Not at all, its like steam. F-droid and GOG can provide software but neither can truly replicate the functionality or the full library of software. F-Droid doesnt have a g-pay alternative because its an open source hobby project and they dont have extensive cloud services.
My point is that the difference is that GOG only needs to compete with the feature-completeness and the momentum of Steam, while F-Droid is legally unable to have the same features as Google Play.
GOG could integrate achievements, a good launcher, a mod workshop, the whole community thing, get a lot of games on the platform, and eventually they would be able to offer the same experience to a newcomer as Steam. Existing customers would take time to switch, maybe, but still.
It’s a better position where F-Droid is just legally unable to offer a competing service to Google Pay or the Google Play infra APIs. Also, Steam does not come preinstalled on every Windows PC (or even Linux/Mac), while GPlay is the first thing to start up on every Android phone.
All that doesn’t stand for the Deck obviously, there it’s more similar, still not the same though as I understand.
Can either of those compete with Google Play on equal terms though?
Not at all, its like steam. F-droid and GOG can provide software but neither can truly replicate the functionality or the full library of software. F-Droid doesnt have a g-pay alternative because its an open source hobby project and they dont have extensive cloud services.
My point is that the difference is that GOG only needs to compete with the feature-completeness and the momentum of Steam, while F-Droid is legally unable to have the same features as Google Play.
GOG could integrate achievements, a good launcher, a mod workshop, the whole community thing, get a lot of games on the platform, and eventually they would be able to offer the same experience to a newcomer as Steam. Existing customers would take time to switch, maybe, but still.
It’s a better position where F-Droid is just legally unable to offer a competing service to Google Pay or the Google Play infra APIs. Also, Steam does not come preinstalled on every Windows PC (or even Linux/Mac), while GPlay is the first thing to start up on every Android phone.
All that doesn’t stand for the Deck obviously, there it’s more similar, still not the same though as I understand.