So I just installed Steam once again.

[CrankyCorvus]

Seen people make this claim many times, never seen the actual quote though. Do you have the actual quote?

Even if it weren't true, it doesn't matter.

When you buy a game off Steam, you own the game. At least, in the same fashion you "owned" those games going as far back as the 90's.

See, here's the thing:
If you're buying software via digital distribution, and you're not downloading and backing-up those games onto a hard-drive, DVDs, or other storage medium, than you are being incredibly irresponsible with your purchases.

Not doing so is the equivalent of going to Gamestop, paying for a game, and asking them to keep the disk behind the counter until some unknown future date when you may or may not return to pick it up.

Or, if you don't keep back-up copies stored locally (as in, solely relying on downloading from Steam after the initial install), then that's the equivalent of buying your game from Gamestop, taking it home for a bit, then returning to the store and asking them to keep it for you until you want to play it again.

Sure, they may be obliged to keep that copy available to you, but if they go belly-up and your copy goes with them, then that's on you.

Every time I purchase a game from Steam, I immediately download it and create a back-up of the game to one of my external hard-drives. That way, even if Valve magically "goes away" in the near future, I still have all of my games.

I really wish more people would realize this. I really get sick of hearing the "but they can take away all my games at any time!" bullshit.

Unrelated: First post! Yay...

Okay, first of all, not one of us has ever owned a game. You only own it if you made it. What the consumer's actually buying is a license to play a copy of the game and a copy of the required media (be it physical or digital) which allows the consumer to play said game. These licenses can, in fact, be taken away from you at any point, though the likelihood is low, I'll give you that.

I also have to touch on your last point here. I guess you forgot about the large number games which require Steam to be running for you to be able to launch them. So, for your plan to work, the Steamworks DRM would need to be removed from said games for them to work should Steam disappear. Call me pessimistic if you wish, but I just can't see that happening.

OT: I've been an active Steam user for about 2 years and I haven't encountered many problems. Even those I did encounter were easily solved. I particularly like the fact that many of the games I'd like to play are Steamworks but I've learned to live with it. I see Steam as nothing more than a necessary evil, really.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

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.

The moment it got hard, if not impossible, to just get proper games in their original language in the shop, mall or bookstore down the corner, I embraced Amazon and every business that would still let me throw money at them and deliver what I want - the game, in its original form, without black-and-white instruction booklets that were of poor quality but came in a dozen languages.

Digital downloads don't give me the disc, they don't give me the box, the don't give me that much-craved for physical something to hold and behold. And yet, I can accept that as being the way to go as long as I don't have to do it all the time. I like GOG for what it is and what it does. A lot of what they have on sale I already own, and yet I'm willing to buy again if it allows me to jump right into playing the actual game instead of having to fiddle with things. I fiddle with things (and people) pretty much 24/7, so I like when, every once in a while, something just works. Steam generally does that now, I like that. Windows 8... not so much. And, after I went on a not so merry trip through the forums after some people suggested it was because of my age or my lack of intelligence that I find myself annoyed with certain things, I can cheerfully report that no, my gripes and worries manifest themselves manifold. Games suddenly all starting in 3D, with the 3D section missing from the graphics driver dialogue? It's all there, everywhere. Giving people headaches, ulcers and nightmares.

The emancipation of the gamer is a strange thing. Right now, I don't really believe it exists. Even if you make things ass backwards, everyone that thinks very little of it will just be called old and stupid.

Well, I say it's time for another war. Just to shake up the fancy little gangsters a wee bit. I'd pay to see that happening.

 

[Olas]

Steam and me go way back. Steam is like an old friend who's hit it big, yet is still really cool. It does whatever it can to make me happy. Steam isn't perfect, but it's too good for me to complain.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Okay, first of all, not one of us has ever owned a game. You only own it if you made it. What the consumer's actually buying is a license to play a copy of the game and a copy of the required media (be it physical or digital) which allows the consumer to play said game. These licenses can, in fact, be taken away from you at any point, though the likelihood is low, I'll give you that.

You bought the publishers bullshit hook, line and sinker. My physical games can't ever be taken from me. Maybe you could tell me how Nintendo would take away my Super Mario World SNES cart if they wanted to. I own that copy of the game and there is nothing Nintendo can do about it.

