Do you like Steam?

I didn't like Steam when I first heard about it because I am the type of person that only like hard copy instead of soft copy. In this case, having a DVD case (which is not as great as the old PC box) along with the cool printed cover and manual and other great stuff inside which was pretty cool to show off!

However after losing important game disks and lending it to people and never getting it back, I realize that I rather have a game to play then not. After purchasing my HD5850 and a free Dirt 2 game was the first time I used Steam and I never ever have to worry about losing it again. Of course not being able to sell back your games, feels like a money grabbing service from steam and is perhaps the only big negative point I have against Them. Times past and I started to accepted this negative factor simply because newer PC games were coming out with Securom and other fraudulent devices that prevent their customer from selling their games (I'm looking at you Assassin Creed 2 and Ubisoft).

Because of these new changes, Steam was legit and look to be the future of gaming. Steam is the future of gaming just like the PSP Go, Electronic books, and of course MP3 players, as all share a similar services.

So in Conclusion, I feel like Steam is the best way to go mainly because you can play as many games as you want, anywhere you want, and not have to carry around a whole collection of games.

Only problems so far is that Steam doesn't carry all PC games as I would like.

What about you guys, do you like Steam? Yes or No, feel free to share your story or just explain why you like Steam or Not.

Thanks

 

I am a hard copy person but I am starting to go for getting things on steam. Sometimes it beats finding all your game discs and keys to get things installed.

Steam has some great deals from time to time. I am definitely going towards steam for some purchases.

 

I think I have transition over to Steam fully, I like having all my games in one place without having to worry about disks and they do have some really great deals. I bought Just Cause 2 months ago for only $7.50 while Amazon had it for $30, talk about a big saving

I do wonder if Steam allow me to play games on steam without needing steam as a save backup cause I worry what if Steam servers collapse for one day, and that mean one day without games. Does anyone know?

I still have a few games that I bought before steam like DA: O, BF2 Bad Company (wish I bought on Steam instead), CCS, Supreme Commander, Sin of Solar Empire, Borderland, Far Cry 2, Assassin Creed II, and a few others.

I guess I won't be completely without games

 

You can run steam games in offline mode i ran 6 months without an internet connection playing Saints Row 2 which is steam only.

 

THANK YOU!
I've been asking that question over at steam forums and no one can tell me as no one has been w/o an internet connection longer than 1 week.

 

I went without internet access for about two years in high school, and Steam's offline mode is a godsend.

 

There's an offline mode? How? Where? What?

 

Login once online and then select from the Steam drop-down menu "Go Offline." I think there is also a way to go offline from the logon screen too but I am not sure. I know once you select "Go Offline," you can login to Steam as normal and it go in as offline mode every time you login until you select "Go Online" again.

 

sure, why not, I never bought that many games within such short spam(big seals ftw), now I have so many games I dont even know when Im gonna play all of them and I keep buying more of them.... dam you steam.

 

i HATE tracking down discs and keys--i am good at losing things--i have lost five wedding rings in 12 years.

i have a stack of dusty discs on the shelves that i might just toss. most of my favorite oldies i have already duplicated with steam sales. i do not remember the last time i bought a boxed game--probably years. i love steam. too bad they don't sell wedding rings.

 

lool its funny to think somepeople didnt know there was an offline mode
i used to have a computer in my bedroom and my mum was totally agaist wireless..so i used to have to carry the pc(tower,screen,keyboard,mouse)down 2 flights of stairs and in my living room to install new pc games HORROR...then when i moved out(16) i got wireless asap


so mostly i only played games on the offline mode fyi when you start steam up disconnected from the internet it should say do you wanna start in offline mode

 

I like not having to track down disks.

HOWEVER recently I purchased a game guide and learned that they never even send you a PDF of a printed document, you can ONLY access it online. Steam customer support was not very helpful, pretty much avoided the question, and the purchase documents never, ever mention that printed material is electronic web access only.

So just be aware. The benefits may outweight the pains, but there are some pains in dealing with Steam. I won't purchase anything but software from them again.

 

i guess you wen't without a bsod in 2 years?

 

LOL everything from steam is digital, and I mean EVERYTHING. Well if they send you a hard copy, you might lose it, so isn't it why we buy digital copy from steam in the first place?

I know it suck, since guide are meant to be hard copy. I feel your pain brah!

Well I knew about Steam offline ever since I knew about Steam but I wasn't sure if you had to log into steam (access steam without internet) to be able to play the games or you can play it without needing steam or steam can be accessed without internet... Does that make sense?

Anyway glad my question help a lot of people out, and yeah Steam forum suck, no one hardly ever answer any of my question.

 

One bad thing about Steam is that it's often more complicated to use community-created mods with a game you purchased on Steam. Trainers and hacks wouldn't work either.

