Steam?

[Jormungar]

Steam is, essentially, a nanny. It needs to be turned on if you want to play games, it sorts them into its own directories, and it automatically updates them. Some consider this convenient and easy, others find the lack of control the user has to be awful. That is a matter of opinion.

On the upside, a game purchased with Steam requires no physical disk or other form of DRM. On the downside, there's other games that do just fine without any form of DRM and which also don't require Steam. (See Sins of a Solar Empire) Not having a physical disk is also a downside, as if you lose your Steam account (accidentally or by being banned) or if Steam's servers kick the bucket in the future, then you don't have the games anymore. The DRM issue is also mitigated in that you can remove it through various methods on certain games you also own the physical disk to.

Steam also has achievements, which some people like, and "social" features such as being able to chat with others across different games.

Personal opinion: Steam reduces user control, and it's requirement to be turned on is something I can't live with. In addition, I prefer having physical disks. Achievements are fun, but they can be handled within the game itself just as well (e.g. Dragon Age: Origins). I don't want to chat with others when I'm playing video games, especially because it would break any immersion. I can update and install my own games just fine.

There's Steam-like services which are less invasive, such as Impulse. Same deal, with allowing you to buy games online and download them, but they don't have to be turned on to play and you remain in control.

 

[Charlie Brooker]

Without Steam, I never would have played M&B.

/thread

Personally I think it's a bit daft moaning about Steam. Auto-updates can be turned off and if there are any games that require it it's only because they're either made by Valve or they use Steamworks; which means a built in server browser and VAC and whatnot.  Would you rather have Punkbuster?

Better we all attach ourselves to Valve before Activision, EA and Microsoft get involved.

 

[NaimaR]

Steam is Big Brother. 
Never heard a valid argument for using it.

 

[Meadows]

I got Warband for 5€ on Steam. So yeah...

You can play Steam games offline, by the way, as long as they're up-to-date.

 

[Melody]

Steam is really, really, really, really, rubbish.

If you need to buy digitally then GamersGate is much better, and a lot of the time, cheaper.

 

[pickled_heretic]

if you have never used steam you really should not give your input here.  you have no idea what it's like with how easy it is to gift games to friends across steam, play with friends, etc. 

I was formerly a developer for a source mod.  the amount of mods available for free if you buy a game that uses source (e.g. deathmatch source for 5 dollars) is absolutely astounding. many of these mods are steamworks mods and are therefore supported by steam's servers free of charge to both the developer and the client. you have no idea how convenient that kind of thing is for a mod developer and the playerbase, which is a healthy size due to the popularity of steam and source games.

on top of that, the sales are absolutely retarded, i mean i bought warband for 10 dollars.  there was a special a while ago where you could buy the thq complete pack for 180 dollars or so and the retail price on those games together was almost 400 dollars.  during the very same sale there were dozens of games that were 75% or more off retail. i ended up buying games that i had never even heard of.  yeah, some of them were bad, but who cares when you're spending 3 dollars on a game?  and these sales are good for the developers too, i mean i would have never bought star wolves 3 from some obscure russian developer at ANY price, because I had never heard of it, and them getting my 3 dollars for their game on sale is better than no sale.

i can find many old abandonware games that i used to love like x-com that are fairly well supported on modern operating systems for 5 dollars or less.  5 dollars is nothing to me.  i spend that on a drink at a bar.  i would gladly pay 5 dollars to have tech support for some of these old games that are hard to get running on vista or windows 7.

there is bad where there is good.  the community and overlay functions are not perfect, in fact i can remember in the past when there would be several days or a whole week where the community page would be broken. there is always concern about drm, intrusive software etc.  but if you guys actually used steam on multiple systems you would know that it's mostly smoke and mirrors.

 

[NaimaR]

You are pretending that steam somehow invented sales or got monopoly on it, and likewise with mods.
Well, afraid to burst your bubbles, but it's simply not true.

