Steam appreciation thread
 

I feel Steam is not getting the love from Abandonia. In fact, its still pretty much disgust, fear and hatred for some reason. For those people who still think like that, I advice pulling their head out of the ground, because, simply put, Steam is awesome!

Yeah, I didn't like Steam first place. It was heavy, clunky and it ate quite a lot of RAM. That was over 2 years ago though, and my quantity of ram has quadrupled. Not to mention it has been improved over the years and it runs great for me at least.

However, the real gold is the games available and the prices. I realized around January that my Visa works on Steam and as of today, I've made 19 purchases (Plus Mount & Blade Warband, but that was offline purchase), all of which were easy to purchase and couple of which were ridiculously cheap. Hell, If I didn't prefer hard copies over download-only, I'd probably own the entire Steams catalog of classics by now. Then there's the weekly deals, weekend deals, daily deals, Summer/Christmas sales....man those chew up people's bank account. A lot of times they offer whole bunch of games with the price of one.

Not to mention there is a great balanced selection of new games, old games and indy games. Steam has done a lot of good for the independent gaming scene (check out the Portal 2's potato sale, where bunch of indy games were brought together to promote Portal 2). It even managed to save Introversion (Makers of Darwinia, Uplink and Defcon) from the brink of bankrupt.

You have to be online to use it? So what! If you cant go online then play something else. "But oooh, its DRM and I hate DRM!" Oh just shut it and show some trust to a developer for a change, rather than taking your time to torrent everything. GOG has better selections and is DRM free? Maybe, but that depends on point of view. GOG is pretty much for old-school lovers. As for DRM.....well, lets just say GOG's games are popular downloads at Underground Gamer.

So get into program and learn to love Steam! It is worth it.

I'm in the same boat as you, a few years ago it gave me horrible, horrible moments. I'm still not a fan of having to activate games with steam etc, and I totally disagree with you about the DRM thing, but I've got to say, this time around the service has impressed me. Particularly when I was able to transfer my games ridiculously easily to a new machine after the first one died painfully.

Also, dive in and join the AB steam group you hooligans! :D
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Abandonia

DOSBox and Hamachi are the only two things I need, Steam is only a luxury toy I play with occasionally.

There's only one thing that really bugs me with Steam, and that's steamworks-only games.

By this I mean games like Empire: Total War, Batman: Arkham Asylum and so on. Non-Valve games that are tied to the Steam distribution platform. It pushes people towards Steam in a way that no other distributor can compete with fairly.

Their dominance is cause for concern, but the other distributors really need to up their game as well.

I do use Steam though, to take advantage of some of the deals. Also useful to have an account if you're looking for multiplayer gaming. From what I've heard, it's far better than similar services (Gamespy, Games for Windows Live)

At the moment, I use Good Old Games, GamersGate, Steam and possibly Origin (I used the EA Download Manager to get Mass Effect 2 (free gift from a friend), so I guess that has become an Origin account?).

And here I am, ol'school gamer.
Bye bye flea markets were you can dig through piles of (older) games, bye bye second hand markets etcetera etcetera blah blah.

And of course bye bye abandonware.

And yet, I guess it's progress, after all, sooner or later (prob will be sooner then later) we'll all work in the 'clouds' , so yeah, I guess that steam and alike are the future.

Can't stop progress, isn't it?

Progress? There is not much progress in the games industry right now, more like regress. But we had that in an other thread already. Just to connect it with Steam - games are a dying branch and DRM is just one of it's signs. I won't ever support DRM, because its model on Steam was inspiration for some other, even more annoying and crippling methods of other publishers, I'm sure you all know what those are.
I might begin using Steam for games, but there's GameStop shop here where I can get pretty much every recent and few years old game. No thanks.

Some of us don't live in places where they stock games in our language blah blah blah, Steam is neat for that.

