Yeah, having a source for the games I want to play at very discounted prices really is nice. There are also a lot of indie games that I otherwise would never see. Easy game installation is a nice plus too. Steam really just works and does what it does very well.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I like it. I hated it at first though, and was suspicious of it. But I bought dozens of indy titles I simply can't buy on Amazon. I don't know of a way to get Magic 2014 on CDROM then get the expansions or DLC for that or other games. It is simply a lot more convienient and doesn't seem to effect the performance of my PC. I mean, you see a game you like the look of, download it and 10 minutes later you are playing it.
There are issues with the greenlight however. Games like Garry's Incident should never get greenlit and it's become a common occurence that substandard games that are nothing more than shovelware are appearing on the market.
I'm not a fan of it. I don't like having one account with X amount of games. If I lose the account there goes my games if I can't recover the account.
I would much rather have the game installed right on my pc and have a separate login for it. I'd feel like I actually own it more than I would through a client like steam.
/endshortrant
Ah, the good ol' hypothetical. At my last job we had hallways filled with filing cabinet's just crammed full of paperwork from the last decade to now. It was becoming a problem (as we had no more space to fit more cabinets and things just weren't fitting in the files anymore) so we had a meeting to come up with a solution. I said, "We don't need to keep hard copies because we already scan and store all these documents into our database, we also make a backup of all work done each month and save it to our shared drive which gets backed-up daily on the servers and stored in a secure facility." Their answer was thusly, "Yes, but what if there's a fire and we HAVE to get a file that same day and our database gets wiped or corrupted? Then how do we know what was done?"
I just looked at them like . . . wtf. Yes, and what if aliens land, take over the planet, and kick your dog?
Anyway, that little anecdote is meant to hopefully alleviate you of your ridiculous fear that you will lose the account and won't be able to recover it. There are many failsafes in place to verify your identity and to verify your order history - barring any extreme circumstances, it's not that easy to lose your account.
Don't take this to mean you should or have to use Steam, but that your hypothetical is silly.
When Valve originally made the switch from the WON ID system to Steam, I was pretty annoyed by it, but after all this time I've become an avid supporter. They gave GFWL an ass whopping, made reaching the audience of computer gamers more accessible to an array of studios, and have continued to nurture the creativity of the community with open sourced modding tools and the Steam workshop. My only serious gripe is regards to being able to make more of my information private; I'd really prefer the option to set my online status to invisible when I wanted to stay under the radar, just as an example.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Originally posted by Lawlmonster I'd really prefer the option to set my online status to invisible when I wanted to stay under the radar, just as an example.
You can do that already.
As for liking Steam, it is one of the best things to ever happen to PC gaming.
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
I'm not a fan of monopolies. When I can't get a legal copy of a game unless I use Steam I know they've gone to far. I will never use a company that threatens to take away my right of purchase through other wholesalers.
Steam is just a store. I don't "like" it anymore than I like the store where I buy my groceries. They have good prices on games so I buy them there sometimes but when GMG offers an extra 25% off a game I want I never hesitate to buy there instead and also do prefer buying on GOG because you actually own the games you buy there. Being fanboys of particular stores is for idiots. Makes even less sense than being a fanboy of a product.
Heh.
I am a super-fan of some establishments because of service. You give good service, I come back. This has been lost in the day of the interwebs, since good service means my online cart works.
Comments
Yeah, having a source for the games I want to play at very discounted prices really is nice. There are also a lot of indie games that I otherwise would never see. Easy game installation is a nice plus too. Steam really just works and does what it does very well.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I like it. I hated it at first though, and was suspicious of it. But I bought dozens of indy titles I simply can't buy on Amazon. I don't know of a way to get Magic 2014 on CDROM then get the expansions or DLC for that or other games. It is simply a lot more convienient and doesn't seem to effect the performance of my PC. I mean, you see a game you like the look of, download it and 10 minutes later you are playing it.
There are issues with the greenlight however. Games like Garry's Incident should never get greenlit and it's become a common occurence that substandard games that are nothing more than shovelware are appearing on the market.
Ah, the good ol' hypothetical. At my last job we had hallways filled with filing cabinet's just crammed full of paperwork from the last decade to now. It was becoming a problem (as we had no more space to fit more cabinets and things just weren't fitting in the files anymore) so we had a meeting to come up with a solution. I said, "We don't need to keep hard copies because we already scan and store all these documents into our database, we also make a backup of all work done each month and save it to our shared drive which gets backed-up daily on the servers and stored in a secure facility." Their answer was thusly, "Yes, but what if there's a fire and we HAVE to get a file that same day and our database gets wiped or corrupted? Then how do we know what was done?"
I just looked at them like . . . wtf. Yes, and what if aliens land, take over the planet, and kick your dog?
Anyway, that little anecdote is meant to hopefully alleviate you of your ridiculous fear that you will lose the account and won't be able to recover it. There are many failsafes in place to verify your identity and to verify your order history - barring any extreme circumstances, it's not that easy to lose your account.
Don't take this to mean you should or have to use Steam, but that your hypothetical is silly.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
You can do that already.
As for liking Steam, it is one of the best things to ever happen to PC gaming.
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
Heh.
I am a super-fan of some establishments because of service. You give good service, I come back. This has been lost in the day of the interwebs, since good service means my online cart works.
But I am old and some things are important to me.
There are a few things I look foward in Steam Beta now.
Soon you can share you games library with family and your close friends.
http://store.steampowered.com/sharing/
Also theres Steam In-Home Streaming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIL71Q6eJ2Y&feature=youtu.be&a
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language