I agree and this is why I never buy any game from steam or any game that requires steam. Half-Life 2 is an exception, because it kicks ass so much.Steam is just another form of DRM - Why encourage it?
fair argument. but while i agree with some of your points...
spyware from wikipedia (not the world's most accurate source i know, but for technology related purposes it's quite good): ''Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user's interaction with the computer, without the user's informed consent.
While the term spyware suggests software that secretly monitors the user's behavior, the functions of spyware extend well beyond simple monitoring. Spyware programs can collect various types of personal information, such as Internet surfing habits, sites that have been visited, but can also interfere with user control of the computer in other ways, such as installing additional software, redirecting Web browser activity, accessing websites blindly that will cause more harmful viruses, or diverting advertising revenue to a third party.''
not the worst kind of spyware but i suppose spyware nonetheless? i agree there should be an opt-out feature.
i believe steam has declared that if they were ever to stop providing the service they would let users keep the games, not completely sure, though
thing is, even though steam doesnt COMPLETELY satisfy a pc gamer, it still does the best job. retail is a huge problem for someone like me, so i have to use steam. and for something that you're forced to use, steam is better than intrusive DRM.
think of steam as the least worst choice?
I'm not sure about the legality of it, but people do sell their steam accounts all the time. I guess even though steam is a DRM, it's just soooo convenient, the pros outweight the cons by far. The thought of owning my gaming collection where I may go is just badass, and you can't ever loose your games. I guess that's just it, convenience.Yes valve is out there to maximize their profits, for their own, capitatlistic, greedy needs! ...but isn't every gaming company doing that? :P
I love it, if i lose a disk.. so what, it's on my steam account, forever there for me to download.. And stores aren't offering Bioshock for $5 at the moment are they....
I highly doubt that Valve would ever go bankrupt. But in the case that they do, Valve has no legal obligation to maintain everyone's access to the games they have bought. After all, they are buying a license. And that license can expire whenever Valve feels that it must expire.
[QUOTE=''ferrari2001'']I love it, if i lose a disk.. so what, it's on my steam account, forever there for me to download.. And stores aren't offering Bioshock for $5 at the moment are they....[/QUOTE]Bioshock is selling for only 9.99 at my local Microcenter. For an extra five dollars, I get to have a disk, a printed manual, and the guarantee that I can resell it at any time in the future. Steam offers none of that.
[QUOTE=''The_Capitalist'']1. Steam forces you to authenticate your game before you can play it, every single time. Sure, you can authenticate once and then set Steam to use the ''offline'' mode, but you can only stay offline for so long, right?[/QUOTE]
I'm today's age its very affordable to have high speed internet that is always connected. If you don't have this type of internet maybe PC gaming isn't right for you, its become very cheap, and many games out now days NEED the internet to even be played. If you can't afford high speed internet maybe you should rethink your gaming choice, because PC gaming isn't cheap if you want to stay near the edge.
[QUOTE=''The_Capitalist'']2. Steam also gathers information about your computer regularly - often without your consent. In this vein, it can be argued that Steam is spyware is some ways. Why doesn't Valve at least offer an opt-out for those who don't want Steam to gather information about their computer? Is it necessary for Valve to know what programs I have installed or what kind of processor I may have? [/QUOTE]
This help you. It helps valve know who has what in their PC, so they can better craft their games to suit millions. You've already given them all your personal info when you bought their game from steam, what else could they want?
[QUOTE=''The_Capitalist'']3. Games on Steam retail for just as much as a boxed copy at a store. Plus, for paying the same amount, you can't even resell your games. On Steam, you are just merely buying a license to use the software. You don't own your games on Steam.[/QUOTE]
Some people don't like selling their games. No one is stopping you from going to buy the boxed version. Some like to keep every game they have ever bought and stuff it in their collection. I see myself wanting to play some of my older games only to find I sold them for a few messily bucks that couldn't have even bought a descent meal.
Well im done being a customer of theirs do to their very bad customer support. I set up a ticket and they dont reply, on an error when purchasing through steam. Bad customer support = a no go for me.
