So I just installed Steam once again.

[Vigormortis]

Quite frankly, I love the program. It's not perfect, but it's certainly FAR more functional and useful than some insist. (and even further from the draconian image others paint of it)

It fills my needs and wants as best anything on the market can and has never caused me any serious, untoward issues. (save for when I first created an account back in 2004)

My only real complaint as of late is the overlay. Normally it functions just fine. Lately, though, it tends to crash with a fair bit of frequency.

However, it only really does so in Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2. And, even then, usually only while loading a map or loading certain webpages in the browser.

It's not an issue that completely ruins my gaming experience, but it's damned frustrating when I need the overlay and it just up and crashes because the game decided to load something.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

As a filthy console gaming peasant, I love Steam, though I have had a few problems... especially with some of the older games I bought off there. Mainly it is just bugs that I wasn't warned about before purchasing, like Fallout 1 and 2 having severe color problems or the intro movie to KotOR crashing the game. These were eventually fixed through messing with the ini files and removing the movie respectively. But on the whole, my library has grown and most games are pretty stable. Steam is a good service and I am glad to give them my money.

 

[Vigormortis]

me too.

i avoided steam for years.

now i think its ok (you don't have to keep it on all the time and you can switch most annoying things off) but the one thing that really bugs the shit out me about it is the selling of games that basically just don't work any more on modern hardware and OSs.

in that respect it needs to be a bit more like GOG going forward and support the actual basic functionality of that which it purports to sell.

While I don't necessarily disagree with you, I'm still inclined to point out that many of the games you're referencing have listed, right on their store pages, the minimum and recommend system settings. Including which OS's they function on.

If someone buys a game without consulting that clearly present info then the subsequent issues are the responsibility of the buyer, not the seller.

That said, it would be nice to see Valve get more devs involved in porting their respective titles to more operating systems.

 

[gigastar]

I never got the resource drain argument against Steam. Looking at it right now on my laptop its not using any CPU and is only sitting on about ~100MB of RAM.

I guess if youre considering it a resource drain, then you might need to consider an upgrade.

As for my relationship with Steam, in my 4 and a half years with it, ive never come across a problem that couldnt be fixed by restarting the program, or waiting for a patch.

And of course, i love me some sales.

 

[AlbertoDeSanta]

Steam is something I've never hated, since I don't have much problem with DRM (it's only the really idiotic publishers that have turned it into a dirty word, but Valve have done well so far), especially when the Positives outweigh the negatives. Steam has never failed me, it may have bugs, but what program doesn't these days? It's used by so many people worldwide each day, and for good reason. Steam, to put it simply, works as intended and provides incentive to use it. On the other hand, Origin isn't so bad either. The only real problems are it's insane exclusivity and unreasonable pricing (the latter being a major issue). Other then that, I just don't *get* the hate that most gamers associate with Origin.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I dont really understand why so many people hate steam because it's DRM. It's so unobtrusive and you have unlimited installs on unlimited computers, and steam running in the background has never affected performance for me. I love all the features that steam has (friends list, dashboard, workshop, even greenlight which is pretty broken) and the prices are awesome. I don't mind always being online on steam, and even if I did mind, there's an offline mode which works fine and never asks you to check in unless you want to update/download new games.

I even buy games on Steam sometimes that I could buy elsewhere DRM-free, and I always redeem my humble bundle purchases in the form of Steam keys, because it keeps most of my games in a single unified collection.

That said my most recent purchases have been the following:

The Walking Dead Season 2 Pre-order
Sir, You are Being Hunted Early Access
The Wolf Among Us
The Stanley Parable

I love me some Telltale games.

 

[Croaker42]

Hundreds of dollars spent on steam. The Library says I own 157 titles and I can say that Steam, for the most part, has been a total gaming blessing. I look at it as a gaming butler that, even though it has its own priorities and life (taking metrics and encouraging me to buy stuff)will for the most part do as I say and keep track of my gaming life.

