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[TheChosen]

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.

[Lulu_Jane]

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!
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Abandonia

[Professor Oak]

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

[Panthro]

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?).

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Panthro

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?).

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).

[Panthro]

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.

[dosraider]

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?

[KrazeeXXL]

Originally Posted by dosraider

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?

^^ 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 )

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.

Originally Posted by TheChosen

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.

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

Originally Posted by TheChosen

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

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.

[Lulu_Jane]

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.

[KrazeeXXL]

Originally Posted by Lulu_Jane

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

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

Originally Posted by Lulu_Jane

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.

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)

Originally Posted by TheChosen

And even if it did 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.

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.

Originally Posted by TheChosen

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.

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

Originally Posted by TheChosen

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?

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.