Are you serious? Technically, you never own a game, you buy the liscense to play it. Semantics aside, I love STEAM because:1.) Your games are linked to your account. Wipe your hard drive? Lose your disks? Go to a friend's for a long weekend? Just download your library again.2.) Sales. I save more money through STEAM sales than through all of the other retailers at which I shop, combined.3.) VAC. People will think twice about using cheats in an online game if they know it will disable their multiplayer on EVERY STEAM-owned game. To help avoid the annoyance of cheaters, I only play on servers that use VAC.4.) Gas money. If the prices are the same, I'll save more money if I download it than if I drive to the store.5.) No tax on my purchase.6.) Unified friends/community list. Sure X-fire is great, buy STEAM does it too.7.) Cloud. No longer do I have to spend time mucking through my options menu when I download a previously-played game. All of my settings (and saves) come with it.8.) Although I love Goozex for trading my old PC games, I'm willing to lose my ability to trade games when you factor in points 1-7.
Because Steam in a non-invasive type of DRM. Not only that, the whole service is built to be utterly convenient. Reasonable people don't complain about DRM just for the sake of complaining, they complain because DRM causes inconvenience and makes them feel like criminals. SecuROM isn't that bad in and of itself, it's how developers and publishers utilize it. Not every SecuROM game inflicts limited installs on the user - those that do will get trashed and rightfully so.DRM sucks and we would definitely be better off without it, but there's no denying that Steam is DRM done right.
[QUOTE=''Gammit10'']Are you serious? Technically, you never own a game, you buy the liscense to play it. Semantics aside, I love STEAM because:1.) Your games are linked to your account. Wipe your hard drive? Lose your disks? Go to a friend's for a long weekend? Just download your library again.2.) Sales. I save more money through STEAM sales than through all of the other retailers at which I shop, combined.3.) VAC. People will think twice about using cheats in an online game if they know it will disable their multiplayer on EVERY STEAM-owned game. To help avoid the annoyance of cheaters, I only play on servers that use VAC.4.) Gas money. If the prices are the same, I'll save more money if I download it than if I drive to the store.5.) No tax on my purchase.6.) Unified friends/community list. Sure X-fire is great, buy STEAM does it too.7.) Cloud. No longer do I have to spend time mucking through my options menu when I download a previously-played game. All of my settings (and saves) come with it.8.) Although I love Goozex for trading my old PC games, I'm willing to lose my ability to trade games when you factor in points 1-7.[/QUOTE]This sir, is epic win. Nicely played gentlemen.
[QUOTE=''trijity''][QUOTE=''Gammit10'']Are you serious? Technically, you never own a game, you buy the liscense to play it. Semantics aside, I love STEAM because:1.) Your games are linked to your account. Wipe your hard drive? Lose your disks? Go to a friend's for a long weekend? Just download your library again.2.) Sales. I save more money through STEAM sales than through all of the other retailers at which I shop, combined.3.) VAC. People will think twice about using cheats in an online game if they know it will disable their multiplayer on EVERY STEAM-owned game. To help avoid the annoyance of cheaters, I only play on servers that use VAC.4.) Gas money. If the prices are the same, I'll save more money if I download it than if I drive to the store.5.) No tax on my purchase.6.) Unified friends/community list. Sure X-fire is great, buy STEAM does it too.7.) Cloud. No longer do I have to spend time mucking through my options menu when I download a previously-played game. All of my settings (and saves) come with it.8.) Although I love Goozex for trading my old PC games, I'm willing to lose my ability to trade games when you factor in points 1-7.[/QUOTE]This sir, is epic win. Nicely played gentlemen. [/QUOTE]
Yes it is.
1.) Your games are linked to your account. Wipe your hard drive? Lose your disks? Go to a friend's for a long weekend? Just download your library again.That's the point of keeping a disk. 2.) Sales. I save more money through STEAM sales than through all of the other retailers at which I shop, combined.True, but it's only when they have their little sales, right? Most of time, their games are similar to the retail price.3.) VAC. People will think twice about using cheats in an online game if they know it will disable their multiplayer on EVERY STEAM-owned game. To help avoid the annoyance of cheaters, I only play on servers that use VAC.Your point? Punkbuster does the same thing. VAC could be easily made separate too.4.) Gas money. If the prices are the same, I'll save more money if I download it than if I drive to the store.That is negligible. You have to drive anyways to buy your groceries, right? You can't download your groceries, right? And plus, you can always order your games off Amazon, too, and sometimes they cut the shipping fees. 5.) No tax on my purchase.True, I guess, depending on where you live.6.) Unified friends/community list. Sure X-fire is great, buy STEAM does it too.You are absolutely on the money with this. I love Steam friends too.7.) Cloud. No longer do I have to spend time mucking through my options menu when I download a previously-played game. All of my settings (and saves) come with it.Only Left 4 Dead does that currently. 8.) Although I love Goozex for trading my old PC games, I'm willing to lose my ability to trade games when you factor in points 1-7.Good for you. But some people can't stand losing their ability to resell their games.
