Lord Shields said:
It's a convenient set up and I've never had the problems you have. I'd call that bad luck for you.
My point is, Steam basically did a big **** on all users who like boxed versions of games, or liked to play games without needing internet access. The problem my brother had with installation, was because of the boxed version, but they only arised because steam assumed everybody downloaded. But with internet being relatively slow in the UK outside the London area (8Mb/s or less, we only currently have 2Mb/s) downloading is not a viable option, especially for 10GiB+ games.
They also disregard all users who still play games offline. Some people buy gaming computers and don't connect them to the internet for various reasons (although mainly so there is not risk of viruses). But the majority of games these days require internet activation, and some even require the internet, even for offline play (steam has the offline mode feature, but some games require the internet to launch, even when playing offline).
To prove my point there, there has been nearly 30 million Xbox consoles sold around the world. But there are less than 10 million live subscribers. Now this could be because 2/3rds of Xboxs have broken (highly likely
), or it could be because around half of gamers are perfectly happy without online features (i said 1/2 not 2/3 there because some people own multiple Xbox consoles, and as i said, some consoles do actually break, and many are not willing to pay the cost of live, but the figures still prove, not all gamers use internet services, and nor do all gamers have internet connections)
I think if you have fast internet, downloading games is a very sensible idea. it is often cheaper, and it means you don't require a disk in your drive to launch the game. But if you install it through steam, it is completely unnecessary. It is just a middle man for technologically incompetent gamers. Given the option, i would always go for the non-steam version. You can always add the game to steam afterwards anyway if you want to use the chat feature, whilst the game remains in its own file so you can patch it, mod it to your hearts content without steam messing you about.