Yes I agree with that :)

So far so good... I took advantage of two special offers: the whole UFO/XCOM series for 5 €, although I've only played XCOM1 so far, and I figured from the start how to extract the files and place them in my usual virtual C: mount; and Portal for free I think--which I haven't played yet either? I've been toying with the idea of playing the Civ5 demo and see if I like it, it's only available through Steam that I know.

It's a perverse mechanism.

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.

I seem to have missed this thread when it got updated.

Well, that's the whole point. If I go out in a store and purchase a game, I'll have a DVD or a CD and a boxcase. The CD is the medium which "really exist". The data on the CD is exactly the same and that is information as you mentioned... However, if I lose my copy on my computer (or my computer entirely), I still own the DVD or CD and can reinstall everything easily. That's exactly what you cannot do here with data-only property.
Sorry, I cannot lose information on a DVD simply by pouring water on it. Or by using a strong magnet next to it. Breaking unintentionally a CD is something which never happened to me ever in my whole life... Even breaking one intentionally require a fair amount of effort! I believe that's really not the same thing at all.

You are however of course right when you say your account still exist. There is assuredly at least one way to get all those downloads back... But at the cost of time and bandwidth. This specific point is still not really strong for a con, I'll give you that.
When you purchase a DVD or CD, you also purchase the right to own the medium you get it on. That, legally, make the heck of a big difference. For once, you can legally make a copy of it because it is a tangible medium and there is already existing laws which allow you to backup data you own for your own personal use. It is not true of intangible data you have on your HD and which is copyrighted. Yeah, I know... Strange and impractical, but still true.

And yes I know too, I'd be surprised any average Joe would ever get caught for such a charge. But it is still illegal as far as I can see.

Unfortunately same answer than right above. However, you'd also need to bother with DRM, getting online, etc.

All those really bug me enough not to want to bother. Personal choice here I guess.

While it probably helps, I was under the impression that the client still had to run to be able to play the games. Isn't? If so then it is really a stupid mechanism which simply feed on resources for no apparent reason. But then again, that's the whole story of the life of the new Windows platforms too.

Trashmen cannot find my own personal information in my trash bin. And that makes the whole difference.

Maybe you in particular don't mind having your personal data sent back and forth around, but I do. I would not want people to get their hand on it because, well... It's personal. Thus the name. :p

Moreover, it is also a question of principle. I do not like the idea that a company "try to save money" on false assumptions. The best example which always flash my mind when I think about this is the music (and gaming) industries pretending they lose billions to piracy each year when in fact they actually have no tangible or even realistic data to base their numbers on. All this because they take for granted that someone who "pirate" one of their product would have purchased it anyways. Which, of course, is a false assumption. The whole thing simply don't sit well with me, at all.

:) Well, I could... But I think I'm seeing enough pointless drama around here right now and I'm already getting more than the share I'm willing to. Maybe another time?

I have to admit that I don't even know what Steam is. I hear people talking about, but I never bothered to check. Well until today. But the page on Wiki is too long and I'm too lazy (to my defence, it's late here and I had a long day).

Can someone explain it to me in a few sentences? I got a general idea, though.

If you lose your digital copy you can still get the game again and easily at that, so what is your point there? At no time do you lose your game purchases unless you happen to just forget how to log in to Steam for some reason. And a cost of time is still required to get back a game if you happen to delete it from your system and reinstall it from a CD or DVD. Not to mention bandwidth if you need to download patches and the like for it.

I have just as much right to use downloaded data as I do if I brought it on CD or DVD, I can legally back it up all I want. In fact Steam gives you the option to back it up if you like. So that point is moot, I can make back ups for personal use in either case.

Steam is the DRM, if you are buying games from Steam in general the DRM is going to be simply using Steam to start the game. Some games use other programs, Games for Windows Live or some other crappy program as far as I am concerned Valve should be telling them that it is not allowed. DRM pisses us all off, but as far as it goes Steam is one of the best on the markets for not punishing people for buying games, unlike some of the others.

Steam is using 100mb of ram at the moment of my PC, 100 mb! Even on my old computer with 3gb of ram that was a tiny amount that I would never notice. Its CPU usage is just as small. But if that is too much for you to have a program "wasting" that is a fair point.

