Your opinion on Steam.

[Phisi]

Excellent. I use it for buying and playing my games, talking to friends and organising events (LAN PARTIES ) Very useful to someone who doesn't like using FaceBook or MSN and plays lot of games. Oh and to the person who asked, steam does not use an always on DRM, you can go to offline mode but some games require you to be online. As for not having physical copies in case something goes wrong, I trust Valve enough not to care. Steam has also made it available for indie developers to publish their games. They no longer have to make bad deals with publishers.

 

[martin's a madman]

I've only had one issue and that was with DOOM 3 and CD key nonsense. But other than that, it's been pretty great.

Hello there, fellow Escapists.

I am currently very pissed of, see. I bought Dawn of War 2: Retribution, and I was so excited. I tried it at a friend's and I loved it, so I thought I´d get it myself. I go home, I insert the CD, Steam tells me "Enter CD-Key", after which an error comes out and says that my CD is duplicated. Now of course you can imagine my frustration (My desk took the most of my rage). This is NOT my first problem with Steam. I was unable to install Red Faction Armageddon too, because of a similar problem (Unavailable at my region). Anyway, enough of my ranting ... okay, just a little more: I HATE online activation, because of shit like this I'm forced to resort to piracy (I paid for a retail copy, so shut up!). I remember when all you needed was your disk and a CD Key, simple as that. I despise the fact that EVERY GAME today requires Steam to be activated. Okay, rant over.

So, what do you think of Steam? Do you like it? Why(Not)?

P.S: I have another question. Why doesn't the game install itself from the disk, but has to download itself from Steam? I HAVE THE DISK IN MY COMPUTER, WHY DON'T I USE THAT INSTEAD???

Right click the game in your steam list and verify the integrity of the cache.

Should fix your problem friend.

 

[octafish]

I love Steam since upgrading my internet connection to cheap reliable ADSL2. Before that I didn't much care for it, especially after the Half Life 2 debacle. On my Dial Up connection the constant updates were very frustrating to say the least. Often Steam prices beat Australian retail prices unless it is an EA game.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

I love Steam. I keep all my games there, and if a game is on Steam, that's usually where I buy it; I like being able to keep a list of them so easily, and it looks neat. It's also cheap.
The only things I dislike about it is the lack of a Linux release, and offline mode, and I do believe they're working on that.
The duplicate CD key is odd, though. Maybe it was used or something?

 

[Fiad]

I have never really liked Steam since I first used it when I bought a copy of HL2 from a local store. I had no clue Steam existed at that point, nor did I really care that much. I just wanted to play my game that I bought. Get home pop in the disc, hey you need to install this or we won't let you play! That was the first thing that bothered me, I did not want to fill up my computer with stuff I didn't need. But whatever I wanted to play the game I bought. Installed Steam. From that point on I have had nothing but trouble with it. It has gotten to the point that my computer will not even play games on Steam anymore. So there is about 250 dollars worth of games on there that I can't even play. If I had a physical copy and they didn't make you use Steam I wouldn't have this problem. My computer can play things not on Steam just fine. But the second that interface gets linked with it, nope. Not allowed to play.

 

[Wieke]

I love it. It rarely gives my any trouble (nothing I can handle anyway). The special offers during holidays are awesome. Most of my friends have it. Don't have to leave the house to get games legally any more. Downloading is quick (especially after the recent improvements to their infrastructure). And a lot more of your money ends up at the actual creators, the rest ends up at the publisher and at a Valve. Which to me seems to be a good thing.

Not to mention the recent influx of indie developers at steam.

Volume vs. price: one indie dev describes Steam sales [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/07/volume-vs-price-one-indie-dev-describes-steam-sales.ars]

This article basically explains what is great about steam, they are absolute geniuses at marketing. Which is great for both developer and customer (they get massive sales numbers, we get ridiculous special offers, 50%-80% off).

EDIT: Forgot to mention this, I've got 156 games on my steam account. Valve pack + HL2 for free with my GPU (before HL2 release, part of their big initial promotion of their steam platform, you could say I'm an early adaptor), THQ complete Pack, a great number of irresistible special offers and quite a number of normal game (pre-)purchases.

EDIT:
For all those who have technical problems with steam. Look on the steam forums for help. Or contact their techsupport. (They are quite helpful, resolved an erroneous purchase in a couple of days for me.)

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I should restate a confusion that often comes up.

With the vast majority of games, you install it, it installs all current updates, and then you can set it to 'offline', and no more need of internet

That one connection at install is a form of DRM sure, but it's a pretty painless one.

 

[Helscreama]

The prices beat the hell out of Australian retail.

How much is the Austraian retail? Because in Steam, the more famous games are mostly 49.99 euro. In my currency that's around 97 lv. A game from a store is 79,99 (71,99 Pre-Order)

In Aus something like that will be $100-$110. Steam? $89.99 if we're unlucky.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I think Steam is awesome. Despite having issues myself in the past, at one point I lost access to half my games due to crashing error due to an update to Steam.
Despite all of this, I still think Steam is awesome. It is just far too convenient to have access to all my games this way. I also enjoy the catalog and sales that they have. I also like the overlay and community, makes it easier to play with my friends.
I don't care for the auto-updates to games since sometimes I don't want to update but whatcha gonna do. I also am notorious for losing or breaking CDs, so it is better to have them digitally.
Also, no one puts any good stuff in boxes anymore. It used to be, you'd get well written and interesting manuals, usually extra goodies like maps or art. Now you just get, the CD, that's it. Why bother with it?

