as far as I'm concerned it is great. I recently had my hard drive fail and had to reinstall my games. Steam made that incredibly easy and I appreciate that. Also the frequent deals they have are really good too.
Poll: Steam, how do you feel about it?
- Thread starter Vault101
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I like Steam, but I never bought digitally from them, my games just happened to use Steam. (It's because I'm materialistic and like to see a big row of boxes) Although Supreme Commander 2 had to download 3 GB of data (updates) even after disk install. What??? Why do you need that much in updates a week after the game came out? But at least it auto updates games for me.
Its amazingly convenient, especially since there isnt a gaming store for miles that sells half the games that I own on steam. I love having hard copies, but they go bad, like my copy of Bioshock. Plus, ive got nowhere to put them all, so digital storage is good. I dont like that you have to be online to access them but its ok most of the time.
You know.. You should try and sign up for steam, god knows what. You might actually like it? Some of my friends tend to go on it only twice a month "Im on it every day" but they still believe that while not being flawless. It doesnt hurt anyone and a lot of people enjoy it in general. Valve making titles exclusive to it is for pure business. But apparently it is ignored when titles are made exclusive to Xbox but i guess a PC Platform and a Console are two different things?Daffy F said:
when it comes down to it, any game distribution method that allows me to purchase every game by a developer for a low freakin price... well it has my vote... like earlier in the year i bought the rockstar pack with like... yeah all the GTA series for the pc from 1 to 4 including the expansion for it, and a couple other games, for less than $40CAD. not to mention other insane deals that've led me to buy games i've been looking forward to for like $5 rather than the general retail $30-$40 range... so yeah... steam is a great medium for game distribution.
also as far as the whole DRM thing, steam is by far one of the softest and easiest versions of it out there, not to mention it has an offline mode, and rather than just "Taking you from behind" like most DRM it just asks you a question(login info), and gives you discounts on a ton of stuff... not to mention less ecological destruction as there are no boxes and packaging to produce/dispose of... so really, it's not about losing personal liberties or anything... companies are just trying to protect their licence and their profit margin which is totally ok, also people who complain about the bandwidth thing... that's YOUR problem not something steam is causing... if you can't even afford a good connection what are you doing buying games anyway... just doesn't make sense... forgo a single game a month and BOOM better connection... and as for anyone living in a less than internet friendly country, please complain about your country, it's their fault... see what i'm saying? bitching and moaning about steam is pointless, they're not causing your problems with their service, they're just providing a service, if you can't access it because of some other issue, they're just not involved in that... so why hate on them?
anyhow
/end rant.
also as far as the whole DRM thing, steam is by far one of the softest and easiest versions of it out there, not to mention it has an offline mode, and rather than just "Taking you from behind" like most DRM it just asks you a question(login info), and gives you discounts on a ton of stuff... not to mention less ecological destruction as there are no boxes and packaging to produce/dispose of... so really, it's not about losing personal liberties or anything... companies are just trying to protect their licence and their profit margin which is totally ok, also people who complain about the bandwidth thing... that's YOUR problem not something steam is causing... if you can't even afford a good connection what are you doing buying games anyway... just doesn't make sense... forgo a single game a month and BOOM better connection... and as for anyone living in a less than internet friendly country, please complain about your country, it's their fault... see what i'm saying? bitching and moaning about steam is pointless, they're not causing your problems with their service, they're just providing a service, if you can't access it because of some other issue, they're just not involved in that... so why hate on them?
anyhow
/end rant.
Well, prices are generally cheaper, it's an easy way to connect with people, and the ability to add non-Steam games means that I can stuff everything into a file deep in my hard drive and still be able to quickly access it. Heck, I use it more often for non-Steam games actually. It's just a nice streamlined interface that appeals to me. Plus there's the whole uninstall now, reinstall later for no cost thing going for it.
I love Steam, very convenient. Takes a bit of figuring out tho, to really get the most out of it. For example, using 'mklink' to move specific games around (such as putting one on an SSD while the rest of them are on a HDD). I've not had any real issues with it.
I have Fallout 3 and Spore via Direct2Drive and their downloader sucks... yesterday I accidentally deleted a file. Steam, you just "verify cache integrity" and it'll download the missing files BAM done, good to go. D2D? Nope, had to download 5GB over the course of 3 or 4 hours and completely reinstall the game.
CDs are certainly nice, but I have 1TB of media storage space so... whatever. Definitely not going to delete that Fallout installer this time, just in case. Stupid D2D.
I haven't used Impulse for a while. The only reason I've ever used it was to get Demigod a long time ago. I didn't like their set up at the time but maybe it's better now.
The one thing that still irks me tho, is downloading a game on Steam which then wants either Games for Windows Live or some other DRM thing - I think it was Crysis that wanted to instal Comrade (The D2D installer)... it's just like, wtf?? I'm on Steam!
Oh well, I can deal with it.
I have Fallout 3 and Spore via Direct2Drive and their downloader sucks... yesterday I accidentally deleted a file. Steam, you just "verify cache integrity" and it'll download the missing files BAM done, good to go. D2D? Nope, had to download 5GB over the course of 3 or 4 hours and completely reinstall the game.
CDs are certainly nice, but I have 1TB of media storage space so... whatever. Definitely not going to delete that Fallout installer this time, just in case. Stupid D2D.
I haven't used Impulse for a while. The only reason I've ever used it was to get Demigod a long time ago. I didn't like their set up at the time but maybe it's better now.
The one thing that still irks me tho, is downloading a game on Steam which then wants either Games for Windows Live or some other DRM thing - I think it was Crysis that wanted to instal Comrade (The D2D installer)... it's just like, wtf?? I'm on Steam!
Oh well, I can deal with it.
