Is Steam okay for you?

[Rheinmetall]

I often talk with friends on the internet, most of the time with people mature and opinionated about games and many other things. And there is always this thing that we will never agree about: Steam. They think that Sream is a kind of blessing for gamers, an oasis in a desert of malevolent gaming services, and above all, a good seller with good prices.

What I think? Why do I need a stable high speed internet connection, forced registration and membership to a site that I don't want, in order to play an offline SINGLE-PLAYER game that for my bad luck is linked with Steam? I would say the exact same things for Games For Windows Live service, but all gamers seem to dismiss GFWL, but are tolerant, or positive with Steam. And this is something I don't much get, since they do exactly the same thing, they force me to become member of a site that I don't want to. I only want to play the game that I already paid for, and that the price stickers and the wrapping didn't let me read clearly the small letters on the back of the case, saying that the game is essentially property of Steam. At least GFWL have a big logo on the front to warn you.

 

[Sp3ratus]

What I think? Why do I need a stable high speed internet connection, forced registration and membership to a site that I don't want, in order to play an offline SINGLE-PLAYER game that for my bad luck is linked with Steam?

Steam does have an offline mode. Read more about it [link = https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555]here[/link], though it really is what is says on the can; being able to play your games, without Steam having connection to the internet.

As for the forced registration, I really do think that's a minor complaint. You don't lose anything by signing up, you're not forced to buy anything and who's to stop you from making an account with a fake name? The only time your identity is verified, is if you buy something from the store, which by the sound of your post is not something you'd do.

Anyway, as for why me and other people love Steam? It's a great compromise on the DRM issue(IMO), the store has great deals, Steam Cloud for selected games, being able to find your friends easily and play with them. All of those things are what makes Steam great and is why I have hundreds(damn you, holiday sales!) on there.

 

[Kristian Fischer]

Definite +1. It's had some issues over the past few weeks (for me, at least), but on the whole, Steam is brilliant.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I think Steam is pretty amazing. I won't deny that it has its issues. I've definitely had some over the years. I remember when I had a crashing but I couldn't locate and couldn't play half my games on Steam for a few months because until it was patched and fixed.
Despite all of that though, I still think Steam is awesome. All my friends are right there, its easy to coordinate playing games with each other. There is a huge library of games, often at amazingly low prices. It is super easy to see what games my friends want and buy them for them as a gift if I want to.
The Steam servers are also incredibly fast, I can download a 16GB game in just a couple hours. All in all, I have no reason to dislike Steam. I use it for all my gaming. The only time I go elsewhere is if the game is not available on Steam, which usually means its older and I go to GOG.com Another awesome site.
I can get why some people don't care for the service though. I don't like draconian DRM and I never really considered Steam that, but I know some people are against ANY kind of DRM at all, which I can't blame them for. For me, convenience outweighs it.

 

[cliffski]

Steam is like a benevolent dictator, just like google, paypal, or facebook. They are all great services that make our lives better. It's just scary that they are close to being global monopolies. That always ends very badly in the long,long run. We wouldn't be happy if there was one energy company on earth dominating the energuy industry, and we shouldn't tolerate it anywhere else either.
so...
Steam is great
Competition is great too.

 

[Jack_Uzi]

Don't like steam one bit. It annoys me that I have to face some pop-up box with commercials about games before I can actually just play a game I paid for!!! So that's the 'thanks' you get for your purchase "here, have some more of where that came from!!!".... yeah...>_<

 

[TheGauntman]

As with most things, I look at the positives and the negatives; and if the positives outweigh the negatives then I judge it to be 'good'.

Steam is a mostly stable platform which offers me easy access to a broad range of titles with frequent sales and discounts, ease of communication and co-operative gameplay with friends, and overall solid mechanics and accessibility.

Sometimes the download speeds aren't as fast as I would like and in the last few days content servers were inaccessible so I had to back-up my game files and reinstall the client.

So overall I'd say Steam is 'okay', because mostly I have had a good experience with it.

 

[Joccaren]

I"m with you OP. Steam sucks.

I buy Civ V. To play it, I have to install it, register it with Steam, and then load up Steam every time I want to play it. Steam has to be up, even if in offline mode. It takes longer to load up than any other process on my PC, and I don't like waiting around for some bumbling piece of crap to load up something that should load on its own. I don't like that Steam forces you to update before playing, I don't like that it throws adds in your face every freaking time you close a game, so that if I'm testing out different settings that require me to close the game to take effect, I keep getting an add shoved in my face as I try to restart it, I hate the blooming overlay that glitches and pops up every time I alt tab (Well, that's a lie. Any time I press shift after alt tabbing back to the game. No, I am not holding down the tab key) back into a game. It is a useless service that should be 100% optional.

Now, for others, I understand it is a good place to digitally buy games cheap. As a service, there are others better (Hell, Origin Loads faster and has better connection speeds, and few of the games in my library require it).

 

[Kapol]

Steam does have an offline mode. Read more about it [link = https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555]here[/link], though it really is what is says on the can; being able to play your games, without Steam having connection to the internet.

