Honestly this is the fairest criticism. Personally I think it’s enough that Steam just indicates what the DRM is clearly in the store, and that they have historically issues refunds when publishers make anti-consumer changes for people who already purchased it.
plenty of games that are DRM-free on GOG are DRM-enabled on steam
I suppose ymmv here. For me, I have a lot of games on my Steam wishlist where every time they go on sale I check to see if the DRM has been removed yet. I also occasionally check these on GoG, but more like every 6 months or so because I don’t use GoG as much. In my experience it’s really rare for a game to have DRM on Steam and still be on GoG. Sonic Frontiers for example - it has Denuvo on Steam but just isn’t listed on GoG at all.
My assumption is that this is something to do with the contracts between publishers and the 3rd party DRM makers like Denuvo. And technical limitations too- I assume there is some level of development needed to add/remove/change DRM. Hi-Fi Rush is a recent example: everyone who owns it now will need to update before January 16th to get the Denuvo removed.
Honestly this is the fairest criticism. Personally I think it’s enough that Steam just indicates what the DRM is clearly in the store, and that they have historically issues refunds when publishers make anti-consumer changes for people who already purchased it.
I suppose ymmv here. For me, I have a lot of games on my Steam wishlist where every time they go on sale I check to see if the DRM has been removed yet. I also occasionally check these on GoG, but more like every 6 months or so because I don’t use GoG as much. In my experience it’s really rare for a game to have DRM on Steam and still be on GoG. Sonic Frontiers for example - it has Denuvo on Steam but just isn’t listed on GoG at all.
My assumption is that this is something to do with the contracts between publishers and the 3rd party DRM makers like Denuvo. And technical limitations too- I assume there is some level of development needed to add/remove/change DRM. Hi-Fi Rush is a recent example: everyone who owns it now will need to update before January 16th to get the Denuvo removed.