

GOG Galaxy (opens in new tab) is GOG’s desktop client, first released a couple of years ago. Initially dedicated to reviving old games and making them work on modern PCs, GOG has come a long way, and today you’ll find DRM-free versions of top titles like The Witcher 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2 and No Man’s Sky, among many others.
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GOG has regular free game giveaways, and sometimes even runs a scheme where you can link your Steam account and get DRM-free versions of your Steam games at no extra cost. So your games are well and truly yours you can burn them to discs, you can keep their installers on external hard drives, you can do whatever you like with them.

One of the longest-running Steam alternatives has made it this far thanks to one particularly powerful selling point: everything you buy on GOG is DRM-free.
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That, and the fact that it’s currently offering a very good game for free every two weeks, means that by brute financial force it’s worth taking a look at. It is, however, the only digital platform with the audacity to secure exclusives like it were the Xbox 360 circa 2008. The Epic Games Store (opens in new tab) even nabbed the beloved Sony-published PlayStation exclusive Journey, which just goes to show that even exclusivity can evaporate in the face of big money (can we have Bloodborne next, please?).Īs we’ve already noted in our Epic Games Store vs Steam feature, the Epic Store doesn’t feel great to use yet, lacking in even basic features like cloud saves and a search bar. Hoping to harness the millions of people who use the Epic Launcher to play Fortnite, Epic has gone in hard on securing exclusivity deals for games ranging from anticipated indie titles like Hades, to big-money behemoths like Metro Exodus. The new kid in town, though maybe ‘kid’ isn’t the right term for a veteran publisher that’s delivered us Unreal, the Unreal Engine and, lest we forget, Fortnite. This really is a Steam alternative that deserves your support.

It has a strong community focus, with plenty of discussions, devlogs, and a schedule of the endless gamejams where aspiring developers can jump in and make games in tight time periods. The app works smoothly and keeps your games updated. There are tens of thousands of games to peruse, many of which were conceived in one of the many game jams organised by Itch. Many games here are free at first, relying on feedback and donations before going commercial. What’s nice about Itch.io is that it puts you right on the frontline of indie game development, helping devs along the tough road to success. This makes it one of the best and most interesting Steam alternatives out there. Itch.io (opens in new tab) is exclusively committed to indie games, and there’s a good chance that some of your favourite indie titles on Steam actually started life on Itch.io before growing to become fully-fledged commercial products.
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The independent PC gaming platform, equivalent to the eccentric bric-a-brac shop selling obscurities from stuffed animals to crystal skulls.