The one thing I did get to learn with Steam is self control. With the frequency of steam sales and the game market/community being what it is, I don't think I need to pay full price for games any more. With few exceptions, and a heavy library to fall back on, shelling out $50+ for a new release just seems silly.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I use it occasionally I bought Skullgirls on it along with Vampire the masquerade Bloodline and The walking dead the last two were on sale and games I wanted for quite a while (especially Masquerade).

That said I dont like it they do some good deals occasionally but it definitely pays to look around they arent always as cheap as people like to think and in many cases outside of sales are damn expensive.

I have no problem resisting buying games off Steam and will always go for DRM free where possible rather than steam unless its hugely more expensive. I would have bought the walking dead on PS3 for about 8 pounds but I have no space on the HD and cant be bothered to change it so had to go steam sale for 6 pounds.

 

[bjj hero]

I dislike steam. I dont like having advertisements dropped on to myscreen uninvited. I only have it because there are games you can only play via steam. I dont use the community functions andhave no interest in the cards or achievements.

Steam feels like an uninvited guest who raids my fridge, kicks my dog and plays loud music.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

As far as DRM goes, its one of the best and most unobtrusive out there with plenty of features to make you forget that its real purpose is to placate publishers because lets face it, unless your name is CDprojectRED or you no longer exist you're going to want some form of protection from pirates.

Quite frankly I rather have a DRM system created by a company unbeholden to shareholders than something from the likes of EA or Ubisoft.

 

[Foolery]

If I could PC game without Steam, I would. And I do, if possible. Like others have mentioned, GOG is pretty great. That's digital distribution done right in my opinion. I miss when you could go to the store and buy a singleplayer game, install and play, without having to go online or update. I'm cool with downloading patches on my own.

 

[TwiZtah]

I got DMC4 last christmas and it didn't work. I still use the games that actually work on it, but I refuse to buy anything more. Steam isn't as cheap as everyone seems to think, I can get games just as cheap used. Used games also have the physical game.

That is most likely a problem on the client side, I haven't seen any threads saying that it doesn't work, and I also have it working. Hardware? Windows 8? (windows 8 fucks up everything in the history of mankind)

No, Steam isn't very cheap outside of their insane deals. I usually get my games from GMG or other places.

 

[DanielBrown]

Well, a few months ago I only played MMOs on my PC. Did all my other gaming on my PS3... then I discovered the cheap bundles floating around the internet. Bought a few, which eventually became many, and now I have 112 games on my almost ten year old Steam account that only had six games, or so, before the bundles. For those 100+ games I've hardly spent anything and a lot of the titles are really good(though around half is shit), so I fucking love Steam.

Latest purchase would be The Secret World. Got it on the Halloween sale for 15 euro. Played it almost constantly the past three days, though I skipped installing it on Steam. Took forever for it to start installing and when it was finally done it still wanted to patch the game. By then the launcher I got from Funcoms website was done a long time ago.
Definetly recomend the game if you want a more adult and non-casual friendly MMO. I had missed not being completely handheld by games more than I thought.

 

[Eve Charm]

- my biggest hate for Steam comes from the fact that many non-Steam game require it. Not so many as it used to, but I won't be supporting such a platform. Buying games like Saints Row 2 (the absolutely worst PC port in history) or Kane & Lynch 2 (the game that taught me to never preorder ever again) on fucking DVDs and than not being able to resell them is not how I want to spend my money. BTW these are 2 of only 4 games I ever considered reselling.

Well the first point as for reselling your used pc games, thats why they started coming up with limited installs, and if your cd/dvd goes bad, your SOL. and a bad game is a bad game no matter how you got it.

- after I bought 2 Ubisoft games with NO DRM WHATSOEVER (Hawx and POP 2008), I learned to really value not having to jump through any hoops to get the games I fucking paid for. I no longer find any kind of online authentication acceptable.

Instead of jumping through the hoop of opening steam and typing a cd key and getting everything for you, your thrown in the vast wasteland of "ok now I installed the cd, where is all the patches so I can actually play the game I installed."

Then of course are the bonus points when it fucks up, such as when it's not possible to start in offline, or some patch blows up, or when a crash forced me to redownload a game, when the download is slow, when the download servers are unavailable, or when there's a downtime. I always have the luck to start Steam when it's downtime.