I also have to touch on your last point here. I guess you forgot about the large number games which require Steam to be running for you to be able to launch them. So, for your plan to work, the Steamworks DRM would need to be removed from said games for them to work should Steam disappear. Call me pessimistic if you wish, but I just can't see that happening.

Agreed with this part.

 

[DoPo]

Seen people make this claim many times, never seen the actual quote though. Do you have the actual quote?

http://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg

Flash is another big offender.

Flash is, without a doubt, the strongest offender. It's very much the reason Firefox, Steam, and a few other browser-style apps are noted as resource hogs, and Adobe doesn't seem to think that perhaps at this point it's better just to rebuild the engine from the ground up so that it's much more efficient.

I think I remember Adobe recently (like a couple of years ago) set their plans like this - let Flash burn. Well, pretty much, at least - or to be more precise, they were going to let HTML5 replace it. Not overnight, of course, but Flash was too much of a maintenance hog even for them, so at some point they'd just drop it and embrace the future.

3. Humble Bundles also have them DRM free as well as the Steam keys. Unless it's from crappy publishers, but I haven't seen many forced DRM games on there.

Actually, there are pretty much regular Humble Weekly Bundles that only net you Steam keys. The most recent one I saw was a month ago and had Killing Floor (though, it may have also been Indie Gala) and around that time there was one with Darksiders 2 (bought it on 4th of October), and a month before that, there was the Paradox bundle with Magicka and other stuff (bough it on the 3rd of September). Even the famous Origin bundle didn't have DRM free games - it was activated on Steam or Origin only.

 

[Saika Renegade]

Steam is like my dog: it's always there, eternally patient, generally reliable, usually well-meaning, and it does a good job of looking guilty when I yell at it for falling over and pissing on the carpet (by which I mean the friend or item servers crash).

It isn't perfect, mind you, but for a free service it's managed to learn from most of its early mistakes as well as that of others, and I can appreciate that--this is where I quibble with Origin, as EA seems to have a problem absorbing the lessons from Valve's own past faux pas without first making the same mistakes themselves.

 

[CrankyCorvus]

You bought the publishers bullshit hook, line and sinker. My physical games can't ever be taken from me. Maybe you could tell me how Nintendo would take away my Super Mario World SNES cart if they wanted to. I own that copy of the game and there is nothing Nintendo can do about it.

Ok, I wasn't being precise enough with the "taking away licenses"-bit and I apologize. It's definitely more of a Steam/comparable digital distribution platform thing (at least if I read the Steam subscriber agreement correctly). I stand by everything else I said, though.

 

[WeepingAngels]

You bought the publishers bullshit hook, line and sinker. My physical games can't ever be taken from me. Maybe you could tell me how Nintendo would take away my Super Mario World SNES cart if they wanted to. I own that copy of the game and there is nothing Nintendo can do about it.

Ok, I wasn't being precise enough with the "taking away licenses"-bit and I apologize. It's definitely more of a Steam/comparable digital distribution platform thing (at least if I read the Steam subscriber agreement correctly). I stand by everything else I said, though.

It's true, if Steam goes down people are probably going to find that there is nothing to that private message from Steam tech support.

Aside from Valve's own games, they have no legal power to remove the DRM from third party games. Consider this, EA has a competing DD service. There is no way they would allow Valve to put their games out there in the wild without DRM.

 

[Joccaren]

Steam is off literally 99% of the time. It only goes on when there's a game I want to play that needs it to run, and even then its usually in offline mode. I don't use Steam. Its a utility, and I see no point in having it running and browsing its store, and been shown ads, and having all my friends be alerted that I'm online, when I don't need it for what I'm doing at that point. It starts automatically when a game requires it anyway, so why start it at startup.

 

[Auron]

people with compulsions and Steam's card system gave me almost a hundred dollars already, I've spent a reasonable amount on December's sale but not too much this july sale I think I'm finally up to the stage where I have most of Steam. This year I've picked up relatively few releases and there's been a bunch of them I'm actually waiting for the next sale right now, never uninstalled though.


Gabe Newell has went on record saying they would find a way if Steam ever died, even if you still had to download origin for the EA games that's keeping the promise. But really you're naive if you think Steam will disappear. If it for some ungodly reason Valve starts to go bad someone will buy it and still profit from it.

 

[snowbear]

For me steams pros far outweigh the cons, and as I now have hundreds of games on there I cant see myself not using it any time soon.