 

[Dtothe3]

i can find many old abandonware games that i used to love like x-com that are fairly well supported on modern operating systems for 5 dollars or less.  5 dollars is nothing to me.  i spend that on a drink at a bar.  I would gladly pay 5 dollars to have tech support for some of these old games that are hard to get running on vista or windows 7.

The other bits are fair points but I wanted to focus on this at first. I picked up the entire collection for £8. I missed the sale on M&B but couldn't wait after playing the demo. X-com: UFO Defense is one of the games that absolutely defined my early gaming years for me. It really set up what I expected out of my games. I never completed it when I originally had it. I orginally got steam because it was necessary for Napolean: Total War (I think that's it's name). After realising the scale of Steams library I hopefully typed in X-com.

For me, as a retro-gamer, Steam gives me access to titles I thought were long lost with absolute convenience. I finally completed X-Com: UFO Defense and am working my way through it's sequel. I got those two and three further games for £8. I got easy and instantaneous access to what i wanted, delivered in a timely manner. Pick up and play has never been this easy.

Most of the arguments I hear against steam sound like this (not just from here mind);

1. It's an added program running on my computer.

2. Steam takes a large cut from developers for what they do.

3. I don't like it/It sucks.

4. It's another form of DRM.

5. Never heard a valid argument for using it.

6. What happens if you lose your steam account or get banned.

7. Can't resell the games.

Now I'm going to give my two bits on the comments i hear.

1. I run several programs on my computer. Seems to work fine with me. This is only opinionated though, I'd agree that if you're trying to run the game at max then it might be troublesome.

2. As do gamestores who also perpetuate selling second hand games which, IMO, is directly stealing from the developer, as well as taking a cut from new games.

3. Opinionated/no factual reason given.

4. DRM which protects the rights of the developer? Thats a bad thing? Also, I have nearly all seasons of Family Guy. Everytime I stick the disk in I'm told "Do not copy this disk" and "Stealing is against the law" which I find incredibly insulting. Steams form of DRM is not invasive, and far more acceptable for it.

5. Bit of a cop out right there.

6. I'm not stupid with my credit card details or my National Insurance Number. Why would I be stupid with my games library? I wouldn't store physical games outside my house. Nor would I leave notes with my account details laying around. As for getting banned, don't be a tool and that won't be a problem. It is a community after all.

7. Re-selling games screws the developers. Not to mention the license agreement nearly always states "Don't hire out, lend or re-sell". They're finally getting into a position to enforce that particular rule and it's complained about. People seem to forget that license agreements aren't randomly put together strings of letters. They're legally enforcable documentation. Although I'd agree that it's a big loss that it's a bit trickier to go to your mates for a gaming session.

Maybe it's just me, but here's a few of the things I do, the way I work things. I buy my sausages from my local butcher. I buy my veg from my local market man. Where possible I get my decorations from local charity shops. My clothes from local independent shops. My pet food from the local pet shop. When I'm done with something, I'll give it to a charity shop or a community recycling scheme.

What I'm trying to get across is for me, I do my best to support my local businesses. When I lived down South Wales A large Sainsbury turned up out of town. It had extremely low prices and one by one the local businesses went bust. As they did so the Sainsburys jacked up the price on the relevent products they once competed on. When I left Abergavenny the once bustling town center was barren.

Steam appeals to me because it doesn't re-sell games. In that sentiment alone, it has strong support for the developers. It doesn't compete against the developers. If I found a better system then I would use it. If I could buy directly from the developer I would. I'm not saying it's perfect, but at the very least, it's a step in the right direction.

 

[Caliostro]

You are pretending that steam somehow invented sales or got monopoly on it, and likewise with mods.
Well, afraid to burst your bubbles, but it's simply not true.

Oh no, they didn't invent sales, but they were pretty much the single driving force behind the digital game sales movement.

But either ways, it's not that they invented it, it's just that they're the best at it.