Also your trashmen, they can get personal information from your bin. It has happened before and will happen again. Same as people stealing information from mail boxes. And that whole piracy bit has nothing to do with Steam or this thread or even to do with your personal information.

Pointless drama happens when people aren't willing to be open to being wrong. If you don't like Steam that is fine, you don't play many new games and don't use the program so it doesn't matter to you. You could have simply ignored this thread and the people in it talking about why they like the program they are using.

@Pex Steam is a program made by Valve, it has a store that you can buy games online. Games that use Steam as DRM get added to your library of games and are launched from the program or from there normal icons. It also acts as a multiplayer platform allowing people to use voice chat or text chat while in different games or the same. By adding your friends to it you can easily see what they are playing and even join in if it is multiplayer game. Other companies are starting to use it as a form of DRM for there store brought products, requiring that the buyer register the game on Steam, some people don't like it but it is an easier system to use then any of the other similar programs other companies are using (those being Games For Windows Live and Origin).

Well, that's a relief. But it really must be some kind of special arrangement because you normally would not be able to do that.

But even then I would not be interested. See right below.
A DRM is a DRM. Even if it is Steam or any other kind of non-intrusive DRM, it is always some piece of technology punishing those which the program intend to actually protect. It prevent you from doing what you want with what you own.

Steam, Games for Windows Live and other similar products are all the same as far as I am concerned. How they are handled doesn't matter in the slightest: you still need to be online for it to work. While you are online they get personal information on you and try to sell you related crap which should have been bundled with the games to begin with. It is always the same kind of marketing scheme... And as I said already here, I'm completely against such things by principle.

I have 512 megs of ram on my computer. I could probably easily upgrade to 1 gig (not sure if I could go higher since I'm still using SP1), but even then 100 megs is ludicrous for a program which does nothing more than allow you to play games which should already work on their own! 100 megs on my 512 is what? About 20%??? With 1 gig, about 10%??? Even on your 3 gigs, that's more than 3% of your resources utterly wasted.

Now, don't get me wrong: 3% in itself is nothing. However, if you go in your task manager, you'll notice that Windows load a lot of crap by default. I did a thorough cleanup of my own system and removed or disabled all those ridiculous small but numerous background processes I don't need. For example, I never plugged nor will I ever use a printer on this PC, so the process to use and recognize printers is useless for me. Java Quick Starter... Don't need that, it will open only slightly slower without it. The Windows default help prompt, got rid of that... etc. It allows me to be able to run XP with only 512 megs of ram perfectly fine because I freed so much resources and memory from it. It however took me a fair amount of time to complete, so of course I would certainly not be inclined to accept cheerfully yet another completely useless process on my PC. Again, it is a question of principle here: if I start to say yes for one thing, then I'll eventually say yes for something else... And you end up doing it anyways. I don't want to do that. Or rather, I won't do that.
No, they can't. Because I simply don't get rid of personal information in my trash. If I ever need to do it, I make sure the information is destroyed in some way (shredder, mixing it in several batches, for example...). That's the whole thing about personal information defense: it never happen on its own. You need to be actively participating for it to work and always be wary and on the defensive. By refusing to use Steam I'm doing just that, even though it become a compound of reasons in the end and is not limited to this particular point.

Except that I'm not the one being wrong. :p

More seriously, this is an open discussion. I voiced my opinion because TheChosen started the topic stating that Abandonia didn't seem to "like" Steam "enough" for his liking. Many voiced their opinion for Steam but also many other users also voiced their opinion against Steam in this thread... The only difference with me is that I'm ready to continue talking about it, particularly on specific points I consider important enough (as a whole, not only for this particular site) that it should be explained and discussed.

To be frank, drama usually happen when a "staff member" voice his opinion (read: final say on the matter) and he doesn't want to let go because someone else simply decide his opinion differ.

