It could happen to Steam one day. Definitely not any time soon. But as the company grows and ownership changes, there is the risk they could go public and IPO. After that point, it’s all downhill from there. However at this point in time and based on their history, GOG and Steam are both excellent platforms to do business with.
I didn’t start using GOG until I got a slap in the face with reality that I don’t own my games. I was ignorant and complacent back in the day when App Store purchases on Apple’s platform disappeared or I couldn’t download them again. “That sucks. Oh well. Damn.” is what I used to always say to myself over a decade ago. Funny that it took a beloved game - parts of it anyway - to where it finally sunk in how important digital ownership is.
Ubisoft is the company that taught me this valuable lesson. In August 2022, Ubisoft announced they would shut down legacy activation servers for their old single player games - https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommissioning-of-online-services-september-2022/000102396. While multiplayer would disappear and was accepted (running online PvP servers for very old games doesn’t make financial sense), the termination of these servers would also mean that my DLC would disappear. I was a day one owner of Splinter Cell: Blacklist on Wii U, and I spent my hard-earned money buying all the content for it back in 2012. Ubisoft was going to take away parts of my video game on a physical disc sitting on my shelf, because if I tried to run the game and install the DLC, the console would make a call to an activation server that no longer existed and preclude me from accessing my paid for content. Now, all those video games sitting on my shelf from multiple console generations suddenly looked less permanent. How many of those single player games required online functionality to work? I always (and still today) buy cartridges and discs where possible because I believe physical copies are superior. Splinter Cell I purchased at least three times because I loved that game - on Wii U, on Uplay, and then on Steam. In 2022, Ubisoft shut down those activation servers and they took my purchases away from me forever. Now, I can only play parts of the game that I paid for. And Ubisoft doesn’t get my money any more (although they haven’t been for a long time since they keep release middling games).
Since that day, I learned a valuable lesson and have since directed most of my game purchases to GOG, where my GOG library has significantly skyrocketed past my Steam library.
P.S. - To this day, I still email Supergiant annually to beg them to release Hades on GOG, and show them the growing interest for their game in GOG’s Dreamlist: https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/hades-2020
It could happen to Steam one day. Definitely not any time soon. But as the company grows and ownership changes, there is the risk they could go public and IPO. After that point, it’s all downhill from there. However at this point in time and based on their history, GOG and Steam are both excellent platforms to do business with.
I didn’t start using GOG until I got a slap in the face with reality that I don’t own my games. I was ignorant and complacent back in the day when App Store purchases on Apple’s platform disappeared or I couldn’t download them again. “That sucks. Oh well. Damn.” is what I used to always say to myself over a decade ago. Funny that it took a beloved game - parts of it anyway - to where it finally sunk in how important digital ownership is.
Ubisoft is the company that taught me this valuable lesson. In August 2022, Ubisoft announced they would shut down legacy activation servers for their old single player games - https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommissioning-of-online-services-september-2022/000102396. While multiplayer would disappear and was accepted (running online PvP servers for very old games doesn’t make financial sense), the termination of these servers would also mean that my DLC would disappear. I was a day one owner of Splinter Cell: Blacklist on Wii U, and I spent my hard-earned money buying all the content for it back in 2012. Ubisoft was going to take away parts of my video game on a physical disc sitting on my shelf, because if I tried to run the game and install the DLC, the console would make a call to an activation server that no longer existed and preclude me from accessing my paid for content. Now, all those video games sitting on my shelf from multiple console generations suddenly looked less permanent. How many of those single player games required online functionality to work? I always (and still today) buy cartridges and discs where possible because I believe physical copies are superior. Splinter Cell I purchased at least three times because I loved that game - on Wii U, on Uplay, and then on Steam. In 2022, Ubisoft shut down those activation servers and they took my purchases away from me forever. Now, I can only play parts of the game that I paid for. And Ubisoft doesn’t get my money any more (although they haven’t been for a long time since they keep release middling games).
Since that day, I learned a valuable lesson and have since directed most of my game purchases to GOG, where my GOG library has significantly skyrocketed past my Steam library.
P.S. - To this day, I still email Supergiant annually to beg them to release Hades on GOG, and show them the growing interest for their game in GOG’s Dreamlist: https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/hades-2020