I really like Steam. I have over fifty games on the service, I buy regularly and I attend almost every sale, just like most other people on this site likely do. However, I have been noticing something brewing in the background. For a tl;dr, scroll down to the bottom.
During the Halloween sale I picked up Alice: Madness Returns for about 13 euros, I am a big fan of the first game and was eager to play the sequel. Upon booting the game I was prompted to make an account for EA though, this was mentioned at the bottom of the store page and while not entirely amused, I did decide to just do it quickly and get it over with. I put in all the information, glanced through the pages and started playing the game. The next day I checked my mail and found out that "EA account" actually meant "Here, have a freaking Origin account!".
This bothers me tremendously and this is not the first time something has happened. I keep noticing that Steam takes it up the ass from everybody, which leaves the service without a consistent set of rules. Some games have activation keys, some games have limited installation, some games require a separate account, some games have separate launchers, some games don't even seem to support the Steam interface. It drives me nuts and lately I have found myself skipping on a lot of games, simply because I didn't want to take a gamble and end up with a barely functional game. Bioshock is a prime example, a game released in 2009, purchased and installed through Steam and it doesn't even support Windows 7 in any form! I had to manually change the Steam shortcut for it to work!
Having to sign up for Steam's competitor to play a game on my Steam account is the pinnacle though. Valve is a giant in the industry, but it can't enforce any sort of rules on games that want to be sold through their service? Lately I have been buying more and more often at GOG, simply because I can always rely on them to provide me with DRM-free and functional games. I don't have to make separate accounts, I don't have to change anything to the game's files and I have as many installs as I like.
Discussion value: Is GOG a better service than Steam?