Ok when is it not possible to start an offline game offline? Patches and games crash when files go bad or get changed or something, same with CD installs which instead is going and uninstalling it, getting out the discs and reinstalling it, then going online to get the patches, then install the patches and hope it runs.

And you must be the unluckiest person for steam to be down the few times when you need to download something and not at the scheduled maintenance time.




It's a service that is 10 times more simpler and user friendly. Much more importantly I know who I'm handing my money to. I've never bought a game then have something mess up and tell me I didn't but charge my bank account then have to spend hours dealing with customer service and my bank to get charges fixed.

 

[Fiirdraak]

I really don't get why people complain about the pricing of the games in that they somehow make it Steam's fault that the games can be expensive. It's just a publishing platform that takes 30% from the selling price. But it's the publishers that set the prices. Sure, paying 59,90 euros for a digital download is a high price but it's really not up to Steam to decide.

And even if they sell games that are older and more likely to not run on your system, it's really not their responsibility to make them work. It's those guys' responsibility who put them there. And you can always go to GOG.com if you want to get (in most cases anyway) a working game from 1998.

Also, during my time as a game artist, our studio has had some weird complaints from the people who buy our games and then don't get them to work. The amount of cases where people have relatively old rigs or use laptops from 5 years ago and then go batshit crazy when the games don't work is surprisingly huge. I don't know why this is, other than the complete lack of taking responsibility in your own purchasing actions. The system requirements are stated in the store page and they know that their rigs can't handle the games and yet they buy them and then complain, saying it is our fault the game doesn't run on rig that has a GPU with 1/4 of the RAM and two cores missing from the minimum processor required to play the game.

Sure, Steam's demand on being "always online" can be tough for some but I have practically never had any problems with it. And to those who are seeking refunds of games "they didn't like after all", well, tough luck. Look for reviews first, then buy the games. I have around 200 games on Steam at the moment and most definitely there are games that have turned out to be awful or boring. But I can't blame Steam for those purchases. I was aware of my actions when I bought them and take full responsibility of the purchases.

Used games, then... Long before Steam service began, games already had CD keys that prohibited (or at least tried to) the lending of games. I remember having Neverwinter Nights back in the beginning of 2000's and it had CD keys. And so did many other games. The "problem" was, those were easy to crack and then distribute to your friends and whatnot. So, basically DRM, one form or another, has been there for a long time.

Downloading games can be a problem due to network speeds and connection problems. I have experienced only few cases of network issues that have made it impossible to play a game and those instances have been, surprise, when I was playing a multiplayer game. I suppose I am lucky to live in Finland where the infrastructure is one of the best in the world and I can enjoy downloading speeds on Steam that go up to 10 MBs/second.

Lastly, games are a commodity, not a necessity. If you dislike the service, you can choose to not use it. GOG.com is a good alternative, maybe Green Man Gaming too with their "re-sold" game activation codes/SecuROM DRM. But hate Steam for the proper reasons, not something like "the games are too expensive" or "my internet connection is bad".

Personally, I prefer Steam over any other service (although I am a customer on GOG.com, too). I suppose I am "a fanboy" and I don't deny it nor do I deny that some people around the world have problems with Steam. Some of the problems just aren't due to Steam but because some other "3rd party problem".

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

My only problem with Steam is that extreme paranoia that one day, perhaps by some freak accident, Valve can't continue to support Steam, and they have to shut down, taking my games with them. Other than that, I love Steam. It takes up almost no noticeable power from any decent computer, all my games can be downloaded at any time, and I don't have to worry about any game cases taking up space on a shelf or drawer (as much as I'd sometimes love to). Also there are deals on new games that even the console versions don't have, patches download automatically, and it's an easy way to keep friends on and see what games they are playing.

Also, can someone tell me, if I upgrade to Windows 8.1 from the free upgrade on the Microsoft store page (I have windows 8), does it wipe all my games and drivers and such? Or would at least most of them still work since it's still technically Windows 8?