One more thing, people shouldn't treat the personal data collection thing so lightly. Yes, they will be using it mostly for marketing and, while annoying, this particular use is mostly harmless. The problem is with the unseen usage of the information. I worked for some time in a company specialized in processing gathered personal data, for profile tracing and other things. Let me say, it is scary, to say the least.

On the 100mb thing, really, it's a lot. Granted, modern OS's have this awful trend of slugging all the resources, and lazy programmers don't help at all also, by churning everything on RAM. I have always actively opposed promiscuous memory usage, and Steam isn't helping.

^^ this

Somehow I feel the same way. I also feel forced to use steam. And I hate it to be forced to do anything...

My first game was a gift from a friend called: Beat Hazard. You know, it's like Audiosurf but you have a lil' spaceship and destroy enemies. A Quasi Space Invaders 2011 where you can listen to your favourite mp3s/wmas/oggs or flacs and blow shit up after a long and tiring day ;) (even with multiplayer function now :lol: )

So I got my Steam Account. Logged in, oh Portal for free. Ok lets download it, it's for free afer all - same story like Japo's as I barely played it. The next game I wanted for many many years was Deus Ex: human revolution. And again Steam required...

But surprise. You wouldn't believe it. A friend of mine works at the Media Markt here in my city and told me that several hundred ppl bought the game there on the release day just like me. So ppl are still buying games in stores. But stores are darned empty though.
DX:HR was ofc an exception bc ppl wanted something to hold in their hands and say: "yessa, finally it's here and it is miiiineee!".

This online-out-sourcing will cost a lot of jobs in the not the distant future I'm afraid. There aren't much ppl anymore going to the stores to actually buy a game. When I go to the Media Markt the games section is almost empty. They also have good offers there. F.e. Fallout 3 GOTY (with all 5 frackin' dlcs!) for 10 bucks or X-Superbox for 10 bucks which contains the complete X-Series (like 3,4 or even 5 games).

Definitely worth it and when I have the time and mood I look by. It's not much but somehow I support ppl I know and like from my own region who work there. Who do you support you know who works for Steam? Do you even know a single person who works for Steam? No, me neither. But I know at least 5 ppl who work here for the retail industry and are paid badly bc shit like Steam.

DRM is just a poor excuse imho.

It just became a mechanism to tie customers with the smallest effort. And now, most of us ppl who disliked or even hated Steam are there. They did a good job. Kudos Valve to your hostile acquisition.

You got it! That's what it's all about. I got Dirt 3 with my new graphics card and I can count the hours on one hand I've played it. Cool game tho. But I also needed an effin Windows Live acc to get it running... - not to mention I had to download 11 GB via Steam - the pain!!! This damn game just seems to be designed for that single purpose! get customers no matter what. Yea and then you have frikken microjunk points and what the shit not. You wouldn't believe it. Capitalism at it's finest. hey but I got a free car and track-pack there. So it must be good ;)

using it: hm...kay... have to; but loving it: no way, U MAD BRO???!!1 oO

p.s:

forgotten one thing which is good about steam:

less paper and plastic shit so it's somehow good for the environment from an ecological pov. ;)

Cheap deals on games in my own language whilst I live abroad, it's easy to shift your account and content onto a new machine, a less painful way of managing drm than physical copies I have bought in the recent past, a totally different animal from what it was even 2 years ago. I love it.

Don't like it, don't use it.

edit: For fun, compare the recent battlefield rollout debacle EA became muddled up in for a a good example of what really constitutes a bad gaming electronic delivery service these days.

Well yes and no. While digital distribution is riding high right now, physical copies arent going anywhere. Like you said, plenty of people still want the physical stuff, even if its just for shelf-filling. And I should know, I still prefer physical. Bought Portal 2 couple of weeks before the Christmas sales, even though I knew it was going to be 20 euros off from the 30 euro price the physical copy had, and that just one example. Then there's Tropico collection, GTA 4, Mount & Blade and so on.

And even if it does finally kill retail, thats just normal human progress. Running a digital distribution business is also a job, and not some front run by a robots thats going to take all the jobs from retailers.