 

[Fry]

6. What happens if you lose your steam account or get banned.

I'm not stupid with my credit card details or my National Insurance Number. Why would I be stupid with my games library? I wouldn't store physical games outside my house. Nor would I leave notes with my account details laying around. As for getting banned, don't be a tool and that won't be a problem. It is a community after all.

I'd like to chip in here. It's virtually impossible to get banned from Steam. Valve knows that some people have accounts worth hundreds of dollars. Posting offensive or obscene comments, pictures, etc might (at worst) get you temporarily blocked from the Steam Community, but they would never, ever touch your actual games. The closest you can get to a steam ban is being VAC banned for hacking/cheating in a Valve game. This only bans you from joining multiplayer servers of games on the same engine as the one you hacked in. If I hack in Counter-Strike 1.6 and get VAC banned from the GoldSrc engine, that only affects 5% or so of my library. Steam will still let me play online in CSS, TF2, and of course non-Valve games like CoD4, etc.

VAC is generally perfect - in any case, it's a hell of a lot more reliable than current alternatives.

Also, Steam Support is extremely diligent at recovering accounts - they know that some people have invested a lot of money into Steam accounts, and they're glad to return them to the original owners if you can provide (on a case-by-case basis) proof that it's yours, which is usually just a photo of a physical game box you registered on Steam, its CD-key next to a piece of paper with your account name.

 

[RitoDurito]

I keep hearing a lot about Steam and I have no idea what it is or if I have it. Does someone mind explaining it to me?

It's like the PC version of PSN, XBOX Live

 

[hruza]

If you can obtain game by other means, don't use it. Especially with game like M&B which you can get easily on-line without Steam. You CAN NOT play your game without Steam if you got it from them. That means whatever happens to Steam, you will be unable to play. Steam itself is solidly tested piece of software but every now and then people have all sorts of issues with it. Its not flawless and it will not run at all systems and configurations without problems. If you somehow get unlucky and you will encounter problems with Steam, you will be very frustrated as you will be unable to play game you paid money for.

There are other issues, mainly you will loose most of the control of your own software. You will not be able to use older patches, Steam patches your software automatically for example. You can not play on computer without access to internet. Can not sell or give your game to somebody else. And so on.

Its like if you would buy new TV in shop, shop assistant would come to your house and install it but then refuse to leave. Each time you would like to do something with your TV, watching it, moving to different room, you would need to ask shop assistant. And they would call it "service".

If you managed to live without Steam till now, avoid it. Especially if your only interest in it is because of M&B. It runs very well without Steam.

 

[fragonard]

The above restrictions are mostly optional.  You can play off line by selecting off line mode. You can turn off automatic updating and use whatever version you want.

There are certainly some disadvantages to Steam but it's not quite as bad as some think. It is true that you can't transfer the game to some one else, for example but I have about 1/3 of my games on Steam and haven't had any problems. 

BTW: there are a few games that require an internet connection but that's the publisher's DRM stuff, not Steam's ( I'm thinking Ubisoft here)

 

[gnawid]

Steam is a great place to pick up games for incredibly low prices, especially during the holiday season. They have insane sales, with Christmas sales ranging from 33%-95% off. They even released a few games for FREE on occassion. I was able to get Portal for no charge. They also have "free weekends" of certain games to pique interest, meaning 3-5 days of playing the full game for free. If one is interested in the game, they may  purchase and continue playing, or leave it and move on.

Steam's auto-updater can be disabled if one does not like it. Steam can run checks through your game files to correct any problems, which is a great boon for players fiddling around with the files.

Despite the belief of many people, steam does NOT require internet access to open. You can link steam with your account, meaning you will stay logged in every time you run steam, internet access or no. You can play whatever game you have in your game library as long as it doesn't require to connect to the internet.

