GOG's Preservation Program Is the DRM-Free Store Refocusing on the Classics

I have flip-flopped between GOG and Steam for many years. This has correlated with my use of Linux and Linux's support for gaming.

When I first learned of GOG and I was still primarily gaming on Windows I tended to choose GOG over Steam since I prefer their DRM-free games. However since it became much easier to game on Linux (thanks to Proton and the work of Valve), I tended to start buying more on Steam since it was so much easier to get games working through their platform. Since Heroic launcher came out I have now switched back to primarily buying from GOG again.

The big difference is being able to download games / installers locally and expect them to work without having to first sign in to an account.

you can only do that with gog, not with steam

ps: however, there have been a few games where multiplayer features required a gog galaxy instance, which I don't agree with given their whole no-DRM spiel

There are DRM free games on steam, you can use steamcmd cli to download them and run without having to use steam itself. Its up to the dev/publisher if they want DRM or not.

The number of games like this (that work without Steam) is vanishingly small ime, and there is no way to tell in advance whether a game will work or not. (I have actually had a lot more success with the Epic Games Store.)

Not saying that there's a lot of games where the publisher/dev made this choice, just responding to OP saying its not possible with steam. Unfortunately the store doesn't show drm free games either.

I am aware that there are some games that you can download and happen to be able to play offline if the steam launcher executable simply happens to be a dumb link to the 'true' executable which checks for a steam connection first, and you could in theory find out where the 'true' executable lies in the game folder, because of the way it's designed. But I would hesitate to call this a "DRM-free" game in that sense; more like "the DRM is trivial and easily bypassed if you know what to run".

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that just because it works "DRM-free" now, it will continue to do so later. Or, just because it "works", it doesn't mean that somewhere half-way into the game there isn't a "check" or "achievement" that won't crash your game.

etc.

And in any case, Steam does not have a commitment towards DRM-free, not even in the sense of at least committing to flag such games as such. It's all 'accidental' at best. And while it's the last games company that you'd expect to go bankrupt 'now', all your games are in theory 'licensed' content, not 'owned' purchases. It's entirely up to them to remove content without notice (because you bought a game in one country and then moved to another, e.g.), or go bankrupt and say well sorry, some games might work if you download them but we don't guarantee anything.

Whereas in theory, GoG will let you make a full local backup of your entire collection, and in the few games that (annoyingly) "subtly" break the DRM-free promise (typically due to the way multiplayer is handled), these are clearly signposted in the store pages.