[Eagle of Fire]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Except that I'm not the one being wrong.

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.