I've had this question looking at the Quake con sale, and Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth is for sale on both platforms. I ended up buying it on GOG. What is your opinion?
Steam, but only because 95% of my library is on there. However, I think often GOG is probably the better choice.
This. I love GoG for what they do and their whole ethos, but I have damn near my entire collection already on Steam and like to condense as much as I can as hard as that may be. Steam is still by and far the best launcher, but every year GoG Galaxy gets a little bit closer to being an actual contender; literally all the rest are absolutely terrible dumpster fires.
Why is that by the way? On my PC I have Amazon, Battle.net, EA, Epic, GoG Galaxy 2.0, Itchio, Rockstar, and Uplay clients (along with some individual game launchers) and not a single one comes close to being as feature rich, streamlined, and just clearly built for the customer/player as Steam is. I know Valve has a lot more experience under their belt but it feels like the others aren't even trying. Most of them are just in your face about their store fronts and barely function as a library after the fact.
When I used Windows I mainly bought on Gog for the DRM-free aspect. Now that I've switched to Linux almost completely, I find Steam's software for running Windows games on Linux to be just about the most seamless and easy to use, compared to other stuff I've tried like Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher.
Steam, because I would want to support the company that respects linux users.
GOG also offers Linux versions of any games that have such a version.
You're right, but I think OP meant almost all the games that are developed by Valve have a Linux version, meanwhile non of the games developed by CDPR has it.
GOG because it's more convenient and less ableist.
Steam's colour scheme makes it difficult to read and causes eye strain and headaches for people with astigmatism, like me. The way the light text bleeds into the darkness surrounding it makes it difficult to read anything so I can't be sure of the price that I'm paying without copy/pasting it into notepad or something. When I made a thread pointing this out years ago, when they disabled the old theme system, Valve's mods banned me from the forum and deleted my thread.
I sent an email to Epic Games about the same problem in their store and got a response that could be summarized as "Don't care, go fuck yourself." so they are not a good option either. I don't like gambling so I won't use EA's virtual casino, and I want to keep the games I buy so Ubisoft's store is also not an option.
It's GOG or piracy for me.
I've never had any issues with headaches, have you talked to your doctor about maybe getting a blue light filter added to your prescription? Also, you can pick a different theme for Steam as well. I'm a big fan of Metro.
It's not blue light. It's blurriness caused by the white of the text bleeding into the black. Straining my eyes to read it causes headaches. I can use light mode things with no problems.
Steam skins don't reskin most of the client anymore. I used to use a light skin similar to Metro when Steam still properly supported it.
OK, in that case I would see about getting a new eye doctor, if you can. If they were doing their job right, they should have made sure the prescription you got corrected the astigmatism. My doctor worked with me to get it perfectly right, so I don't have any issues anymore with small text, including on Steam.
If you or someone else who reads this can't afford to get glasses, there is help available. If you're in the US, check out New Eyes, which works with those who can't afford to have their vision corrected.
I have glasses. This isn't something that they can correct for me. Glasses don't fix the shape of your eyes. Maybe this can help explain what it's like? It's about conferences but it's the same for anything with that colour scheme. The smaller the text, the worse it gets.
Dark mode is not good for everyone.
No, glasses don't fix the shape of your eye, but they do correct for that uneven shape. I would know, because they've corrected my vision and it's now crystal clear after being blurry from astigmatism for years. It sounds to me like your prescription just isn't quite right, because you shouldn't have any issues if they had nailed it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not dismissing that you have a problem, and I'm not defending Steam or saying they shouldn't have more accessible options for those with sight issues. What I'm saying is it really sounds like your glasses aren't where they need to be, and that's why you're having issues. With the tech they use to make lenses these days, you should definitely be able to dial in a prescription to get perfectly clear vision with astigmatism.
I'd go steam, they games probably drm free on both and steam has a Linux client and cloud saves and workshop
GoG if possible. I'm very slowly trying to buh more from GoG as insurance from the eventual enshitification that I sadly know Steam will fall prey to.
I've got to say, Steam's native Wine/Proton implementation works decently well, and really entices me to buy games without native Linux support on Steam.
GOG for drm free. I'm always gutted when I buy on steam, but forget to check GOG and it's there.
At the moment I pretty much only buy games on Steam. GoG has been pretty hostile to Linux over the years, whereas Valve is the only gaming focused company that robustly supports Linux on both a hardware and software level. The money I give to their platform directly supports Linux gaming and everyone directly benefits from this.
Valve is also an exceptionally rare example of a privately owned, not publicly traded company of their size. Gabe Newell himself owns a majority stake and has shown that he is more interested in running a company that can make effective long term decisions than a company that desperately suckles at the teats of short term profits and corporatocracy. As long as this stays true, Valve is in a vastly better position to resist enshittification than most big tech companies out there. Valve doesn't need to pull a Red Hat unless fundamental things change, and Gabe seems pretty happy to be in a position where he doesn't need another layer of corporate overlords.
I'd definitely prefer to have DRM free stuff, but Steam is a pretty good compromise at the moment. If Valve ever goes to shit, I'll just take steps to access the games I own in a way that is independently well supported on Linux. I suspect there will be multiple ways to do so if it ever comes to this. Proton being open source counts for a lot.
Gog, drm free, just works, and devs get more money.
On the other hand, death to valve and steam. The launcher itself is dogshit bloatware and I do not have a single recent memory of it being remotely pleasant to use. The download and verification speeds are absolutely awful compared to Gog and, in my limited experience, Epic. valve was definitely a pioneer in microtransactions with tf2 and csgo. Locking mods to their storefront is fucking disgusting, as was their attempt to monetize them. There is also negative quality control when it comes to what's allowed to be sold on steam.
If it's not on Gog then I'll just pirate it.
If I'm getting it on one of those platforms, it's to play it on my Steam Deck and it's more native to do it in Steam.
Used to be GOG for DRM free games, now it's Steam because of Linux support and the Steam Deck
Lutris makes installing GOG games with proton pretty easy. Haven't had issues on my end
Depends on thw game and what sort of mod support it has. Obviously on Steam if it has Steam workshop support. DRM free on GOG is good but at the same time Steam has been doing quite of lot of good things related to gaming on Linux and I would like them to continue doing it.
Steam because GOG does something to their games that makes most mods not work on them.
Gotta have my mods!
