Steam key or DRM-free: what you actually get when you buy a PC game

Last updated: October 7, 2026

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When you press “buy”, you do not always get the same thing. On one store you get a game tied to an account. On another you get files that run without any launcher. The price can be identical, and the difference only shows up years later, on the day you want to reinstall an old game, play offline, or sell a game you no longer touch.

Here is what two stores say about it in their own words, and a short way to choose.

Simplified from the Steam Subscriber Agreement and GOG's own posts. See the sources below.

The short version

Steam: you buy a license that sits on your account. The agreement says so in plain words.
GOG: the games are sold DRM-free. GOG says you can run them without a launcher, install them on as many devices as you wish and back up the files.
Neither is “better” in general. It depends on what you want to do with the game later. And a good price still matters more than the label, so compare the price on the day.

What Steam says you get

The Steam Subscriber Agreement is clear about it. In section 2.A:

“The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.”

Other parts of the same agreement explain what that means in practice:

You cannot sell your account or transfer it to someone else (section 1.C), and you may not “sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Content and Services to other parties in any way” (section 2.G). In plain words: the agreement does not allow you to resell or give away a Steam game. (Consumer law differs between countries, and this is not legal advice.)
If Valve cancels your account or a subscription because you broke the agreement, section 9.C says no refund is granted, including for unused funds in your Steam Wallet.

This is not a warning that anyone will take your library away. It is a description of what the contract says you bought. A key for a Steam game that you bought in another store is redeemed on a Steam account, so these rules apply to that game once it is there.

What GOG says you get

GOG sells only DRM-free games. In its own words, from a post published on November 4, 2024:

“That’s why we are fully committed to providing you exclusively with DRM-free games.”

and that DRM-free means a game is “devoid of any Digital Rights Management”. According to the same post, this gives you the freedom to play offline at any time, back up the game’s files, install it on as many devices as you wish, and decide “whether to use a launcher or run it directly from the executable files”.

GOG also runs a Preservation Program. In a post from November 13, 2024, GOG says it will “commit our own resources to maintaining its compatibility with modern and future systems” for the games in the program, and that buyers can “always keep access to their offline installers”. The same post admits “We haven’t figured everything out” for some other platforms, macOS for example. It does not promise that a game will stay on sale.

What we did not check. We could not read the legal text of GOG’s User Agreement, so we do not say whether you “own” a GOG game in the legal sense. What we describe above is what GOG says you can do with the files. Also, DRM-free does not make an online game offline: if a game has online or multiplayer features, they can still depend on servers.

How to choose

Pick DRM-free if you want to keep installers, play offline, install on several PCs, or still be able to run the game in many years.
Pick Steam if you want one library for everything you play, or if the game is not sold DRM-free. Some games are only sold with a Steam key, and then the choice is made for you.
If a game is sold in both places, compare the price and the edition on the day. A DRM-free copy at a higher price is not a bargain, and neither is a cheap key that does not activate in your region. Our guide to real and fake discounts has the checklist.

Three questions before you buy

Will you want to play this game in five or ten years? If yes, a copy you can keep is worth something.
Does the store page say which platform the game or key uses? If it does not, find out before you pay.
Is the game online-only? Then the store model matters less than the servers.

How we handle this

Some of the store links on our site, including links to GOG and IndieGala, are affiliate links, and we mark them clearly. This guide contains no affiliate links, and it is written from the stores’ own pages listed below, not from our commission. Read how affiliate links work on our site, or look at the current deals.

Sources

Pages were read on October 7, 2026. Terms can change, so check the source pages for the current wording. This is not legal advice.