Why should I have to login to play games that I bought? it's bullshit. I don't have to login here at GOG.

You can have your opinion, but it's one I think everyone's heard it since 2005/6. At least come up with a new compelling reason :\

What does the age of the argument have to do with its validity? I would imagine that it makes Valve look worse, as they have faced heavy criticism for years but have not attempted to address these complaints.

Well, I said that I lost access to my games, and a bunch of people said "No, you can still play your games!" but I outright proved them wrong. That's all it was, was a rebuttal to those people who are quite clearly liars and trolls. And it solved that point, pretty well.

Because you signed a license agreement when you registered with Steam. Perhaps you should try reading contracts before you sign them, it would save you a lot of grief.

This tired nonsense?

While a somewhat logical response to those who already bought games through Steam's service, it doesn't exact address the question if it's coming from people considering whether or not to begin using Steam, or whether to buy any further games on Steam.

Not to mention that EULAs are ridiculously abusive. If you read all the EULAs of all software you ever install on your PC, in their entirety, you'd do nothing else of your days. There's nothing clear in any of that, you're just overloaded with a bunch of obscure legalese and haughty claims meant to absolve you of any rights. It's stupid to assume that anyone would waste his time with these abject alls of text.
An EULA is not a law. A company like Valve all the clauses it wants in its EULAs, it still doesn't allow them to forfeit their responsibility to offer a fair service to their customers.
Microsoft got slapped on its fingers repeatedly in Europe for their malpractices. Other software giants who get too big and too cocky will go through the same thing.
Though in this domain I would understand if it took time. Because, you know, these are just videogames, That's not important, this is just stuff bought by men with Peter Pan's syndrome who refuse to settle down. This is just a waste of time. That's the typical casual response.
Nonetheless the industry is worth billions and expands every year. You open the business section of your local newspaper, and you get to read financial information about videogame companies regularly, something that only occured once in a blue moon only ten years ago.

I'm not defending Steam, and no i'm not a fanboy, I think it's senseless that you need to open the client for many games (i have lots of games anyway and i can prove that the vast majority runs without the steam client if you want.)
I'm just saying that you actually CAN play them offline without problems, you just need to remember to set the client to offline mode every time you disconnect from it. I use it this way and i have no problems so it's you being wrong about that. you can play all the games offline easily as that. An whining about the fact that you just need to remember to set the offline mode is kinda silly, i know it's not a totally fair thing, but at least there's a way that doesn't involves cracks or stuff like that. In retail products you need no-cd patches to play the games you've bought without the CD, so i think that's not a big deal.
GOG is on whole new level, i adore it, sadly Valve is a big company and they work like big companies usually do :\

wow there is a lot of steam hate on this board. I've read a lot of comments in other threads acting like steam should be avoided at all costs, and how this site is so much better.
I have to vent below, maybe it doesn't belong here but I don't know where else to put it and I'm kinda pissed off
To be honest, so far I have found this site to be much more frustrating than steam. I just bought my 8th game here, and it crashes my pc. Out of the 8 games I have bought here, 4 of them have had problems running (freespace 2 doesn't run at all, giants citizen kabuto has sound but just a black screen at the start menu, fallout 2 had funky colors, and now empire earth freezes up when I try to start a campain). 50% success rate for my games is pretty shitty.Maybe there is a solution to these problems that aren't even gog's fault but it's still frustrating, especially considering I have a 100% success rate on gamersgate and steam games.
It's not just the games. Before when I tried to buy some games here, I got a message saying that my bank might have put a block on my purchasing stuff from here. I know there was no block because I had purchased fallout 2 earlier from here. Also after retrying again later, I didn't get the message again.
And when trying to contact a support team about freespace 2 not working, it took a week for them to answer. It probably would have taken longer if I hadn't first sent a follow up response complaining about their lack of a reply. I have read another comment about how someone contacted support, and still hadn't gotten an answer in 10 days. I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous to make someone wait so long.
anyways, yeah I like steam .After seeing people hype this place up as superior to steam, I'm pretty disappointed in this site. Steam might have DRM, but shit at least the games work easily compared to here.
sorry for the rant

