Steam vs PC?

[SilentVirus]

Kids...sit around the campfire while I tell you a tell... Once like two weeks ago I decided to get a new game for the PC. So I got dressed and embarked on a long journey. I walked up to EB Games.Had to find out the new that the game I wanted wasn't in stalk. Walked home. Drove to Walmart. Stood in line for a ridiculous amount of time. Purchased the game. Went home. Realized that my house key is missing . Searched car. Drove back to Walmart parking lot. Found keys. Spent $65 on gas. Went home settled down at my computer where upon my disc drive somehow scratch the disc when put it in (Really sharp tray?). Game is really hard to play without the game messing up every 25 minutes.
Ironically my friend got the same game on Steam without the whole trip I went through.
Lesson of the story is...."Eff this I'm using Steam"

 

[Skizle]

Their are a few problems I have with Steam.
1: You have to be connected to the internet in order to PLAY games and if your on the road with a laptop your shit out of luck.

2: Valve will NOT lower the price of their games no matter how old they are (I still thought $7 for HL1 was a rip off)

3: Why the built in internet browser?

4: if the game originated on disk then you cant lend the disk out to others in order to try it out before they buy it.

5: You can't regulate the speed at which you download, you can only pause it.

1. You can play games in offline mode just not online games like TF2

2.Were you paying attention the last few days they were having a TON of sales including there own games

3.Cuz... thats not really a problem

4.Don't most games have a CD key so you can only have it on 1 computer at a time anyway.

5.Not really much of a problem. I dont know why you would want to slow down the DL speed.

OT:Steam is amazing and worth having unless having the physical disk is a MUST for you.

1: you still have to log on to Steam to play in offline mode. If I cold boot my laptop no were near an internet connection and I want to play KOTOR I'm still screwed.

2: yes, but I hate how some of their older games still cost $20

3: Its pointless and it irritates me when people use it

4: a CD key generally prevents you from playing online at the same time from 2 different ISP

5: I would like to regulate it so that I can balance the game I'm downloading and other downloads as well as not DESTROYING my internet connection.

 

[Vern]

I prefer buying the games on CD/DVD/Physical copy if I can, however if Steam is having a sale where I can get the game for a quarter of the price I'll go with it. I prefer having the case, the manual, and an actual, tangible copy of the game. From what I know you can back up your Steam games, but I haven't tried it so I'm not sure if you would still need to have steam installed to install them. That's my main concern with downloaded games, if the company goes down, or stops supporting the service you can't reinstall the game. I still play DOS games from 1992, and most of the publishers aren't in business anymore. The only way they can be played is by having the original disc, and messing around with them enough to force them to play. I know Valve is great and awesome, but who knows if they'll still be around and supporting Steam in 17 years. On the other hand, if you have the disc, there will always be like-minded individuals that can make them work on new software. So I'd go with buying the actual disc for games you really want, I mostly just use Steam and other download services that have games I kind of want to play that have decent prices. Physical beats intangible.

 

[Zephirius]

Actually, games ON Steam but not made BY Valve are independent of Steam once they are downloaded, ie, you don't need Steam to run them (you can just go click the little exe in its particular file). Making it essentially DRM-free.

Most STEAM games come with whatever manuals the game provider provides, which is usually an HTML version of the box manual.

This is just a little silly.

Ever visited Good Old Games? It really is a fantastic little site that goes beyond any other digital distribution site to try and please their customers. For example older games sold via STEAM work on a buyer beware premise, not guaranteed to work on newer systems nor do they generally come with anything beyond the game itself. GOG on the other hand has their own installer which they've implemented for every game in their catalogue, tweaking the games so that they'll work on newer systems. Customer support is also fantastic and most if not all games in their library come with extras, not simply manual's and wallpapers, but often entire soundtracks and the like. No DRM of any sort either, once you've downloaded the game it comes in a simple exe file you're free to do as you wish with, nothing more, nothing less.

It really is a great website. Saying it's superior to STEAM as far as distributing older games go isn't the least bit silly, it's common sense.

Give it a try!

So, just an installer .exe, you say? Sounds like GamersGate. No paper manuals though, and not all games have digital manuals either. Still, I prefer not needing to run a bloated content delivery system in the background while I play games.

 

[RanD00M]

Steam is both a download program so you just get it straight after purchase.When you download it,Steam installs the games during the download.So it's ready straight after the download has ended.And it often has weekend offers and midweek offers that can you great games for 25-75% of the original price.

 

[Pyode]

1: you still have to log on to Steam to play in offline mode. If I cold boot my laptop no were near an internet connection and I want to play KOTOR I'm still screwed.

2: yes, but I hate how some of their older games still cost $20

3: Its pointless and it irritates me when people use it

4: a CD key generally prevents you from playing online at the same time from 2 different ISP

5: I would like to regulate it so that I can balance the game I'm downloading and other downloads as well as not DESTROYING my internet connection.

1: If you already have it set to offline mode, you can exit and restart steam without re-connecting.

2: You have to realize that buying an old game isn't the same as buying a used game at a store, hence the slightly higher price.

3: Um... that sounds like a personal problem.

4: That depends on the game.

5: That seems like a minor problem. Just download whatever is more important first, it won't take much longer then downloading a bunch of stuff at reduced capacity.

 

[Shadowkire]

What do you people do with your disks that "no scratchy CDs" (even though they would probably be DVDs) is actually significant enough to be mentioned?

Tip 1: Sandpaper goes in the garage, not your office or any room that has a valuable scratchable surface.

Tip 2: Disk holders, cases and protectors exist for a reason, use them.