 

...and you see this as a problem?

 

trainers and hacks dont work on single player games?

and to RainMotorsports, i think people (including myself) like to mess around on some games. I loved being godly on fable 1 and what not.

 

I don't mind that games are more expensive on Steam than from brick and mortar stores. The convenience of Steam is simply unparalleled, especially for anyone who formats their computer often and has to reinstall all of these games. The sales are unbeatable as well.

I was extremely upset when I heard that Battlefield 3 most likely won't be on Steam. I was really excited for it and now I'm thinking of not even getting it because of this. I just don't want to have to deal with another digital distributor or hard copy discs anymore. There's really no reason why we should be wasting resources on mass producing as many hard copy games as we do now. Granted, I understand there is a need for a few people, but digital downloads are much more environmentally conscious.

Also, from what I've heard only some of Steam's games work in offline mode. Not all of them. But, there are a lot of hard copy games that don't work without internet access as well (Ubisoft, I'm looking at you).

I don't see this as being a bad thing at all, I'd actually be pretty angry if they wasted all of the resources to print and transport something as redundant as a strategy guide. If it was some sort of collectors edition artwork book it wouldn't be so bad. I would much rather alt+tab out of games to read a section of the guide or print off a specific number of pages if a certain part of the game requires it.

 

I like steam very much:

1) its cheaper for me
2) I can actually find the games that I want (try to find a hard copy in brazil, they only sell pirated games in here, or console)
3) I backup my games to my NAS, thus avoiding hassles of finding disks and to find out those disks too scratched to use

My library right now is divided between steam, gog, and origin, those 2 latter are because I got the games as a gift

 

Give me Steam!

*me rocks to Peter Gabriel*

YouTube - ‪Peter Gabriel - Steam‬‏

 

I like Steam's prices. I hate the program Steam.

Would MUCH rather go out and buy a stand-alone copy of games. My rule is: New games -> pre-order from Amazon, Older games -> Steam sale

 

Problems I see with that is that new games tend to be regularly price at store whereas online it a little bit cheaper but it take a while for it to ship, whereas Steam tend to have good sale only a few weeks afterward and can be dl instantly. No waiting for shipped date.

Well I guess I like Steam cause I don't buy game on release date with a few exception. GW2, Skyrim, and BF3 is a must.

 

This was back when I was using XP, so yeah, I had a few What do BSOD's have to do with it?

I haven't really modded every single game I have on Steam, but I haven't run into any trouble. Oblivion Mod Manager and Script Extender both work perfectly with the Steam version of Oblivion, and so do all the mods I've installed.

Forgotten Hope 2 also works with no trouble on my Steam copy of Battlefield 2.

 

I mod the (excuse my use of language) out of Just Cause 2 which can only be bought from Steam and it was a cakewalk. But I got bore at being unkillable so I went back and start over on super hard difficulty and am 1/4 done with the game

 

Can someone tell me if I can use an external hard drive to play Steam games and other form of digital download as well as game disc?

Thanks

 

For me when I found the digital distribution system (with Steam) I was happy because I didn't have to use discs anymore.

I also think this is the future of gaming (digital distributions), in general they offer:
+ No use of discs.
+ Unlimited downloads (not sure if all sites, check FAQs)
+ Access to old games that can't be bought or are incredibly expensive due to its age.

Speaking of Steam, it has the advantage over many other digital distributors:
+ Automatic update and no need to track keys.
+ Online community

Nevertheless there are issues Steam has to work out to be close to ideal:
- All installations go to a specific direction, where Steam was installed.
- The backup tool takes AGES to do a backup, and you can't do separate game backups simultaneously (all go to a single one, or go one by one).
- The interface (especially the colors) should be worked about a little bit.

Just my 0.02 USD

 

That's why you don't use Steam's integrated backup function. Instead, just copy your steamapps directory to an external hard drive. It's much faster to restore your games this way. The only downside (if you can call it that), is doing a restore this way precludes the games from showing up in the add/remove programs section of the control panel.

 

I really like steam, its very easy access and quite the user friendly interface too. Then theres the steam deals which are just amazing and really gets the game flow going. I would prefer a hard copy at times, but i think steam does it rather well. The only thing i really can complain about is how every new game on steam is more expensive than else where....

 

Certainly that is the way to go around the issue. But from a product performance point of view, it should be fixed.

More (personal views) on topic: Like mentioned in the OP, going digital means no resale rights, that is why I only but when there are deals.

 

Yes I do, the prices are outrageously cheap during sale times. I only hate that the deals get so good sometimes, it makes my wallet cry.

 

Damn I'm starting to hate Steam. It's so freakin buggy.

