The best Steam alternatives for PC gamers

1

Steam

The independent PC gaming platform, equivalent to the eccentric bric-a-brac shop selling obscurities from stuffed animals to crystal skulls. Itch.io 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. This makes it one of the best and most interesting Steam alternatives out there.

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2

Origin

Given the choice, we’d probably still opt for a Steam version of a game over an Origin one, but one feature that does make Origin pop is the Origin Access subscription.

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3

itch.io

The independent PC gaming platform, equivalent to the eccentric bric-a-brac shop selling obscurities from stuffed animals to crystal skulls. Itch.io 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. This makes it one of the best and most interesting Steam alternatives out there.

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4

Fortnite

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.

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5

Epic Games

As 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.

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6

GOG Galaxy

GOG Galaxy is GOG’s desktop client, first released a couple of years ago. It essentially gives the scrappy DRM-free experience a platform, with all the bells and whistles like friends lists, cloud saves and automatic updates for your games. It’s convenient for library management and shopping, and even stores your owned games on virtual wooden bookshelves.

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7

Uplay

Ubisoft’s official desktop gaming client and store doesn’t have the best reputation. One of its more notorious traits is that even if you buy the Steam version of an Ubisoft game, you still have to run it through Uplay. Basically, it’s Double DRM and it’s not great (so if picking between the Steam and Uplay version of a game, you may as well just pick Uplay to avoid this situation).

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8

Microsoft Store

It’s no secret that Microsoft has always harboured ambitions of becoming the leading digital distribution platform on Windows. The problem is that during the years when Microsoft was embroiled in the Xbox and Xbox 360, Steam came along and pretty much took over the PC gaming market unopposed. That, and the fact that first Games for Windows Live, and later the Microsoft Store, were pretty awful for gaming.

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