Pros:
+The sales (even new games are normally cheap enough).
+Its also convenient to be able to have all my games in one place, I can delete, re-install as and when I like without worrying if ill loose or scratch a disk.
+All my friends are there and easy to reach too (the game overlay is a god send when talking to people in game).
+Free party chat (voip) and the quality is pretty good and doesn't take up much bandwidth.
+As far as DRM goes its the least invasive I've seen (doesn't alter the game experience at all) I'm not sure I would even bother calling it DRM these days.
+Achievements and trading cards actually mean something, and if you're lucky enough you can get money off games through playing.
+My installed games are always kept up to date without having to worry about what patch I need to download.

Neutral
*VAC while its a good idea, I feel it still needs work. lets people get away with hacking for months before finally clamping down on them.

Cons
-The games brought are only licences and if steam goes, then pretty much so do my games (cant really see it going anywhere any time soon though).
-Having the steam network going down can leave you without some games for a while. (longest I've been without was 10 mins or so but I had plenty of other games on steam to get on with so didn't affect me too much.
-No warning when a games patch is going to download, can be a pain if you're streaming a film or TV. easily solved by turning steam off, but i like the convenience of leaving it on. so a warning would be nice.


All in all I've been using steam now for 7-8 years and while in the beginning it was a bit of a bumpy ride, for me its now a fantastic service that me and my friends would hate to be without.

 

[Xentek]

Steam with the window being open, 100MB of RAM, with it minimized to tray, 20MB. Chrome is using well over 500MB with 4 tabs and some plugins. This is not an issue unless your PC is ten years old. For the rest you can set yourself offline (though why have friends if you don't use it?), stop it from booting with your system, remove the news on start-up and make it go to your library right away. You can also disable automatic game updates if you want to play a specific version of your game (and yes, official patchers work just fine on Steam games and finds the path automatically near always).

Now yeah, Steam is DRM but I love it to death. I don't even want to buy games anymore that I cannot add to my Steam library and non-Steam games I start-up from there too (even Origin/Uplay games I own outside of Steam). I have games on GOG, GamersGate, GreenManGaming though I find it a pain to manually download these games (don't get me started on GMG's capsule client) and then to make sure they are patched to the latest version. The main benefit is that Steam keeps everything centralized and is generally reliable, or at least a lot more than Origin and Uplay. If talking about physical games, I don't even have room to store my ~350 of them and I'll be damned to go through the trouble of finding the one I want, installing it over DVD, manually finding the latest patch, download and install it and then keeping the DVD in the tray each time I want to replay a game.

If Steam breaks, I got 300 games installed I can play in offline mode. If the Steam service ever stops entirely, don't even try to tell me there won't be a another (less than legitimate) version that'll launch your installed games within the hour. Though I don't see how this is really an argument, the same goes if GOG or whatever goes offline and you don't happen to have a back-up of the installer. The main thing is that I don't have to worry about more draconian DRM like AC2's always online nonsense. Though it remains ridiculous that Steam games may still require other DRM like Uplay (Far Cry 3, Driver:SF, Anno 2070) or god forbid, GFWL (Dark Souls, Lost Planet 2, Resident Evil games).

All that said, sales aren't really an argument for Steam as these occur everywhere. Prices are usually on the high-end outside of sales too, but from what I understand that's mainly the publishers' doing, deciding for how much its games should be sold. The primary issue with Steam is the same one most digital distributors have, the inability to re-sell games as used. The other glaring issue is the (from what I heard, I've never needed it) Steam support center for being generally slow and unhelpful.

Bottom line, it's not perfect but it's a whole lot better than the alternatives: fragmented library, time spent installing and maintaining said library and horribly intrusive DRM that actually makes you jump through hoops like: please make an account/login and register your CD key for each different publisher. Also note the 3 machine activation limit and if possible, please be online all the time; 1 dropped packet and you get to restart your game. Oops, server is down! Guess you can't play at all! Even though you have everything installed and registered...

 

[WouldYouKindly]

I've never had issues with Steam, at least not since I got my new computer and crammed a little more ram into it. 16 gigs will handle whatever leech program you want to run.

In all honesty, I see people who have had problems with Steam and I feel lucky or something. I've never had one single problem with Steam. My downloads are swift and never delayed unless I myself delay them because I want to play some online multiplayer game. The sales spoil the hell out of me, but that should be par for the course for a medium that doesn't have to pay for any physical presence, just shuffling data around.