Steam's DRM is at minimalistic as possible. All you need to do is log online. With nearly everyone having a internet access these days, its as basic as walking to a mailbox. Inconveniences happen, but that applies to the mailbox trip as well.


I feel you for the Windows Live account thing. Thats plain awful system. Games being 11 GB...yeah, thats todays games, but that has nothing to do with Steam (and quite frankly, Steam downloads 11 gigabytes quite easy, like say, utorrent). Elaborate more on the "purpose" and microjunk points and what does that have to do with Steam?


Cant argue with that.

I can, I am going to argue with that.

Running your machine wastes valuable resourc... Heh, just kidding.

It isn't that easy as I'm forced to use it whether I like it or not.

Boohoo poor BF gamers who had to wait a few days for their braincell-massacre. Boohoo ;) Tooo sad (looks staged for me tbh - let them wait for a couple of days, driving them crazy enough to even use origin w/o reading the eula)

Yep it is "progress" and economy is hard and unforgiving. That doesn't mean I have to like and support it just because I know and agree that's the way it is. Slowing the so called progress down is a form of resistance, too.

As I wrote: with the smallest effort @ DRM. It's no mircale it doesn't take a couple of hours to crack DRMs ;) btw, I wouldn't call my mailbox - spybox. Srsly, do you know what Steam is looking for? It's updating like everyday but I don't see any changes so far. Well, lets be optimistic and a bit naive: perhaps it's just the ads ;)

uhm, you need a coffee? I need one now ;)

yea 11 GB is today's games. But it's still a PITA if you want to play a new game NOW and Steam has a bad day and your dl "crawls" there between 200 and 300 kb/s... I still like the concept that I have a coupon with a number and all that. Kinda cool. But waiting many hours is bah.

And what have microjunk points to do with that? Well, I talked about Dirt 3. Some Rallye racing game you get for free with some voucher when you buy a graphics card. There are various Dirt 3 Edition graphics cards out there f.e. - mine isn't but the game respectively the coupon was in there and it was kinda nice to save like 40 bucks and get a "free" game.

But obviously it's a sugar-coated decoy to lure you to Steam and Windows Live as you need both accounts to get that game running. And if you want all the cars and extras you need the microsoft points and exchange them on the microjunk marketplace (some software you have to install, too). And then the Odyssey begins. I'm not a big fan of "points" at all. Whereever you get them.
May it be the gas station or the drugstore. Their only purpose is to get your adress and bombard you with ads for useless junk you can get in exchange for them points.

So no, I won't start with that. I have to admit I looked for a free way to get this points first but then BAM. "What the actual fuck am I'm doing here?" - ran through my head as I found myself on market research websites where they wanted my e-mail addy. Pulled the handbrake there literally. ;)
I'm still like WTF when I think back to this. xD

^^ kinda embarrassing

next step on this Odyssey: to get Dirt 3 running you have to start 2 of my favourite windows services.

The intelligent background transfer service and windows update. I hate both of them and they're always de-activated. I get my updates from other sources for dunno as long as I used xp. Could be 10 years or more.

But ok, to play the game I activated them and got M$ infamous patch which checks if I have a legal windows copy and probably other stuff as well. Not a big problem... at all?

Not if you don't care about your information. I do and what gives me the creeps & headaches is how tough corporations fight to get your information these days.

Can't agree with you here, none can "force" you to use something you don't want.

I don't want it, I don't use Steam, simple as that. Period.
If others want it and use it, fine by me, as long they're happy with that system.

when I want to stay legal I must use it. Otherwise I have to look for other "solutions".

That is all.

That doesn't make much sense.

Marketers never allow common sense to stop them. ;)

my, don't pretend you're not knowing what I'm talking about. kinda ridiculous...

So it doesn't make much sense that I just can play a game like DX:HR with Steam? or have to use cracks or an illegal copy otherwise?

edit: if you're assuming that not playing the game is the option then... erm yea... just stop commenting... lol

as this makes no sense at all

@Eagle of Fire: there's a difference between a forum and a chatroom.

