Main Area and Open Discussion > DC Gamer Club
Steam, and the gift of game...
Deozaan:
Another topic here was about Audiosurf, but I didn't download it because it required Steam. Maybe I'll reconsider...
f0dder:
I was pretty skeptical about STEAM when it first appeared, and I had this whole "ah christ, now I need a silly launcher app just to play games" - but I quickly grew to like it. You don't need to have it auto-start with windows, you have a convenient game-list of all your STEAM games, it's easy to purchase online (although with big game releases, the servers tended to be a bit overburdened. That should be fixed with multi-server download which was introduced a while ago, though), auto-updates, et cetera.
But one of the biggest benefits, to me anyway, is still that the games tend not to have über-intrusive copy protection, instead relying on STEAMs much gentler mechanism.
jgpaiva:
I think Steam was the best thing that happened in the gaming world.
I had never bought genuine games prior to using steam, and since I use it, I've already bought 3! (which, coincidentally, were the only games I played in that time, except for the free trackmania nations).
It's easy to buy, it's usually way cheaper than in stores (at least around here), and it's MUCH more confortable than having to carry and save the CDs and cases.
As a person who tends to loose "real world" stuff, I think this is the perfect solution to keep everything at hand ;)
Lashiec:
Is Steam really all it's cracked up to be? Does it phone home or run when it's not supposed to? Does it hide itself as a service that runs automatically when my PC starts up?
-Deozaan (September 01, 2008, 12:47 PM)
--- End quote ---
It's not perfect, but it's much better than similar services, either devised for gaming (Direct2Drive and the like), or for music and video (yeah, that big sack of crap called iTunes). The unique problem I see in its future it's the reliance on DRM, which poses the question of what will happen with your games if Valve goes out of business (or another company buys them). You could say that something like that will never happen with Valve, but bigger companies fell despite it seemed they could do nothing wrong. Gabe Newell said unofficially that they will provide something if that happens, so I guess it's not a problem (we can always use other methods anyway *cough*).
Something that also worries me is that everyone seems to be in a "me too" stance, and they're releasing their own services, complete with frontends: Microsoft, Stardock... prolly others like EA or Activision could join the fest, as well as more "niche" companies.
Other than that, it's pretty nice. Not intrusive, takes care of your games, you can use as a frontend for other games you have in the computer, and the terms of service are reasonable. The option of letting you download the games as many times as you want it's what convinced me. That, and getting some free games thanks to my copy of Half-Life, and the nice offers they have for older games.
Personally, I'm more interested in things like Good Old Games, which don't tie you in any way, and have excellent prices. Of course, we're talking about games not available in physical shops, so I guess companies will not embrace it as an alternative method (with all the crazy talk about piracy, low prices and no DRM for PC games scare 99% of the game companies), but I think it will find its place in the net. In my case, I'm drooling over the perspective of almost stealing Operation Flashpoint and Fallout so...
Deozaan:
So I just clicked the button in Steam to download the Audiosurf demo. Apparently it downloaded and preloaded Audiosurf (Full game) first, then started on downloading the demo... Not cool.
Anyway, I'll give it a try for a while more, though I haven't bought (or played, I guess) a new retail PC game for a couple years because I'd rather spend the money on console games.
Spore will be the first new PC game I've played/purchased since Oblivion, I think.
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