For those of us too lazy to go out to retail stores and buy it, Steam is always available. All you really need is credit card information, but Steam will never redistribute your personal information to advertising companies. After you have finished your purchase, all you need to do is open your library and begin downloading straight away. You can pause and resume downloads/patches whenever you want, which is great if you want to focus on one particular patch finishing first. The only differences from buying a hard copy and a digital copy is the download speed and the requirement of the disk if you're using the hard copy.

Steam is good.

 

[mikeybimley]

Yeah, pretty much what everyone else said. I, personally, love steam. I love it to pieces. 

♥

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Steam's auto-updater can be disabled if one does not like it. Steam can run checks through your game files to correct any problems, which is a great boon for players fiddling around with the files.

Doesn't it not allow you to revert back to a previous patch if you updated it and it neither saves your configuration status every time the program updates?

Despite the belief of many people, steam does NOT require internet access to open. You can link steam with your account, meaning you will stay logged in every time you run steam, internet access or no. You can play whatever game you have in your game library as long as it doesn't require to connect to the internet.

There seems to be a lot of problems with it when you Google Steam offline mode actually.

Bottom line is, if you like the features that Steam has, go for it. If you're on the fence about it, Steam is a program that can potentially go wrong and stop you from playing the game, so if the mandatory client doesn't do anything for you, it's best to avoid it since it's another link in the chain that can break.

 

[saeval]

Doesn't it not allow you to revert back to a previous patch if you updated it and it neither saves your configuration status every time the program updates?

There seems to be a lot of problems with it when you Google Steam offline mode actually.

Bottom line is, if you like the features that Steam has, go for it. If you're on the fence about it, Steam is a program that can potentially go wrong and stop you from playing the game, so if the mandatory client doesn't do anything for you, it's best to avoid it since it's another link in the chain that can break.

you can play whatever patch you wish. offline mode works perfectly. there is an options tab, it helps set up the way you want steam to work with your games.. they do no voodoo or otherwise dark magic to your pc, just offer games at low prices. steam being down is not frequent, and if it ever is, it is not for a long period of time.

 

[hruza]

Steam's auto-updater can be disabled if one does not like it. Steam can run checks through your game files to correct any problems, which is a great boon for players fiddling around with the files.

Once game was patched, you can not revert back to older patch. Only latest patch is available. And if you are not using disk install or other independent installation method, you even can not revert to unpatched game. And if you have to buy DVD or download independent installer, than it sort of defy purpose of Steam, doesn't it?

Despite the belief of many people, steam does NOT require internet access to open. You can link steam with your account, meaning you will stay logged in every time you run steam, internet access or no. You can play whatever game you have in your game library as long as it doesn't require to connect to the internet.

You have to validate your Steam account and you have to validate your game. I don't know how is that possible without online access. As much as I know they do not have validation by phone or something similar.

Then yes, you can set Steam to offline mode. But I saw people on forums which claimed Steam requiring online access to let them play even in offline mode. Go and try your luck.

it's best to avoid it since it's another link in the chain that can break.

Exactly. Games are usually buggy on their own. Steam just unnecessarily rise chance of problems. And once you encounter problem, it makes more difficult to correct it as you don't know if its Steam or game causing it.

 

[MadMage]

My problem with Steam has to do with it's pathetic offline mode. I don't want to have a persistent internet connection to play games I've paid hard-earned money for - and I have a gaming laptop because I bring the thing many places, often places without internet. [EDIT]: Oh, and I can confirm the offline mode not working properly - M&B specifically crashes constantly while in offline mode, along with many other games. And don't even think of trying to use a Steam-game if the connection you're on has Steam blocked (my colleges' internet, for example).

Honestly, I think anti-pirating measures are like trying to shoot the ocean to keep a ship from sinking. I now pirate software on a regular basis simply out of spite for such measures. Copyright laws are bull anyway.

 

[Zigama]

Adding on to the debate, I just got Napoleon Total War (requires Steam) for Christmas and can't download it because "the servers are too full to handle my request"

FML