I buy from Steam because of the excellent Linux support, and Steam input.

I buy from GOG because I like owning my games and I like preserving good old games.

Every time I buy a game I make a choice based on those criteria.

I don’t like owning games twice.

The choice isn’t always easy, but that’s OK.

You can’t buy games from Steam.
You can only license them for private use, subject to a change in licensing terms or disappearance of the game from the platform at any time.

Buy on gog if it’s there. Buy on steam otherwise. Keep a pirate copy handy either way.

I buy on gog if it’s available there. Because no DRM is a great thing for simplicity’s sake for me. With that said, the experience running gog games, even with Heroic, on SteamOS is rough. But so far that hasn’t been enough to change my behavior.

My general policy is to buy stuff from GoG that I will likely want to replay in the future and prioritize Steam for anything that I primarily play with friends (as that’s the main advantage of Steam for me). If it’s neither, I’ll default to GoG.

I try to go GOG first, so I can keep the installation kits offline. There are however a lot of good indies on Steam, and few of these ever get ported from there. Steam workshop is also fantastic and doesn’t really have a match on other platforms, and unlike GOG they provide good linux support. Also worth noting that some of the old games on GOG are inferior to their steam counterparts ( see Commander Keen for example ). So yes, I’d say both are good, but maybe prioritise GOG first.

Check both, if the game is available on both, then I will get it on Gog.

If not, Steam it is!

I have a few games I enjoy so much that I have bought them several times, including on both Steam and Gog.

An example, back in 2004/2005 I bought Unreal Tournament 2004 on CDs, then when I found it on Steam a few years later, I bought it there as well as I wanted a modern installer, finally I found it on Gog without DRM yet another few years later and bought it there as well.

I love that game and wanted the best installer for it, especially without DRM.

Fun fact, Unreal Tournament 2004 has a native Linux version on the retail disks, you will find a bash install script in the root on one of the CDs

Honestly, it depends on you, what matters to you more.

For their stance on DRM free and game preservation, Id buy from/support GOG every day of the damn week.

Problem is, that I’m from a third world country, with recent and very high inflation. Dollar is way too expensive here. (With a gov tax on converting the local currency to dollar on top of that 🤮)

So the above + regional pricing means I’m stuck to Steam + piracy.

If budget is tight, I’d say, stick to Steam. Otherwise, go GOG

Every gimmicky feature on steam is fluff to lock you into an ecosystem. Buying steam games for achievements for example is really silly.

Truth is if you care about a sustainable games industry, then drm free and maximising developer cut is the right choice.

Choose the option that gives the developer the biggest cut, like itch or directly, and just use a launcher aggregator to manage it from one place like heroic launcher or playnite. I personally use gog for most but will use an alternative if it supports the dev better.