I have it on GOG , and never played it .

This game is on my 'todo' list. Looks great. Own it. But haven't got to it yet. I keep getting stuck on classics.

Try new game,.... or play Thief for 30th time? or Diablo 2 for the 10th time? or Oblivion for the 10th time? or.....

one day ;)

Edit:never mind.

I haven't played Psychonauts yet. I've got it on GOG, so one of these days.

Yeah, that's what I was kind of getting at with "In Valve, We Trust".

And I also share your earlier sentiment of disliking the fact that more PC games are becoming Steamworks-exclusive. If Steamworks doesn't give you any value, or its restrictions + risk of possibly losing access to all your games is a concern, then you should be able to acquire your game from another vendor that you do like - having no choice here is not a good thing.

However, all I can say for myself is that I generally don't mind titles being Steamworks-exclusive, as I am partial to it, and have invested considerably in it. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalization][1]

That's not a problem with Steam, it's a problem with Valve's game development branch deciding to put it there. If CS still had ads but wasn't a Steamworks title, it would still have ads.

The number of Steam games that I have that have systematically placed ads is 0.

Distinguishing between Steam and Valve is arbitrary. Subsidiaries. Run by the same crowd. Same people calling the shots (probably directors, but shadow directors in the least).

The other issue concerns that of CS itself. The 'earlier' versions of CS - up until 1.5 used WON. With 1.6, CS moved away from WON on to Steam - which mind you was the move that made Steam big in the first place. CS 1.6 still has 70k players daily. It is the single most popular game on Steam. Technically, Steam DRM and VAC were vastly inferior to WON. Valve announced quite some time ago that they are no longer updating VAC, meaning that public servers are often riddled with cheaters. The pro scene has to resort to 3rd party AC. ESL's latest AC cost them over 500k euros to develop.
Steam and VAC led to a 5-10 ping increase for most users. This is immense in CS.
When 1.6 was first released back in the day, the system requirements rose a lot. Arbitrarily.

Anyway, end of the rant. I don't really understand what you're trying to say though? CS would still have ads regardless of Valve's opinion. Despite the fact that Valve were the people behind the update? (CS started off as a 3rd party mod, was then acquired by Valve.)

That is a very superficial conclusion. And it's completely wrong.
As far as legal, as well as practical control goes, Steam is pretty much Valve.
Saying the contrary is absurd. It's like saying: "Well, Bill Gates didn't personally write Office, therefore he shouldn't be held accountable for design decisions."

No, it would be like saying "Xbox Live is a bad service because MS Excel can only handle 30,000 records" or whatever it is. There is a relation between the two, they're both from Microsoft, but it's not a valid reason to dislike Xbox Live.

You're pushing it too far here. If you can show me that Gabe Newell or the rest of the Steam / Valve team has had no say in the decision, then be my guest. The relation between both companies is very close (one is a subsidiary of the other). Saying that each others' creative control is completely independent of the other is absurd.

You're changing the argument. It wasn't about whether Valve's creative control is what determines how Steam works (of course it does), it was about whether Steam could be transparent to your game playing, and specifically that it couldn't because of advertising, as a function of the Steam game client.

Look, I'm sorry, but I've lost you here.
Counterstrike 1.6 is a Steam exclusive. The game is owned by Valve.
Counterstrike 1.6 is full of ads. For games made by Valve.

The connection there is more than tenuous. Sure, it might be limited to Valve games only, but as I said earlier, CS 1.6 is the single most popular game on Steam. Hardly worth ignoring, is it?

It's worth ignoring when you're talking about using Steam as a means to play the 1,616 games that aren't CS. The discussion was about it as a general games client, not as a CS launcher.

I must say that it is refreshing to have a Steam fan who not only acknowledges that it is not for everyone but volunteers the Stockholm analogy. Most just say that Steam haters are either too stupid to know how to use it or are obvious pirates because they hate the most uncrackable DRM ever.

You bring up the idea of losing access to a Steam account. I fear that this is not a hypothetical 'If' but an inevitable 'When'. I can't really post the links as I'm posting on my phone and it's kind of a pain, but check out the Wikipedia articles about anti trust violations; specifically Barrier to Entry and Third Line Forcing. This makes me feel that Steam is one court case away from having to make drastic changes to its business model and it is the customers and the indie developers who will be hurt the most.