By God, if Steam is another form of DRM, then it's a damn good DRM then. Valve are more customer friendly than EA and they will make every bit of your penny worth it. Really, don't see any debate in this. If you reinstall, your games will be there already and there's no need to re-activate the product key. I'd say Steam is heaven. It saves you lots of trouble. So I agree with the last few posts.
[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]
[QUOTE=''Agent_Kaliaver''][This message was deleted at the request of the original poster][/QUOTE]To spend $10 worth of gas driving in my Accord, the closest Wal-Mart would have to be 260 miles away. Sorry, I love Steam and prefer it to retail (I don't keep manuals or boxes anyway) but your argument just doesn't hold water.
Your views are fine, but come on. You use the example of buying groceries digitally which is horrible. If you are going to give an example at least give one that makes sense and works. Now it doesn't change the fact that you are heavily biased anti-steam and that is your opinion. Mine is not like that at all. I have bought plenty of games from Steam and saved a bit. I bought STALKER for what $5? That is how much cheaper than any retail store? Also it saved the gas and tax. I also bought Red Orchestra for $5. You tell me what store even sells that... Steam is very good for indie devlopers (like the people behind AudioSurf) and some of those games are supossed to be quite good. 90% or more of Indie games don't come out in disc form so Steam is a great place to put them all. But while many things are good it does not mean i'm buying all my games from there. I just bought Cyrsis (Collector's Edition) from EbGames' website because it only cost $20 (free shipping, but $2.50 tax) while it cost $26.99 on Steam during the sale. Even then Steam is cheaper then almsot anywhere else on that game (it is normally $30). At Walmart the game is $40 and same with BestBuy (at least their websites). It just so happens EbGames was even cheaper than steam. Another reason it is nice is say your store runs out of stock. That means you won't be able to play the game for maybe a few days to a week (not that, that is so bad), but it will always be in stock on steam. Also if a game goes on sale in a store they may only have like 5 copies to sell while a sale on steam has unlimited copies untill they end of the sale. Another thing is stores eventually stop selling games when they get older, but games could stay up on steam for years and years. I mean i've wanted to buy Final Fantasy 7 (i know its PS1, but still PC), but nobody sells it and not even PSN sells it. As long as the game gets put up on Steam it could say there for a long time.Also it is a hub for games. I have actually played mods/games that i normally wouldn't think of playing (Red Orchestra and Insurgency) because they were just right there. I normally don't play multiple games when i have to put in the disc and all that (don't ask me why i just really don't).Also game discs scratch. My Starcraft disc barely works and once it stops it means i will have to spend another $20 to get it again.... Also companies drop some DRM. Spore doesn't have an activation limit or SecuRom on the steam version. That makes me happy... It doesn't mean i'm buying the game still.... but i'm happy.Even though i like steam, if i find a game somewhere else cheaper than i will get it, but if it is the same price i probably won't. I bought Fallout 3 (disc form) and the SecuRom on it barely makes it works (luckly Bethesda put in their own crack for the game..... for the install and to launch it... you don't even need the disc). I spend $50 on the game disc and i can barely get it to function (i didn't take it back because it worked for awhile...). That makes me never want to buy a game with SecuRom on it again. And i am really happy i didn't have to download a crack for a game i legally bought the disc of. And that is not something you should ever have to say. P.S. Also just because you have the disc of a game it doesn't guarantee it will sell. I mean it probably will 90% of the time, but it doesn't guarantee it.
drm isn't bad. oppressive drm is bad.
when you can log in to steam on ANY computer in the world and install your games, i don't call that oppressive.
when you can only install your game on 3 pc's at a time, i call that oppressive.
drm is necessary to some degree, and steam has handled it better than anyone else. how many times have you heard of steam making people's cd burners stop working? never.
oh, and what corporation doesn't protect its own interests and maximize profits? probably just the ones that are dead and buried.
Buy from Direct2Drive. You can still download anything and play anything from anywhere, but there's no DRM bull**** you have to deal with other than entering a CD key when you install. No CD checks, no logging onto steam to verify, none of the other restrictions Steam has.
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