Let me put it to you like this: I tired to play a game in offline mode. I went through the usual rigmarole associated with doing so. I found it was impossible to play the game in offline mode.
I contacted Steam support. I was told that the game needs to be online to be playable. By Steam. It was Valve's own game. It was single player only. It was HL2 Episode 2. Even their own games don't guarantee full support with their own client.
I think that it's now playable offline. But that doesn't change the fact that offline support remains the least of their concerns.
Oh and as for setting it to offline mode first: how do you always know when you're going to next need it to be available in offline mode? If that was a problem it wouldn't be "silly". The client does eventually get the idea and ask if you want it to run offline if it can't find a connection. That takes a sodding age to happen, but at least it's possible.
That's not the issue. The lack of universal compatibility with offline mode is the issue.

That's pretty unfortunate. 50$ isn't even an acceptable success rate to Microsoft.
But it sounds to me more like you're having issues with your graphics card drivers than anything else. I have Giants and Freespace 2 through GOG and both work fine for me. I have a retail version of Fallout 2 which exhibits no signs of graphical corruption.
I'd recommend you first try updating your graphics card drivers along with Direct X. Then if that doesn't work, try contacting GOG if their support articles yield no solutions. Ultimately, if something has gone that wrong you may be better off formatting and reinstalling your OS.

Dunno if you've managed to resolve all of those problems but here's a few threads that could help:
Fallout 2: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/Fallout_Series/fallout_2_colors_problem/_/1
Giants: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/giants_citizen_kabuto/music_with_black_screen
With freespace 2, what exactly happens?
I can't say I really understand the steam hate myself. I don't like having retail games dependant on it since it just gives valve a monopoly on that one game and I don't like the fact they don't do any form of compatibility work on old games but other than that they're okay.

Honestly it's funny, something like that did happen the other day.
Visa had blocked my card and called me to check out on potential fraud, all because I made 3-4 purchases over the course of two or three days on GOG.

try shopping at 2-3 gas stations in a day, same thing will happen

http://forums.aceteam.cl/index.php?showtopic=897&pid=7650&st=0
On the sidenote, one of the Steam tech support guys has stepped in to offer a hand. I'm having mixed feelings regarding this. I know he has good intentions, but on the other hand, I also do know that they'll never be outright honest, since there's a lot of non-disclosure information that cannot be revealed to the public.
Oh well. Alas.

Not saying you're wrong there, or condemning your point in any way, but my case is the exact opposite. I got a reply very quickly, within 3 working days. In your case, you may just have been unlucky.
I do agree that these older games are more problematic, but I can also assure you that the GOG staff is fully supportive of their games...at least upon initial release ( yes GOG I'm glaring at you for M.A.X >.< ). Nevertheless, they do check in from time to time on issues that people might be having.
Of course, to balance the argument, I'd have to play devil's advocate and say that a lot of issues have been fixed by the community, rather than GOG. I've paid for my right to own the game and I demand full satisfaction. But, to be on the human rationale argument, GOG isn't exactly charging a nuclear bomb for its games, and there are over a hundred games with issues to deal with, not considering the fact that there are upcoming games that will need to be closely tweaked and examined too. Factor in the unpredictability of DOSBox on various types of systems, and you have all the various intricacies that make it difficult for GOG to properly deal with entirely.
I do understand your angst, and I don't think they're unjustified, especially since you're obviously just a disgruntled customer rather than coming in and raging like a kid, but at the same time, I will blame it more on bad luck than anything else that the games aren't working properly.
For Freespace 2, look into Freespace Open. Freespace 2 native has issues running on most systems, including mine, so this is something that we'll have to deal with on our own. I know it sucks not being able to run it out of the box...er browser, but oh well, life goes on. Put it this way, you still need Freespace 2 to run Freespace Open anyway :)
Don't know of a fix for your other problems, sorry :(