GOG when available, but what should I choose between PS5 physical and Steam when not?

This is the way. I buy games primarily to support game developers, not because I don't know how to pirate. GoG is generally preferred when possible, but I buy games on Steam primarily because of convenience and the other services they provide, not because I blindly trust those games will always be accessible, and I think for the services they provide they do deserve their cut, so I'm supporting them as well. I do also happen to trust them, and I believe those games will be available to me for the foreseeable future and if I didn't, my buying strategy would shift quite promptly, but I'm not blindly trusting that, it's a calculated risk.

I absolutely do know how to pirate games. This is not my first rodeo. But it's mildly inconvenient, especially for updates and sometimes multiplayer, and I trust that process even less than I trust Steam. If Steam were to take my games away that I've already paid for (and supported) you'd better believe most of them are going into the download queue. Some I might choose to support again on a different platform, some have certainly earned it. But I know what I'm doing, and I'm doing it with intention. I decide who deserves my money and who doesn't, and so far, Steam has earned what they get from me.

Some games on Steam are actually run without DRM; so if you find that out for some set of them, you can likely back them up as files.

There is no need to be so strict so just mix it up and do it all.

Yeah but I’m kind of psychorigid and I like to establish guidelines😅

Many games are sold on 1st party storefronts. Sometimes even indie ones, like Rimworld. I’d say they are less likely to yoink the game since they own all the rights, and they’re often downloaded as DRM-free executables.

So I’d check, in order:

- GoG

- The game dev/publisher storefront.

- Some storefront with a DRM-free download. I noticed EGS (for example) does this for many of their giveaways.

- Steam, as a last resort.

I wouldn’t trust PS5 discs though.

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…But you should consider practicality, too.

In practice, your PS5 is going to be your most powerful machine until you get a bigger PC with a GPU. And FYI, the Steam Machine will not be $1000, not even close.

That, and launching less intense games on your Deck is way more convenient if bought through Steam. Otherwise you have to deal with some intricacies of Proton and controller remapping to get them running.

So the PS5 discs aren’t impractical. Steam isn’t impractical. They should launch for a reasonably long time.

Well no one really knows the price of the Steam Machine, maybe not even Valve😅

What I know is that I’m not willing to put more than 1000$ to buy it.

Even if Valve said they won’t bleed to make it cheap, I don’t think they can afford to make it so expensive.

We’ll see because everyone is just guessing for now😇

It’s not a guess. Look at the price of any PC now. Or wholesale prices of individual components like CPU trays or RAM ICs.

$1000 is basically impossible for the specs it has. Even if they sell at break-even cost, it’s not even close.

No one knows the actual price tag will be, of course, but there are practical minimum bounds.

Hence, if that’s your limit… you should definitely plan on the Steam Machine being too expensive. Maybe consider a used AMD 6000 series GPU in one of your servers.

What's on the disc isn't even the game you play most of the time. Hell even the day 1 patch that replaces most of the files on the disc isn't the game you play unless you mainline it in release week.

Even if this is the case physical used is going to be the cheapest.

As always "it depends". Especially with frequent and deep sales it highly depends on the title. But given that it has to exist on both platforms for this to even be an option to begin with, it might be true more often than not.

This might also be an additional consideration, that selling titles is an option for physical PS5 titles. Assuming the discs can always be sold and copies aren't tied to your digital account anyway once you play them.

Yeah PS5 physical discs, even if only holding data to download the game, have the advantage of giving you the ability to resell a game if you don’t enjoy it.

Yeah but buying on GOG also means not being tied to them if they turn evil since you can just copy the game and use whatever launcher.

Piracy.