Yup. Which is exactly why you don't seem me posting often in the chatbox at the bottom of the forums... :rolleyes:

Nah Krazee, you misunderstand me, I know exactly what you mean, but I think that doesn't make much sense. It seems like you're saying the equivalent of "these shoes don't come in my exact size so I'm going to steal them instead."

As in, that's the way the product is being sold, just because you happen to disagree with part of it does not mean you are "forced" into pirating the thing. It's a computer game, not a human right.

To be clear, I don't have any issue with the pirating thing, and that's really a discussion for another thread if anyone wants to have it, I can't be bothered having a massive derail about that, this is our mighty Steam Appreciation Thread :)

Although Steam prefers to be online.
It's NOT a 100% requirement.

Once a game in the list has done it's first time setup through steam, you can play it while steam is in offline mode.

I use that on occasion when my connection is just too cr@p to load anything.

Requirements for offline play are:
- Steam must be allowed to store user credentials.
(My own laptop, so no problem of anyone else logging in on my stuff)
- Game has to be started while online @least once to set up and check for patches.
- your internet has to be out 100%.
(if steam detects even the slightest hint of a connection it will try to go online)




Also. On the 100mb use.
It's only using 50mb of RAM here. So that's 50% LESS then all of you say.
It is also just 10% of what Firefox is using on my laptop.
(above average amount off add-ons + a lot of pages open in tabs)

While it is true, you still need to be online to be able to get the games. To download them, which take time. That was the point and I think you yourself speak for it when you say that you play offline when your net connection is zero: if it is then you simply cannot get a new game either, right? Also, if you got a computer without the net on it (which should not be too rare for computers which are dedicated to run old games), you're boned.

That's a huge difference if you compare that to the "normal" way of acquiring stuff. Even online purchases like Ebay and similar, while also being an online service, allow you to simply do a quick visit anywhere (say, an internet café) and then eagerly await your stuff at home to install it normally.

Also, what does exactly mean"(if steam detects even the slightest hint of a connection it will try to go online)"? I'd be interested to have more information about that.

Sorry, but your analogy is flawed at several levels.

If your analogy was correct then you would need to say something akin to: "shoe companies does produce my shoe size but they simply refuse to sell them to my country for whatever reason. All of them. So I am left either choosing nothing or trying to "steal" it from them since they store them right next door..."

;)

Seeing you are so prone to keep your personal info safe I'm rather amazed you even suggest an internet café. O.o
In my opinion that's the best way to be hit by any info stealing virus or info stealing web redirects as you never know what anyone else has dumped or looked at on those machines.


If you start steam and your internet connection is trying to connect online any possible way. Steam will attempt to go online. (and fail totally)
So for offline to work finally you need to turn off the wifi and disconnect the net cable.

And one more note.
All those Digital services (Steam, GFWL, Origin, etc.) are aimed mostly for games that are rather new (between last 5~8 years @max) and are for multiplayer gaming. (with an additional single player story if you're lucky) And thus need internet on their own even IF you buy it off e-Bay, etc.

Hmm. From my experience, you are wrong. It's a usual script for my son: he arrives at home while my computer is off and start Terraria just after system went online. Steam went offline, of course, as he didn't connect ADSL. After that some other program (I think, it's a uTorrent, but I cannot confirm it, as I never was at home when it's happens) auto-restores ADSL-connection and everything is working since then... but when I arriving at home several hours later, Steam still offline. So I don't think that it can go online by itself.

Hmm, actually, I just checked both scenarios: "put Steam in offline mode then plug on network" and "put Steam in offline mode, turn it off, start network then start Steam". Only difference is question on start "Do you want to go online or stay offline?". So no, it's not going to online by itself. :)

I certainly would never do that: I would be extremely reluctant to do it even from my own home. But many people don't even have the luxury of having an internet connection at home. This is a workaround for them.

To be really frank with you, for those who know nothing about computers already manage to do that quite more easily from the own "safety" of their own homes...