That is true. Why, just yesterday I saw a trailer for Call of Lungfish: Modern Fishmonger 3. Looked pretty much the same as the last two. Same ol', same ol'. And don't even get me started on Battleflounder 3.

I played it when it was free on GameTap a few years ago, and I must say, I really did enjoy my time with it. And a few months ago, I decided to actually buy it when I saw it for $2.50, thinking I owed it the devs because I enjoyed it previously, and because I thought enough time had passed for me to enjoy another romp with it.

Though unfortunately, I only managed to play it for about 1.5 hours before I had to call it quits - I think once was enough.

And as far as Steam, I love it, and own 184 games on it. But while I am aversive of intrusive DRM (I've refused to buy games because of it before, such as DiRT 3 and its SecuROM), I don't mind Steam's non-intrusive account-based DRM at all. And in fact, Steam and Steamworks-based games give me enough value to want to run the Steam client (eg, Steam's friends list, matchmaking, Valve Anti-Cheat, cloud-synced game saves, two-click installing/uninstalling of games, statistics, etc.). That, and Valve actually treats their customers with respect, and not like wallets with brains.

With that said, though, Steam is the only account-based games-marketplace + client I'll bother using, because nothing else provides enough value or justification for fragmenting for me to care. So I refuse to buy games from other client-based services such as Beamdog, Origin, and Impulse. GamersGate may be an exception though, since if you buy a DRM-free game from them, all you need to do is authenticate once to download the game's installation file(s), and then you can backup those file(s) for offline installation at any time.

But, uhh... I love GOG.com too, since they treat their customers with respect, and their DRM-free model differentiates them from everyone else. That, and the fact that GOG's PR-guy has the best voice ever - when GOG did the livestream a while back, I only watched it to see if he (can't recall his name) would say the words "clahsick games catalog". Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

Now, to sum-up my incoherency: Psychonauts was only fun on the first play-through. I love Steam. I love GOG.

Elaborate please.

Actually, I finally finished the game last night. Had it sitting in my giant backlog since... last Spring? It was pretty fun, although I think people praise it a little too highly. Some of the platforming was more than a little aggravating, and the hunt for figments and emotional baggage got a little too repetitive and boring after a while. Yet I very much appreciated all the wacky brain-level settings. I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get to run around in Lilly's brain.

So, good game, but I doubt I'll ever play it again. Definitely worth the $10 though.

I wonder why the new update is Steam exclusive. Not even available for the loyal, faithful retail owner.

I played a bit at a friends house once

I've never played it. Haven't really looked into it that much, but I've heard good things about it.

GO AND PLAY GRIM FANDANGO RIGHT NOW YOU HEATHEN!

And then play Day of the Tentacle.

As an example, look at Steam's , and the design of the [url=http://i.imgur.com/JFHOF.png]client. It basically says "You're here for games. We make it easy to shop-around if you want to, but we don't force anything down your throat". So, if you're not interested in buying any games, Steam can just be that thing you use to play your games, with nothing shoved in your face to encourage you to spend more.

There's that, and the fact Valve acknowledges that intrusive DRM (like SecuROM, StarForce, and whatever Ubisoft is using on their titles lately), and regional-restrictions are unnecessary bullshit that only serves to annoy consumers and drive them to piracy. And I'm sure that, to some extent, they've actually lobbied against such things, and have convinced publishers to drop hardware-probing, activation-limit-based DRM "solutions" from their games in favor of their Steamworks DRM, which isn't intrusive. Nothing evil gets installed on consumers' machines, and customers can install & reinstall their games on as many times as they'd like, on as many machines as they want.

Here's what their DRM basically is: "Hey, steamclient.dll, does the user running your instance of the Steam client actually own me? Yes? Alright, off I go.". That's it. Though, now, this is the crux of some controversey: What happens if you lose access to your Steam account somehow, or Valve dies in a nuclear explosion someday? That's a bit out-of-scope to discuss here, and ultimately comes down to whether or not the Steam client & platform personally brings you any value that justifies their account-based DRM, and your trust in Valve. But the point I'm making here is that their DRM is unintrusive, and that they know piracy is caused by inconvenience and treating your customers like criminals, and that more restrictive DRM is not the answer.

That to me, is respect. (Oh, and also Valve gives users free content-upates for all their self-developed games. Though that leans more towards being awesome, and not necessarily respect.)

Now, to contrast, let's look at at Microsoft's Xbox 360 & Xbox Live brands (I've been subscribed to XBL since 2003, just for the record). Their marketing and presentation -- via the website, the Xbox 360 dashboard, and email campaigns -- says to you: "The Xbox brand is home to everything you love in your digital life! We are your benefactors. Consume and enjoy."

And here's some things they do or did to try to make you spend more:

* For years, the only way to turn off auto-renewal for the Xbox Live service was to phone-in to their support line, be put on hold, and then deal with a rep who tries to encourage you to stay subscribed to the service. Why couldn't you just do it through their website? Because it'd be too convenient - they want(ed) people to either forget about their subscription, or be too lazy to bother with it. This was even confirmed by an (anonymous) Xbox Live engineer on Reddit once[citation-needed].

* The 'dashboard' for the Xbox 360 console is with [url=http://i.imgur.com/XsQvR.jpg]obnoxious ads. They're always in your face, and some of them are even videos-thumbnails that auto-play with audio when you hover over them!

* Look at the presentation of the rewards.xbox.com page/site. They're encouraging you to spend more, trying to lay-in the impression: "Well, if I'm going to be buying/using this stuff anyway, why not get something in return for it?". And gander at these taglines: "We Reward, You Enjoy", "Get rewarded for doing what you love" (<-- paraphrased from something I remember reading). It feels like they're trying to straight-up baby consumers, and manipulate them into spending more.

* They force stupid limitations on developers to try to charge consumers more. For example, the developers of the game 'The Orange Box' (a Valve title, coincidentally) wanted to push-out massive, free content updates for it, but were not allowed to do so without charging for it. So, they didn't, and as a result, the game languished, compared to all omgcoolawesomestuffs the owners of the PC version got for free. This to me counts as disrespect because they didn't give the developers a choice in whether or not they could charge for their content, thereby, screwing consumers because they would have to pay for somethings the devs wanted to be free.

* 'Avatars'. Or, more specifically, the 'avatar marketplace'. Avatars are basically virtual characters that are persistent to your Xbox Live account/identity... and you can buy stuff for them. Lots of useless stuff. Any sufficiently-popular game pretty much has a billion avatar items for it, all existing for the purpose of grubbing at consumers' wallets because they want to "express themselves". Two examples are: Halo: Reach, and Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

----

Anyway, I could ramble on and on, but I think I've gotten my point across. With Valve and their Steam service, I just feel like I'm being respected: Nothing's crammed down my throat, and I don't feel like I'm being manipulated. I can't necessarily say the same for some other services.

(Oh, and did I mention I less-than three GOG? :>)

I feel the need to point out that Valve are actually pretty damn awful for regional restrictions.

Then do so. The game is such an important part of the history of games that it simply must be experienced.

If LucasArts don't want your money then that's their lookout. :P

I wish I have.

I have it (on Steam) but haven't played it yet. It's yet another game in my backlog that I'll get around to one day.

(in a whiny voice) but i don't wanna get a computer virus :(