I bought Killing Floor, but not before a friend sent me a sneaky guest pass for it. Now whenever I log onto Steam the guest pass alert pops up, but I can neither ignore (ignore button doesn't work) or accept (it just says "you have this game already", and alert pops up next time Steam opens). To make it worse, whenever the guest pass alert pops up, my Killing Floor play-time hours counter gets RESET!! Freaking A man.

 

contact steam about the issue

 

1) In my country, piracy is like a philosophy. There are too few PC games stores, and those few are TOO expensive. For example, AC2 is about 70$. And there are few games available. So, before Steam you had these options: a) pay those prices and select what you play based on the available games on the stores. b) Buy a hard copy from an Amazon-like store on U.S.A., that's about 30$ + taxes and wait for about 2 weeks to arrive. So, no many options around here. 90% torrent their games, or buy on the black market previously torrented games on DVD.

I'm trying hard changing friends mind about piracy. Already introduced a couple of friends to Steam and they somewhat changed. One of them is a Dragon Age fan, and is not playing it because he's waiting to have some spare money to buy it. He HAS the pirated version on DVD, but he's not using it, he want "true" copy of games now. My wife is on Steam too, I gift her some games from time to time (she's not a gamer, just likes a few ones, but I'm still trying xD). So, I believe Steam IS helping a LOT on 3rd world countries like mine. Buying original AAA games for less than 10$ was imposible back then, there are a LOT of people here who still think original games = 50$+.

I know Steam is ONE MORE marketplace, but for me, is THE marketplace. I like having ALL integrated: community + games + forums + achievements + etc. And I'm ALWAYS connected, wifi or 3G, so, not a problem for me.

2) I'm somewhat of "enviromentalist" or "ambientalist" or wathever you wanna call it. I favor the conservation of trees and "stop doing garbage people!". I believe books should be digital. Got a kindle. There's no excuse, is exactly like a book (and I'm a serious reader), even more comfortable I must say (and only 140$, come on!). So, you want the game manual? Download the PDF/doc/other and thow it on your ebook reader (there are a lot of software to convert those documents to the reader standard if you are delicate about that. I use Calibre), is even easier to search through the pages. Hard distribution of certain things must stay on collector's side. Books, games, movies, music... all should be digital. Less garbage for the planet. Also, the more people go digital, the cheaper the prices should be. Right now, hard copies ARE more expensive, the way it should be

 

heh I read on my pc using fbr reader, thus Im greener! However there are titles that arent sold via amazon kindle, specially the ones that I usually read (economy books, international relations and some coding books), for the normal novel types they have it all

paraguay and brazil are very much alike when it comes to gaming, there isnt enough offerings in terms of games for pc, and only on consoles that cant be hacked you can find games at stores. However there is a caveat, the usual fare of games and consoles being sold here are smuggled from paraguay, and thus are much cheaper.

Like I saw a user with a mbp the fully loaded 2000 bucks one, he got this one from paraguay for only 2281, and thats the price that I paid for the base mbp 13

 

Yes. There are A LOT of PS3 games on stores. But ultra expensive!

There is a "little" problem. One can buy a mbp fully loaded from Amazon at 2000$, + taxes it ends about 2500$ more or less. BUT, as APPLE don't have a south american Store (hey, they didn't even have a proper "policy" about us here!), all resellers don't take the "worldwide" apple warranty. At least in Paraguay, the reseller didn't took my MBP warranty my sister bought me when she was on U.S.A. They told me "if you import the laptop, bring us the import papers, we can check. But even so, I doubt we accept the warranty". So, on less words, if you don't buy from the reseller, you are alone... and your warranty = fingerscrossed

All APPLE resellers prices on South America are HUGE because Apple don't care about us. At least by now

On other things: you can't imagine how much I search here for a decent laptop at a good price. All are the standard ones. One like my XPS must be about 2000$, but there isn't one. The reseller just sells cheap dells at expensive prices. Asus G series? Alienware?? In your dreams!. I just imported it. And the reseller here is not an "authorized" one (I found that later). So, no warranty for me. AGAIN. My next purchase would be AGAIN an imported machine, but maybe a Mythlogic or such good HUMAN FACTORY TESTED machine...

 

i been using steam since cs 1.6 and its pretty darn reliable and userfriendly. ive bought numerous games off it and register retail game cdkeys and never had a problem. they also refund prepurchases very fast (even answer my request on saturday last weekend)

though the dl speed has gone wayyyyyy down after tf2 became free to play and all these steam sales.

 

Been getting 1.5 Mbps solid through the day they offered it for free through the day I downloaded it and until now. Must be your region. Just redownloaded Saints Row 2 last night and its huge lol.

 

for me it depends on the game. I got a hard copy of Sims 3 because i get lots of mods for it and not all of them work the same way with Steam version and I don't want to risk that. Also, I like the security of having a hard copy since i really really like that game.

