Just a question to you die hard steamers.
How many games are 100% freely available through steam.
(no money needed whatsoever)

Also which (well/better known) titles. (that are freeware :p )

Looking at the list I am puzzled, taking Origin as example I think that a little bit of competition between Developers can't hurt, but what's next? How many of those forced applications we must use? (There's also Windows Live that come to my mind).

I hope Origin wont start a trend of companies making their own Steam rip-offs. I remember downloading one for specific mods and freeware games and it was awful and clunky. Besides, I'd prefer to have all the apples in one basket.

If you're referring to GOG having free games, thats nothing. Those games have been freeware for a while, no thanks to GOG.

And yes, Steam does have couple of free games. Recently introduced couple of online games using F2P method (you know, standard free game, pay a little for extras) and quite recently Team Fortress 2 was also turned into free game (with very small differences between free and premium users, and you can become premium just by buying any item from the item store, like Scouts soda for 0,39€). There's also Alien Swarm, a completely freeware action game.

The forced applications thing is annoying for me too, which is why I prefer GOG and GamersGate.

However, in my recent uses of EADM (now Origin), I haven't been required to have the client open or active when playing Mass Effect 2, which is nice. One less bit of clutter. It was only required through installation and activation.

I have always been against several things that Steam and other sites like it represent.

First, purchasing things which are not physical and cannot be freely transferred from one computer to another without having to connect to the internet is such a taboo for me that I don't even want to talk about it. It is simply a big NO.

What's the appeal of that? You pay for something which doesn't really exist. If you lose your HD, you lose your property... Or rather, and that's the whole point, what you purchase is not your property anymore. What you purchase is not something tangible but rather an idea, the right to use something. Yeah, sure, you can always get it back from the site (as long as it is still in business)... But then what?

Second point: why would I need to stay connected to the internet or a foreign site for anything? We all know that those companies tell us that it is free to connect and that their prices are very cheap... But in reality, we also all know (or you should know!) that those same companies make/save millions by gathering your usage data and using them to narrow their next marketing campaign or sell your data to other sites which either use it with malignant intentions or do the same for their own marketing campaign.

This too is an heresy. Why do you think FPSs are so popular these days? All FPSs need you to connect to the net. All FPSs require you to find others to play reasonably. All FPSs can guarantee an online community will be created and maintained for a reasonable amount of time... Why do producers love FPSs? Because that's the place where the money can be the more easily snatched from the hands of users for stupidities like extra maps which should be bundled in the game in the first place, pointless trophies to display your e-pen** and whatever more...

I have many, many more points against such sites... But why bother, those two are already enough. Isn't?

It's a restricting mechanism, and whenever you reduce freedoms in something, you pay a price. Usually, the price comes in loss of innovation and discouragement of newcomers. I dislike this trend a lot, and see no bright future for gamers in it.

http://www.ztgd.com/news/18023/steam...-massive-2011/

Those are some big numbers. I've also heard total amount of sented data is around 780 petabytes, but I have no idea how big that is since its the first time I heard the word "petabyte".

As a person who's been using Steam now for over a year (unless you count the time when I only had the Orange Box, but I dont), Im looking forward for this year as well. Also, since six months starting this thread, Im happy that lot of people here seem to have accepted it (except with the usual cranky old-gamers) or just plain admit liking it. Never expected GTX to become such a huge user of it though.

Steam has certainly changed since when I first tried to use it back with Half Life 2 when it came out. And since it does many games cheaper then what I can get at the stores here and has better sales it has become a standard place for me to get PC games.

It isn't perfect by a long shot and it sucks that games are being forced to use it as pirate protection since people with no internet or bad internet (and Aus is a place you can still get some pretty down right awful internet) are locked out of games they should be able to play. But all that aside the program works well most of the time and games that run on it alone run well. I can't say the same for Games For Windows Live nor Origin at all, both of which have cause games to crash on my PC.

Hmm. Actually, I can argue with every point here.

1. "You pay for something which doesn't really exist." Oh, it was the same all this time, from the rise of computers. You are paying for information. Not for something that "really exist". Except very small part of free games where you paid for media - cassette or diskette.

2. "If you lose your HD, you lose your property." Hey, if you lose cassette or DVD, you will lose it exactly the same way! Moreover: Steam account will not be lose when your HDD crashed. :)

3. "What you purchase is not something tangible but rather an idea, the right to use something." And it meant to be this way always. You are buying right to use info - not rights for info itself (and information still immaterial :). Media is only... medium. :) It is way to aquire info, not product itself. And then - what difference between keydisc, manual protection and Steam? It is way of protection that must assure that it's "original" purchase, nothing more. And it can be bypassed exactly the same way as keydisc was. :)

Also, if you so need of "something tangible", you always can make Steam backups on DVD. ;)
Well, if you are feel paranoid, Steam can be turned into offline mode. Surprise! ;)
Oh, so you blame companies that they can make use of data that you don't need? What next? You will blame trashmen that they make profit from your garbage? :)
Not enough, as for me. :) But I can listen for more points! :)

I'll stick with GOG. You'll occasionally see me on CS or DoD though. But honestly I wish I could somehow have a legal Steamless version.

If people love it that's all fine, but I'll never understand why.