Finally, some of the features people might not use, such as the Steam Workshop(I FUCKING LOVE THE STEAM WORKSHOP!), are exactly why I love it as a service. The only thing I wish I could do is have them make some kind of guarantee that even after Steam ends, anyone who has games on Steam will be given completely DRM free versions of their games. Otherwise, our only recourse would be *looks for mods* piracy... Or spending thousands of dollars on games we already spent thousands of dollars to buy in the first place.

 

[Strelok]

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.

Really? Where is this magical land where recently released console games drop in price so fast? For now, till I get an answer I think we will call this land, The Land of Make Believe. I bought Red Dead Redemption, a truly awful game for $19.00 a full 2 years after release. I bought Tomb Raider 2013 for $19 not even 6 months after release. Did the same for many more when the console versions for a used copy was maybe $5 off.

Let's try Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City Stories on right now:
EB Games used for PS3 $19.99
www.ebgames.ca/ps3/games/grand-theft-auto-episodes-from-liberty-city/254429

Playstation Store digital download $19.99
http://us.playstation.com/games/grand-theft-auto-episodes-from-liberty-city-ps3.html

Steam daily deal price $7.49
http://store.steampowered.com/app/901583/

There are release day deals, usually 10 to 25 percent off, some AAA don't do this, think Activision for a main culprit, most PC games can be $10 to $20 less, sure you can find some really cheap console games at pawn shops, that is where I usually go, I rarely buy console games at release, but even pawn shops are not that far off say Game Stop's used game price.

Edit: Looking at your replies you were just using this thread as a soap box to spout more more of your console crusader rhetoric, please ignore my reply and carry on Jihad. In the coming end times Cthulhu knows consoles are going to need a rabid defender.

 

[HYNGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]

Honestly my only real issue with Steam is being forced to log on in order to play a game like Skyrim.

I get that there's an offline mode, but occasionally Steam decides to change its mind about whether or not that's going to work, and then I'm forced the log on again. Sadly, I tend to only play most of my Steam games after my net has gone down, so the forced log on doesn't help.

 

[ERaptor]

As someone who often switches computers, has a lot of friends who also play PC-Games and has a habit of loosing CD's, steam is ideal for me. I can log in and theres my entire Librar yof Games just a few clicks and a download away. Sales also allow me to purchase good stuff even if its a tight month, and the browsing features allowed me to find a lot of good indies i would have missed completely otherwise.

And about Steam going out of business and taking down my games. Well, first of all im fairly certain that we would know if something like that is looming, which would allow me to backup not only the Games, but also all Serial Keys (As a tip, if you are concerned with "loosing" your account, or fear that steam might go out of business, i would highly recommend not only backing up the data, but also all Serial Keys. If worst case happens, you have something you can prove that you bought the games.). But im not really seeing Steam going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[Vigormortis]

Unrelated: First post! Yay...

Okay, first of all, not one of us has ever owned a game. You only own it if you made it. What the consumer's actually buying is a license to play a copy of the game and a copy of the required media (be it physical or digital) which allows the consumer to play said game. These licenses can, in fact, be taken away from you at any point, though the likelihood is low, I'll give you that.

Copyright law is such that the licenses for said software theoretically can be taken away, but ownership of the actual software may or may not legally remain in the hands of the purchaser.

Really, the whole thing is a wash. Copyright laws are so muddled it's a wonder ANYONE can make sense of them in their current state.

I also have to touch on your last point here. I guess you forgot about the large number games which require Steam to be running for you to be able to launch them.

Um, no. I didn't. And I'm a bit insulted you're insinuating as much.

So, for your plan to work, the Steamworks DRM would need to be removed from said games for them to work should Steam disappear. Call me pessimistic if you wish, but I just can't see that happening.

Pardon me while I quote one of my own posts. The one I made immediately after the one you quoted, in fact.

Spoiler

I was under the impression that most Steam games need to check in the first time they run (at the minimum). If that is true then wasting space on your external hard drive is for nothing if Steam goes under.

They need to "check in" upon the first, initial install. If installed from a back-up they generally do not need to do so. You can even (most of the time) install a back-up while in offline mode. Provided your account credentials are accurate.

Besides, that "check in" is something that can easily be patched out. A simple update to the Steam platform would remove that necessity.