The rest, which is mass effect 2, assassins creed 2, and tropico 3 so far, i got from steam/amazon equivalent in the case of ME2. And I'm fine with that. I'm not as attached to those games, and this was a much cheaper way, and i have no complaints about playing em so far :]

 

dled a bunch of sale games at a lan recently. before steam use to go at 6mb/s now its only around 1.2mb/s and stops going sometimes. should be fine after the sales are over

 

Ah i never get over 1.5 from steam i thought they capped it like alot of servers do. I get 22Mbps down from speed test paying for 15 i think. LOL so i just get average speeds from steam and haven't been affect then lmao.

 

any chance ur in canada and using rogers internet

 

No and No lol. I can also pull from my personal rack server alot faster than I can from steam. But steam is always 1.5Mbps for me. I only download a few times a year so your observations are probably more frequent as well.

 

well at least in brazil we are progressing on the apple support, just received my mbp 13 today, and guess what its a fluke, will get my replacement by friday, and will rma on the same truck

I think that the problem is that paraguay has grown a remarkable fame of being smugglers that apple didnt accept the warranty, but its my guess that if your sister purchased the apple care (which I wil, I want this mbp to last at least for 3 years), they could have worked it. The problem is to buy the warranty (apple care is global)

Yeah I was torn between some dells, mainly the vostro 3450, just to avoid the hassle of importing the thing, dell is dominating the south american market with prices that are expensive, but still within the reasonable 2x as much range (It just gave me so much pain to say that its a fair price to pay 2x as much on a product...)

btw I chose the mbp because the price of importing one legally would cost me the same to buy one here, too bad that they dont apply this to every product that they sell, the mbp 15 and 17 are just too expensive)

 

there are only a few things i dont like about steam:

team fortress 2 beta is uglying up my grid view of my games (same with zeno clash for some reason)

if i add a non-steam game it uglys up my grid view

cant sell my games.

however, considering i buy absolutely every game i own on steam for around 50-80% off its well worth it.

 

I use Steam mostly for game purchases. And for that its awesome. At least, with a fast internet connection.

 

Yeah, but the reason why electronics here are so dam expensive is because of that ludicrous import tax, when u factor in 60% on top of original price AND the freight u get pretty much 2x the original price, then u go out here and see for 3x the price u see outside this country. I paid about a thousand dollars for my notebook about a year ago and it wasnt on US(cuz there it would be quite cheaper) but it was still quite a good deal for me because here in Brazil the same notebook would cost me about 2 thousand dollars...
The government sets this ridiculous tax on imports to encourage national producers, however that sort of backfires on us costumers... and also encourages smuggling... go figure.

 

this is all from the time of the dictatorship, there was and still exist the cobra computers, which did produced some x86 chips however what they right now is unknown, I never asked my colleague from college what he does there.

in the lula gov, there was some tax reduction regarding computers, however the ones with gpu got the price jacked up, as the higher end cpus as well.

and yes I agree with you, while we are in the threshold to find decent R$2000 laptops (U$1250) laptops, we are still far away to find gaming ones at a decent price point. Enterprise class hardware is the one that suffers worse from that, in the laptop perspective off course.

However its not just diminishing taxes that we can make the market thrives, its got more complicated than that. liberalism without control is going to doom the market, cartel and such already existed here, and it will come back again, the CADE is eying major computer transactions here as of now. Specially after the establishment of the apple factory here, eike is going to get himself in some serious profit and trouble. But in the end it will fix itself, by the competition.

Might I add, tax:

consumer - 50% of any imported product
enterprise - 30% it varies, for low end cpus its 15%, and so forth

 

Never had a problem with my steam account. actually I bought Half-life 2 many years ago, and forgot about it and steam. I then returned a year ago since I wanted a new game. And there was my half-life game waiting for me to dl. Since then I was hooked and I really like the idea of never have to worry about my games

 

I forgot the email I use and I don't like there extra security since I'm using my laptop to login. I know my username and password but I need to remember which email I use now and the good offer (steam sale) will be gone by then.

 

I don't think Apple care makes any difference, unless you bought the product from the reseller here. Is not Apple who don't accept the warranty, is the reseller the one who don't want to make the paperwork, biasing you to buy from them next time, is some kind of extorsion. I can send my MBP to an Apple Store in Sweden if I want and they will recognize the warranty.

And that's not all: Some time ago I was in need to buy a new powercharger for my MBP. The reseller DIDN'T HAVE ONE. "On about 2 weeks we can bring you one" they said. The same time It would take to wait for an amazon buy. I just bought one from amazon. The reseller here is NULL. If they dont have a sinple powercharger, can you imagine a battery motherboard or any other thing?. Imagine you bought your machine from them and got the warranty. How much time will you wait for a replacement?. How serious is the reseller if don't have a simple charger?.