Try saying that when you lost access to the internet for a week or more unexpectedly and can't access your games because you have to be able to go online to go into offline mode. I think it's a bit of backwards logic there. "You can play offline. But you have to go online first then set it so your computer is in this special mode that lets you play offline." That's why I always have either my desktop or laptop on offline mode at all times as a precaution.


Personally, my problem with Steam is that they can legally cut off access to every single game you have through them whenever they want. Yes, other programs do this too (like Origin), but this is something that is kinda glossed over by many for Steam. And I know what a lot of people will say. This is Valve, who is a kind company who always works with gamers when there's an issue, right? Not quite so much. I've heard of people losing access to their accounts (and by extension every game they own on Steam), and having to wait about a week to find out why they did in the first place because Steam support is just awful. And when they do, that doesn't always mean the people can get access right away.

The fact they can make you unable to play your games at all is enough to make me consider the service a bit iffy. I could understand cutting people off from buying anymore games, or taking back games that have payment issues (which yes, if there is a payment issue, they take away total access to your account). But to take away access to the games people paid for either through them or through other places since many games are going Steamworks just seems wrong.

 

[AppleShrapnel]

Been a user for a long while now, and have never come across ads popping up... closest thing is a window announcing newly released titles, others that are available for pre-purchasing, new dlc packs and the like.

I guess you could label that an ad, but it's not like you have to sit through a 30sec Pepsi commercial before you can start playing or something... it pops up, you click "close", crisis averted.

If you think it's the anti-Christ and never want to spend money there, then... well, you're a strange person. I have over 300 games and been registered there for 3 years, and have never had DRM issues with anything. If that's the only thing you're worried about, then your fear is grossly unfounded. /:|

 

[Roxor]

I think Steam is great. The only things I think it's missing are clients for Linux and Android operating systems.

 

[M4t3us]

I've used Steam since Half-Life 2 was released and I remember hating to have it installed in order to play Counter Strike: Source, but back back then Steam was a bloated piece of software.

7 years pass, I've been account hacked once, but regained access the same day after a trade of e-mails with Steam Support, so I don't agree about them sucking and I own 40ish games on Steam now, which I can play both on and offline, with little to no trouble.

Honestly, if I had to buy these games retail I'd have lost the disks and I couldn't play them anymore, but mostly I wouldn't buy them retail, why? I pre-ordered Skyrim on Steam for ?40, while it costs ?60 retail.

As long as Valve doesn't turn evil, Hail Steam!

 

[Kapol]

I've heard of people losing access to their accounts (and by extension every game they own on Steam), and having to wait about a week to find out why they did in the first place because Steam support is just awful.

Yeah, I've heard about those idiots who are unable to write a ticket too.

I for one had to contact the support several times for various reasons and it took never longer than ~6h to solve my problem. And one of those problems was the loss of account, email-account and secret answer. 6h to put the account on another email and enable access for me. Sooo awful.

Yes, because it worked fine for you it must be fine for everyone. I've had to write them a number of tickets about a number of things as well. I've never got an answer earlier then 3 days later and even then, more often then not, I got automated responses that didn't really answer the question I had asked.

And my point still stands that they shouldn't be able to take away access to your games at all. Even if it is only 6 hours, that's still 6 hours that you can't access the content you paid for.

 

[anthony87]

What's with all these people saying you have to be online to go into offline mode? My internet had a little hiccup when I turned the computer on and then Steam popped up with a failed to connect message and gave me the option of either retrying the connection or starting in offline mode.

 

[M4t3us]

And my point still stands that they shouldn't be able to take away access to your games at all. Even if it is only 6 hours, that's still 6 hours that you can't access the content you paid for.

Well from the moment you pushed "I Agree" on their EULA you were giving them lawful authorization to do so. Don't like it? Start reading the ToS and EULA's before pushing the I Agree button.

 

[VladG]

Don't like steam one bit. It annoys me that I have to face some pop-up box with commercials about games before I can actually just play a game I paid for!!! So that's the 'thanks' you get for your purchase "here, have some more of where that came from!!!".... yeah...>_<

Those bastards, shoving their massive discounts in our faces like that every time!

I rather like Steam, it does indeed have a form of DRM but there are a few things in it's favor:
It offers good online services to compensate for the DRM, like cloud storage, easy access to friends so that I actually do want to be online and not just be forced to be.

They have very good offers now and then (and if you don't think so, check Origin, see how many games they have for 10$ or lower... that's right, none).

There's also the convenience of not having to leave the room to buy pretty much any game I want.

 

[Kapol]

And my point still stands that they shouldn't be able to take away access to your games at all. Even if it is only 6 hours, that's still 6 hours that you can't access the content you paid for.

Well from the moment you pushed "I Agree" on their EULA you were giving them lawful authorization to do so. Don't like it? Start reading the ToS and EULA's before pushing the I Agree button.

I've known that Steam cutting off access to my content was something I'd have to potentially deal with from the moment I signed up. It's something I can live with, but that doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me or that it shoudln't annoy me. 'Lawful' doesn't always mean that something is good. So thanks for pointing out the obvious.