The question I asked does matter. People keep quoting that but so far NO ONE has been able to produce the quote. I just want to see the quote.

Thing is, you don't have to go looking for a quote from Mr. Newell. Simply pose your question to Steam Support directly and you're likely to get this in response:

The only potential issues that may come up in such an event would be those titles that require other, 3rd party DRM.

 

[Vigormortis]

It's true, if Steam goes down people are probably going to find that there is nothing to that private message from Steam tech support.

That's a bit of a stretch. And, in some ways, a bit paranoid.

Truthfully, if you have the software purchased and stored in some physical form, you're allowed to use it regardless of whatever "license" you lost.

Publishers can fill their EULAs with all the claims they want, but unless copyright laws go through some changes you can still legally use the software.

(one of the very few bonuses of our current, antiquated CR laws.)

Aside from Valve's own games, they have no legal power to remove the DRM from third party games.

Sure they do. Any games that utilized DRM services that were a part of Steam can have those removed, should Valve have to shut Steam down.

Third party DRM systems couldn't be, of course, but that's a non-issue as Valve can...

Consider this, EA has a competing DD service. There is no way they would allow Valve to put their games out there in the wild without DRM.

...just transfer any serial keys to other, requisite publishers services. So EA games could be transferred to Origin, Ubisoft titles to Uplay, etc, etc, etc.

For those games that wouldn't be associated with a third party DD platform, they could simply have their Steam "check in" disabled. Any other DRM system they utilized would still be functional as those systems would not be directly tied to Steam.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On a side note, in another post you said:

You bought the publishers bullshit hook, line and sinker. My physical games can't ever be taken from me. Maybe you could tell me how Nintendo would take away my Super Mario World SNES cart if they wanted to. I own that copy of the game and there is nothing Nintendo can do about it.

The same is true of digital downloads.

As I described in a previous post, a person is being irresponsible with their digital purchases if they're not downloading those titles immediately and storing them on a physical format. (whether it be DVDs, CDs, hard-drives, etc)

And, once you've purchased the software and stored it on a physical medium, no matter how many "licenses" you lose the associated companies can't take the physical copies from you.

 

[CrankyCorvus]

snip

I think I do see some of the logic behind your stance, but I just didn't immediatly believe what this support tech said to be true. It'd be great if it was true but I'm not holding out too many hopes. Again, call me a pessimist if you wish (it wouldn't be the first time, believe me).

Anyway, we are dealing with hypothesis here. Valve suddenly discontinuing Steam does seem very unlikely at this stage and up until that happens (if it does) we can still play Steam-games. I back-up them up, too, but more because I then don't need to download them again in the event of a pc issue/full pc upgrade.

P.S. I must agree with you on the "copyright laws"-bit, though.

 

[TehCookie]

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.

Really? Where is this magical land where recently released console games drop in price so fast? For now, till I get an answer I think we will call this land, The Land of Make Believe. I bought Red Dead Redemption, a truly awful game for $19.00 a full 2 years after release. I bought Tomb Raider 2013 for $19 not even 6 months after release. Did the same for many more when the console versions for a used copy was maybe $5 off.

Let's try Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City Stories on right now:
EB Games used for PS3 $19.99
www.ebgames.ca/ps3/games/grand-theft-auto-episodes-from-liberty-city/254429

Playstation Store digital download $19.99
http://us.playstation.com/games/grand-theft-auto-episodes-from-liberty-city-ps3.html

Steam daily deal price $7.49
http://store.steampowered.com/app/901583/

There are release day deals, usually 10 to 25 percent off, some AAA don't do this, think Activision for a main culprit, most PC games can be $10 to $20 less, sure you can find some really cheap console games at pawn shops, that is where I usually go, I rarely buy console games at release, but even pawn shops are not that far off say Game Stop's used game price.

Edit: Looking at your replies you were just using this thread as a soap box to spout more more of your console crusader rhetoric, please ignore my reply and carry on Jihad. In the coming end times Cthulhu knows consoles are going to need a rabid defender.

Flint, the 2nd most dangerous city in the USA is where all the magically cheap prices are. Especially the pawn shops that don't take names or ask questions.

Besides how am I a console crusader? Because I play on both and am not a full PC elitist? I never hated on PC games, just DRM and Steam. I'm going to go with the DRM free option, and if the next gen-consoles had DRM like they said they were at first I'd hate them too.