It just says steam is down for maintance on my freinds list now.

It says it's up for us. Exit it and refresh. :)

From what i've read here, there's a workaround to make gamersgate drm-free games truly drm-free. Anyone care to put a quick guide on here for me?

Thanks.

Gamersgate usually saves it's installers to a temp folder, and during download it asks you if you want to save them after the install. Click the box to do so then find where it downloads them initially and make copies from that temp folder to a perm/ folder or to disk.

1. Download the game and look for the temp folder like gamerager said
2. when the install starts copy the decoded .exe setup file
3. install or cancel and it will ask you if you want to keep the files
4. just move the files with the copied exe wherever you want

So I yes to keep the files?

Lets see if I have this. Download and find where it downloaded. Click install. How far along in the install are we talking about before copying the .exe? Actually installing or pre-installation settings like destination folder or shortcut placement? After copying the .exe cancel then I say yes to keep files and copy the copied .exe into the folder where the files I asked to keep are?

Should I get Test Drive Unlimited 2 for 9,99 USD? I quite enjoyed the first.

Save 2 dollars by getting someone in Europe to get it for you it's only €4.99 there which is $7.22

I hate that they lack redbook audio too. The source ports mentioned earlier have the ability to play back the redbook audio when they're encoded in mp3 or ogg though. I'll add a few examples here:
Quake 1: Dark Places
Quake 2: KMQuake2
HeXen II: UQE Hexen II

They also support widescreen resolutions in addition to extra graphical enhancements.
Here are some Quake 1 screenshots
Scourge of Amagon
Dissolution of Eternity

I still have my original CD's for those so I wasn't much worried about it but if you didn't have access to original CD's those soundtracks are pretty easy to find (i.e. ffshrine).

No download/install is via a little exe it makes you run I think. Once that's running it is downloading the game to install it. When it finishes downloading the files it will then ask to install......before or during this install look for where it temp downloaded the files(the ones it grabbed after you ran the small downloader exe) and copy-paste those somewhere while the game installs.

1. Click to download file on the site/client.

2. A small downloader exe will download to your pc.....run that.

3. The downloader will download the installer files to a temp folder. Find this folder.

4. When the downloader exe finishes downloading it'll prepare to install. At this point when all files are in the temp folder so it can install the game go to that temp folder and make copies of those temp files and save them.

Run the downloader to download the installer and wait for it to start the installer. Once the installer is running (not installing, just on the first page or whatever) find it in the temp folder. Copy it somewhere else and cancel the installer.

The reason for copying it somewhere else is that the downloader will try and encrypt the installer as soon as it finishes installing/when you quit. As long as you copy it somewhere else it can't encrypt the copy. =D

Gotta be honest, the sale is somewhat lackluster compared to the last Summer Sale (which was actually bigger than the Holiday Sale that preceded it) and certainly the most recent Holiday Sale. Rather than raw savings they opted for more gimmicks which is probably the smarter strategy for them given the amount of new people they hauled in with the TF2 free-to-play launch: they aren't as savvy with Steam sales.

Across the board the discounts are pretty low. Take for example obscure games like Loki or Silverfall that were 75% during the whole Holiday Sale... now they are only 33% off. Ah well, hopefully there are a few daily deals that will be nice but overall I don't see myself buying that many games.

I feel the same. I already loaded up on a -ton- of stuff the last two sales... there really isn't much of anything I want anymore, other than a few random games that were released kinda recently, like the Wolfenstein reboot.

Whereas I still have ten games on GOG from the Interplay promo that I need to get...

Thanks all.

It's times like this where I wished GOG had drm-free indie titles on its site for when a game isn't available directly from the devs.

Whoa did my repping you on two posts rager make you just go up 10? Crazy.

A quick note for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of discounts in the Steam sale: I've found that Bansama's site is quite useful in that regard. It's sortable (although the sort arrows can be a little hard to see) and it updates fairly regularly: http://didimatic.com/dd/en/onsale/steam