Poll: Steam, how do you feel about it?

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

Meh I've never liked Steam... the first time I ever came across it was when I was forced to install it to play Empire: Total War.

Before then I'd never had to put up with any digital distribution medium on the PC, and Steam glitched out on me for about a day, refusing to allow me to install the game, then trying to make me download it, then after managing to get it to start to install it tries to download it again.

Right there I decided Steam is not something I enjoy, the deals are good for people who buy from there, but I don't therefore Steam is useless to me and just serves to get in my way... also oddly enough, it feels oppressive, I select Empire and a little pop up box informs me it's connecting to my account, which it proceeds to do for the best part of a minute before my game actually runs.

I prefer GFWL on pretty much all fronts, they just need a larger selection of games and I'll be set.

 

[botobeno]

We have been told that the patch is ready should Valve fall off of the face of the Earth. It is then perfectly reasonable to assume that Valve (of all people) would put that patch online.

And I have no idea what you're talking about, so I can't comment. Comparing MS and Valve never really works though, and I'm assuming MS never promised to release such a patch beforehand.

I wish i could be as optimist as you, but we live in a world were goverments delay payment for the services companies do for them to make their budgetreview look better, bankrupting several companies that were stupid enough to sell things to their own goverment. And then they say the economy isnt going that well. Meanwhile continuing to cash their own paychecks while we havent even had a goverment in place for weeks because the previous elected idiots couldnt get along and we had to go revote and now the newly elected idiots are even worse at getting along. (Belgium)

Steam will not go bankrupt soon. We can all agree on that. But if it does go down, there is absolutely no garantuee that that fix will be implemented. And you cant do anything about it if they dont.

 

[Cousin_IT]

Steam = good.
Steamworks + regional distribution system = f'king pain in the arse.

I'm still bitter that I had to wait for Civ 5 to unlock on Steam despite having the disc in my hand (well, in the DVD drive)! & woe betide if I ever dared try to order a game using Steamworks that had not been released in the EU at all.

 

[Delusibeta]

And you cant do anything about it if they dont.

Here's the big glowing problem with this arguement: we can. We can crack the Steam DRM, in the event of Steam's closure.

There's also one large flaw in Garak's analogy with PlaysForSure. In that case, there is nothing in common with the filesthat are DRM'd. In Steam's case, there is: the client. Rather than individually patch every file (like Microsoft would have to do, had they bothered), all Valve have to do is to make sure the client software does not require Internet access, permantly. Job done, all your games are safe and all Valve had to do was distribute one singular patch, rather than the thousands and thousands of different variations of the patch Microsoft faced with had they went and removed the DRM in PlaysForSure music.

 

[Delusibeta]

And you cant do anything about it if they dont.

Here's the big glowing problem with this arguement: we can. We can crack the Steam DRM, in the event of Steam's closure.

There's also one large flaw in Garak's analogy with PlaysForSure. In that case, there is nothing in common with the filesthat are DRM'd. In Steam's case, there is: the client. Rather than individually patch every file (like Microsoft would have to do, had they bothered), all Valve have to do is to make sure the client software does not require Internet access, permantly. Job done, all your games are safe and all Valve had to do was distribute one singular patch, rather than the thousands and thousands of different variations of the patch Microsoft faced with had they went and removed the DRM in PlaysForSure music.

It isn't about how much work is required, it's about the legality of being able to strip off the DRM for all those games.

BTW, if you have to crack the DRM, you may as well have saved your money and gotten the cracked version to start with.

...and we don't know what the contract the game companies signed for when they put their games up on Steam. For all we know, there could be a clause that says that "in case of Steam's closure, the client's authentication system should be disabled". For all we know, there might not be a legal issue after all.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

I hate buying stuff online, so the bargains don't matter to me. And I love that I get all sorts of free stuff for TF2 and L4D. But steam in itself? I tolerate it. I would rather not have to deal with anything other than me and my game. But it's the lesser of two or more evils. It's the succubus of gaming ;p