have is platform independency with Steam - if you buy the physical medium, you can only use it in the environment it's designed for, while Steam can offer support for whatever platform you need, if the game is designed for it. As long as Steam is around, you always own what you have bought, so if you accidentally wipe your hard drive, you can still re-download your library. The only way you can lose it is if you lose your account. (or if Steam goes away, but you probably could still play offline. Maybe.)

Also, the sales. The glorious, amazing sales. Just wait another couple months until the Winter Sale comes around. There's also superficial stuff like Steam Workshop and achievements and community integration.

Not necessarily, for multiplayer this is often the case unless I suppose 3rd party DRM is used, hoewever for singleplayer not necessarily (you can run the game from the exe in the steam folder. Also there is a difference between being required to be signed in, and needing to be 'online'.

You can also link external games inot the steam library, it wont inherit any DRM but neither will it gain many of Steams benefits, although the Steam Overlay usually still works and you will be able to launch it easily and find it in the list with all your steam native games. 

So in short, go GOG/DRM Free and then just link the exe into the Steam library for ease of organisation and launching.

Thanks, I think I'll go this route, and do as you suggest.

One thing that makes steam stand out is the fact that you can backup your game data into an ISO so you technically have your hard copy of your game though your still tied to Steam. IMO go with Steam. You can install Steam on multiple devices and have the game installed right there to play. You can throw it into offline mode and still play your games you have installed which is a big plus. Ive ran into some DRMs (Onlive) where if you dont have an internet connection your shit out of luck.