 

[aaronobst]

Why doesn't the game install itself from the disk, but has to download itself from Steam? I HAVE THE DISK IN MY COMPUTER, WHY DON'T I USE THAT INSTEAD???

This, ^ THIS is why I hate Steam. If I wanted to play the game using Steam (with no other choice no less) then I would have purchased it through Steam.

I don't walk into a game store and physically buy a copy of a game only to have Steam rear its ugly head.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I still resent steam being forced on me when I brought home a game and it made me install steam to get the game. But I'm starting to like it. The monopoly they have makes me nervous though.

 

[brainslurper]

Great updating system, great indie dev support, great AAA support, and a great community. Unlike something else I won't mention, which has no standard updating, no indie games at all, only one studio making games exclusively for it, and pretty much no community at all. Seriously, unless EA stops playing around in the origin sandbox all by itself, and stops shitting in the sandbox, and stops attacking anyone who comes near it... Steam is about the best we are going to get.

 

[MikeCrick]

I've only had one situation where my physical copy of a game had to be proven for Steam to allow it, not really a biggy. It was an old one too and I didn't need my receipt, just took pictures of the box, CD case, CD Key, me holding the game etc. just sent them everything I could and they authorised it. User since 2005 (Half-Life 2) and that's the only major I've ever had.

I hate having to wait for my games to 'download' though. Right now I'm waiting for Steam to download the 'updates' for Space Marine which I got a physical copy of from the store. I'm not planning on playing online yet...I just want my damn game. Unfortunately you can't play it till the download is finished and in Australia on release day that's a slow process.

We also have internet caps here and the automatic updates can be huge sometimes, eating 1/4 of my cap in a day. You can turn this off apparently and that seems to work most of the time but every now and then TF2 will have download a 500MB update despite me never telling it to.

I guess I mainly miss the days of patching my game manually, if I felt I needed the update, not because the publisher/steam thinks I do.

 

[BabyRaptor]

Truth be told, I mainly use it to talk to people. That's why I made an account to being with.

My friends are slowly corrupting me, though.

 

[Valiance]

I really hate a game requiring online activation. I think it should be an option, sure, but to require it is ridiculous, and Steam having a monopoly in that market is a very bad sign. That's really my only problem.

I mean, I can pull out my DOS machines or Win 98 machines and just go play a game that I have. With Steam, it's not like that - if you buy, say, "Doom" on Steam, a title that runs in win95 and dos, you can't -play- it in win95 and dos, or even win98 or 2000, because steam ITSELF needs to be installed first, and the game needs to be launched through Steam. Steam will not install on those operating systems. Also Steam always wants to install visual C++ libraries, .net framework, etc, etc... Not a big fan of that extra Microsoft bloat, or even Steam's bloat. Something really nice about the old days was when I went to play a game, the game had access to pretty much all the hardware in my computer. Now Win7's GUI OS, Steam, shit tons of random services and 3rd-party software is running at the same time, and if I could have one less stupid IM client with a shitty browser in it with voice-chat that is obsolete compared to teamspeak/mumble/ventrilo/skype/whatever, that would be nice.

I don't hate Steam, but I don't really like it either. I like having a box, I like that "new game smell," I like having a manual, I like all of that kind of stuff. I mean, if a game is 5 dollars on Steam and 30 dollars retail, I'm buying it on Steam, but still...it's more of a necessary evil these days than anything else, but I much prefer it to, say, games for windows live or XBLA. I kinda like Origin though, since it's similar to Steam but actually allowed me to activate some old boxed game codes on there.

I know I'm in the minority but if I could just start up the game EXEs without Steam, I would. It adds no value to me. I don't need ads coming up when I start my game/end my game, I don't need "update news," I don't need to auto-patch a game that I didn't tell you to patch that I never play, tying up my internet connection, or god forbid I don't WANT you to patch it and I want to play it anyway, nope, everything must the latest version, even if it's a game where fan-made patches are better than dev-made patches. "verify integrity of game cache ohohoho"

Sorry, I'm gettin' carried away. My point is that I don't need a friends list, a browser, screenshots, videos, profile pages, achievements (don't get me started on them), recommendations, trailers, "summer camp" "potato hunts" and other such bullshit, I just want to play the fucking game.

Bottom line is I use it, I like it, I can put up with it, but god damn it can be annoying.

 

[DarksideFlame]

It's got way too many die-hard fanboys, but otherwise great

 

[FLOPPY HIPPO]

Only problem i have with it is that when i have a long break at college i like to take it with me and play games on steam, BUT you have to put it on offline mode and i rarely remember to do that. So i bring it in, click on borderlands or Half life and 'you can't play this game' comes up and im left with the biggest portable music player ever.