Poll: Your least favorite online distribution system. And why?

[KungFuJazzHands]

Steam for me because it's nothing but bloatware at this point. It's only getting buggier and slower with each update. Valve's developers are so obsessed with pet projects that they've completely let their flagship client go by the wayside. They should consider offering a "slim" client that offers only the minimum a user would need to play his/her games -- enough with the feature-creep, Valve!

Origin, aside from rendering my digital copy of MoH Airborne unplayable, hasn't done enough to offend me yet.

GMG's Capsule is shovelware, but it more or less does what it's supposed to do.

GfWL? Everyone hates using it, and there's a hundred reasons for that.

Uplay -- any client that prevents its games from playing isn't worth the bandwidth it takes up.

 

[Talshere]

Anything that completely locks up my computer for a full 10 seconds on launch is not good for it. Also, fuck you EA.

 

[Requia]

Steam. Because it's so popular. No really, I'm worried about them having too much power over developers if they keep getting more popular, akin to what happens with Amazon or Walmart squeezing suppliers.

I'll give you this, that is a reasonable concern to have; but Valve has no power over other developers. They don't own any smaller devs. They did buy out Turtle Rock a few years back, but they broke up and went their separate ways. Valve tried to work with another developer on a project, but it didn't go anywhere. Valve prefers to operate alone, so they will have minimal influence on other developers.

I think you misunderstand the concern. The problem is as more and more people buy their games nearly exclusively from Steam, developers that don't have millions to spend on marketing become invisible if they aren't on Steam, and that means they'll have no choice but to accept whatever Valve wants to pay them, Valve in turn can use that power over devs to lower prices on Steam that won't be lowered elsewhere, driving the distribution level competition under and further cementing its monopsony.

IOf course in the meantime I buy from them because they're the only game in town if I want multiple OS support -_-

 

[J Tyran]

Gonna go with Uplay because of how obnoxious it is, at least with Origin you do not have to load it up with games you bought elsewhere. If you buy an EA game through Steam for example it uses Steam, if you buy an EA game through Origin it uses Origin.

Not Uplay, Ubisoft have to be a special snowflake and demand you use whatever platform you bought the game through and Uplay as well.

 

[BrotherRool]

The ones I use have been generally equally bad. Steam has screwed me over a lot more times than Origin has, but then I've also used it more.

 

[MetalDooley]

Well as a console gamer I'm going to nominate Xbox 360's Games on Demand service for a few reasons

1)It can take several months after launch for games to appear on the service which kinda renders the "On Demand" title a bit questionable
2)Games are often up to ?20 more expensive than the physical copy was at launch.Certain games on the service retail for ?70 when most hard copies here launch at ?50-?55
3)This combines 1 & 2.Because games take so long to appear it often means that MS will be charging ?70 for a game that's currently retailing for between ?20 - ?30 in stores
4)Games drop in price glacially slow.I've seen games retailing at their launch price a year after launching
5)Apparently you can't play the games offline for longer than 10 minutes.Recently I was playing a game I bought from the service and I got disconnected from Xbox Live.A message immediately popped up on screen saying "You must be signed into Xbox Live to continue playing.10 minutes remaining".I left it to see what would happen.The message repeated every minute for 10 minutes until the time ran out and it booted me back to the main menu

 

[Eliam_Dar]

Well, I tried Origin, and I hated it. The main problem I have is that the pricing is in euros for me, which is weird since I am in Argentina. I checked if it was a configuration problem or something like that but it all seems to be ok. In fact I checked with a friedns who also had it, and thye were charged in Euros too. After that I unistalled it.

 

[Tayh]

Steam is a blessing to us PC gamers.

In the future, please don't assume to be speaking for everyone with statements like that.

My least favourite "online distribution system" (<-wtf not just call it DRM like it is?) is steam.
Mostly because:
- It got its greedy, slimy tentacles on such a large part of the gaming industry, it's almost impossible to find a non-steam(DRM) game these days.
- It takes control away from the user.
- It made omnipresent DRM popular by bribing its users with discounts.
- "God damnit, I bought a physical copy of a game, why do I need to use steam/re-download the game/download&install patches before being able to play/wait for steam update before being allowed to play"
- More expensive than retail(Denmark).
- Tries to be the facebook of the gaming world.
- Highly unreliable and limited offline mode.
And lastly:
- Its religiously fanatic users.

 

[Daft Time]

Anything that isn't GoG or Steam.

Either give it to me DRM free, or put it on the one DRM platform I'm allowing on my computer, because I'm not having more than one of those pieces of shit clogging up my system.

/thread, basically. The only thing I have to add is how much I loathe Origin in particular - it's probably not any worse than other systems, I just haven't used enough of them - but holly hell is EA's custom service the most soul crushing thing on the planet.

 

[The Lunatic]

While steam is far from perfect, it's much better than the alternatives.

I do hope Steam improves in places, but, right now, It's hard to really dislike the platform all that much.