 

[PureFlight]

I love this thread. You folks are great!

 

[wordsmith]

Whilst steam is brillant, I can think of at least 2 other services which do the same, http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/ and http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/. Steam is great, it's got a great community, I have great fun playing with the other Escapists on it, but the one drawback is the pick-up-and-play problems it has. If you want to play something for 15 minutes and there's a new patch out, there's no way of stopping it patching. You have to wait for it to patch and load before you can hit the play button.

On the other hand, £15.26 to get Braid, STALKER Clear Sky and Chernobyl and Mass Effect can't be to bad, can it?

 

[skullbone]

im pretty new to steam but its a brilliant system and some of the deals you get are amazing. there are not many places you can get a set of games worth over £180 for just under £40 in a holiday sale and no store that i know of gives deals like that.

 

[MNRA]

I've been looking around back issues of the escapist for 20 minutes now but I can't find the article that puts so eloquently why steam (and other D2D) must die. I'll try to surmise my own feelings about it thoguh. This is a far5 less compelling argunet than the articles made so if you have time, look them up (Such as "The Downside of Direct Downloads" from issue 212). No offence to you steam users, but I'm quite happy with the selection of games that I can buy and hold in my hands. I don't need the excessive (and at the same time limited) selection of steam.

1: When you buy a game from steam, you do not physically own the game. You have a digital version that is only acessible too you if you have the internet. If your harddrive crashes or if the steam servers go down. You have paid money to own absolutely nothing.

2: When playing some (not all) games. You play on servers that are hosted by the company. As such, if coupled with the above steam argument, what you have just done is (metaphoricaly), not to buy a car, you have paid money to loan a car and drive it on someone elses porch. When I buy a game I expect to be able to just put it in my PC, install, and play. I do not expect to be forced to install extra programs (i.e. steam) nor do I expect to be forced to be connected to some internet serverce (WL and sometimes steam) just to play the game. I expect to be able to play without the latest patch should I choose to do so, and download said patch when I want. AND I expect to be able to play even if a power outage has made some server in america unavailable.

3: To exemplify my point I'll say that I'm a great fan of the Dawn of war games, yet I'm not touching the second one with a 15 foot pole after the clusterfuck that windows live turned it into. I'm SURE steam is diffrerent but I don't give a damn. If I'm paying money so that I can stand in three years time after steam turns sour and not own a single game. They can frankly go f*ck themselves.

PS. If blizzard is going to go battle-net only with SC2 I'm not buying. DS.

 

[gxs]

I have only one problem with Steam. If you're from anywhere else than America then you're getting ripped off. The money conversion system if 1€=1$ and that's just not fair.
So if you're not from America you're usually better off with any of the other download services.

But they do have great special deals so it's not all bad.

 

[Amarok]

I have only one problem with Steam. If you're from anywhere else than America then you're getting ripped off. The money conversion system if 1€=1$ and that's just not fair.
So if you're not from America you're usually better off with any of the other download services.

But they do have great special deals so it's not all bad.

IS it still? Cos I generally have to pay less £ than Americans do $, or is this just a Euro thing? :S

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I've been looking around back issues of the escapist for 20 minutes now but I can't find the article that puts so eloquently why steam (and other D2D) must die. I'll try to surmise my own feelings about it thoguh. This is a far5 less compelling argunet than the articles made so if you have time, look them up (Such as "The Downside of Direct Downloads" from issue 212). No offence to you steam users, but I'm quite happy with the selection of games that I can buy and hold in my hands. I don't need the excessive (and at the same time limited) selection of steam.

1: When you buy a game from steam, you do not physically own the game. You have a digital version that is only acessible too you if you have the internet. If your harddrive crashes or if the steam servers go down. You have paid money to own absolutely nothing.

2: When playing some (not all) games. You play on servers that are hosted by the company. As such, if coupled with the above steam argument, what you have just done is (metaphoricaly), not to buy a car, you have paid money to loan a car and drive it on someone elses porch. When I buy a game I expect to be able to just put it in my PC, install, and play. I do not expect to be forced to install extra programs (i.e. steam) nor do I expect to be forced to be connected to some internet serverce (WL and sometimes steam) just to play the game. I expect to be able to play without the latest patch should I choose to do so, and download said patch when I want. AND I expect to be able to play even if a power outage has made some server in america unavailable.

3: To exemplify my point I'll say that I'm a great fan of the Dawn of war games, yet I'm not touching the second one with a 15 foot pole after the clusterfuck that windows live turned it into. I'm SURE steam is diffrerent but I don't give a damn. If I'm paying money so that I can stand in three years time after steam turns sour and not own a single game. They can frankly go f*ck themselves.

PS. If blizzard is going to go battle-net only with SC2 I'm not buying. DS.

Actually although you own a virtual copy of the game you can actually download it and reinstall it as much as you please all you need is access to your steam account that you bought said game on. The only problem I have with steam is even if you want to play a Vavle game offline you are forced to update it first and you have to be online to play games on steam other than that I have no problems with Steam as I bought over 30 with those christmas deals.

 

[Z_Invader]

I totally agree with you Goldeneye1989, I reasently bought Empire: Total War and it took good few days to download all needed updates after crashing and downloading failing.

Tried turning the updates off but then it would let me play the game and took something like 10gb of my internet allowance.That was probably the most annoying that I had to pay more money for something I already paid.

But lets go back and think about the people that cant get access to the internet at that time but are really hoocked to the game....what then???

However overall I think steam is a good value for money software offering a lot products, downloads and freebies.