Two Best Online Platforms for Buying and Playing Video Games on a Computer

Games
September 2, 2021
0

Gone are the days when video games came exclusively on CDs and DVDs, not to mention floppy disks. Although it is possible to get them this way today, it is much more convenient to use one of the many online video game distribution platforms.

With the development of the Internet and the increase in download speeds, this method of distribution brings many advantages over traditional physical disks. All games are on the platform you use, they are always available to you so you don’t have to worry about losing a disk or damaging it, the game is always updated to the latest version, and they are often cheaper because there is no need to print physical disks. These are just some of the reasons for the great popularity of these platforms.

There are many online video game distribution platforms, all of which are completely free to download, and games on them can be free or you have to pay for them. The problem is that most of them are quite bad, without many options, actively harmful for users (Epic Launcher), or offer very few games, often only games from a certain publisher.

Fortunately, there are two platforms that defy this trend and in our opinion make all others completely unnecessary, and those are Steam and GOG Galaxy.

Steam

Steam is the most popular free online video game distribution platform available for Windows 7, 8, 10, and Linux. There are many reasons for the huge popularity of this platform, and its place at the top is absolutely deserved. In addition to the fact that you can get almost all computer video games that have been released in the last ten or more years, the options it contains are phenomenal.

When you search the game library, you can sort the games by genre, release date, price, and other categories. We especially like the options to search only for games that are free, to set the maximum price you want to pay for the game, or to show only games that are on sale (have a reduced price).

When it comes to sales, this is without a doubt one of the main advantages of Steam. Namely, in addition to the fact that games are occasionally sold at a lower price, Steam twice a year, at the beginning of summer and before the new year, organizes a mass sale of games with discounts that go up to 95%. These amazing discounts are not only for small or unsuccessful games, but you will often find popular games that are only a few months old here.

Two other phenomenal options we have to mention are Steam Charts and Steam Workshop. Steam Charts is an option that allows you to view statistics on how many players are playing a game in the last hour, the average number of players per day, as well as a graph showing the gaming population since the game was published. This is a great option if you want to play a multiplayer game. No one wants to play a game that depends on the online population, and there are only a few players a day that plays it.

Steam Workshop is an option that allows quick and easy installation of game modes. The biggest problem with modding for many players is the fact that their installation is often complicated, and can lead to many problems in-game. With Steam Workshop these problems are solved and all you have to do is choose the mode you want, click on the install button, and everything else will be done automatically.

We really don’t have enough words of praise for Steam. What we have written about it are just some of the advantages of this platform, and there are many more. If we didn’t have such a high opinion about the next platform we will write about, we would easily tell you to use Steam and forget about all the other options.

Platform:
Windows 7, 8, 10, and Linux

Download Steam for Windows.
Steam installation guide for Linux.

GOG Galaxy

GOG Galaxy is a free online video game distribution platform available for Windows 8, 10, macOS, and Linux. The GOG Galaxy is a platform that primarily aims to provide you with a single platform to run games that you have acquired across different platforms, so you don’t have to constantly change platforms when playing different games.

In addition to this, you can buy gog.com games with GOG Galaxy, and here we will focus mostly on this aspect. GOG (Good Old Games) is a platform that in many ways cannot be compared to Steam, the game library is much smaller, the options it offers are poorer and sales are less frequent, and prices are often reduced much less than on Steam.

However, the advantages for many can overshadow these disadvantages. First of all, GOG offers a large library of old games (there are also new games on offer, this is not a platform that deals exclusively with old games). However, the old games found here have been updated to work seamlessly on modern computers, which is a major problem when it comes to old games.

It should be borne in mind that these are not remakes or remasters (although there are cases like this), but old games have been repaired to work without the need for additional settings or the use of additional programs.

Another advantage of games that come from GOG is that there is no DRM in them. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a program used by video game publishers to verify that a copy of a game is genuine and not pirated. This program is packaged so that it is an integral part of the video game.

We do not support the piracy of the programs or games and we believe that the program should be paid for like anything else, and publishers have the right to protect their product. The problem arises when this protection negatively affects the experience of paid customers.

This is often the case with video games. DRM causes games to perform worse and causes bugs that sometimes make the game unplayable. As a result, when a pirated version of the game appears, which always happens sooner or later, not only that prates do not pay for the game, but their game works better than for those who paid for the game. This is unacceptable in our opinion. When you buy a game through GOG these problems are not present because their games do not have DRM.

The GOG Galaxy as a platform is really not bad and we have no particular objections. The ability to run games that come from other platforms can be very useful for certain users, and old games that work well on modern computers and modern games without DRM are something you won’t find on any other platform.

Platform:
Windows 8, 10, macOS, and Linux

Download GOG Galaxy for Windows and macOS.
GOG Galaxy Installation Guide for Linux.