Direct2Drive are hypocrites since they sell other Steam-activated games like Dawn of War II and Saint's Row 2
You know you can close Steam and set it so it doesn't launch at startup, right? You can also close it. Right-click on the little tray icon and click "exit." The platform behaves just like your IM client. It lives in your tray.Sjakie said:I despise steam, it is everything a digital delivery service should be and should NOT be.
It delivers, it integrates into your games like a virus onto your PC and it keeps bugging you like one. start your game and steam activates and connects to the net, but when you quit your game, steam stays active and thinks it's fun to throw some adverts in your face while your at it. I dont know about you, but i usually buy stuff to get rid of advertising. Not get some extra. Not to mention, what happens when your internet connection goes down or resets itself? So much for playing your games off-line. And what if the steam-servers go down?
Along with the writer you seriously overvalue the power of Steam. Steam has to bargain with publishers who might rather just make their own programs just to get the games distributed. Then they have to bargain alongside the retailers that sell the games.otakucode said:Why are publishers allowed to implement DRM over and above Steams protection? Why do games cost the same, or often more, than retail? Why did Valve spend thousands of dollars developing a "preloading" system that downloads the game to a paid customers PC and then actively PREVENTS them from playing it until retailers can get their shelves stocked? Why does distributing a game through Steam require negotiating with Valve?
Revenuesotakucode said:People that think Valve had no choice in these matters, and that they HAD to bend over for the publishers, consider what Apple did with iTunes. Apple told publishers they could not charge more than 99 cents a track. They told publishers they had to sell tracks individually and could not force customers to buy multiple tracks packaged together. They told publishers they could not implement extra DRM. Apple stepped up and forced the publishers to actually take advantage of digital distribution and pass along the advantages to the consumer. Of course, Apple is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I am only pointing out their actions to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Valve absolutely DID have a choice when they made the decisions affecting the design of Steam
This. (Your entire post is great, but I feel that this sums up the situation nicely).Sjakie said:Steam and steamlike services have the future, but instead of giving users more control over their games i feel that they are taking it away from us, more and more and all for $$.
The problem is not with the service that Steam offers (although I have a number of gripes with their service...) The problem is that it's a service which users are forced to accept in order to play certain PC games, whether they want to or not. The problem is that regardless of how good the service is, it's still being installed on my machine against my will. If I don't want to use it's features while playing my games, I shouldn't have to.Walking_Target said:Not only do you get a way to track 'achievements' and other stats, you have access to game and publisher specific forums, a technical help line and of course, one-stop shopping. Steam also encorporates support for both P2P multiplayer and traditional dedicated and semi-dedicated game servers. Not only this, but there's also automatic patch detection and downloads for multiplayer games (no looking for patches!) and they have done a wonderful job supporting Indie games and the mod community for their own games. Then there's the big benefit - as long as your account remains secure, you never have to worry about lost disks, keys or other problems. They're all stored to your account profile.