Whaaaat? What are you talking about? Here we have this guy talking about 4 clicks and we have Steam:

- Register Account
- Confirm email
- Download client
- Install client
- Pay for game
- Download game
- Play

Registering alone is like 20 clicks and every time when you want to play a game you have to login/launch client.

I highly doubt that this person is talking about services that force you to use additional clients to use media (or subscriptions if we are talking about Steam) that you owns.

And definitely he is not talking about service that threatens you that they will block your access to media that you've already bought if you won't agree with their new terms of service.

Steam Cloud itself is working in the only sensible way possible; if a game - even a Valve game - doesn't use it properly, that's a problem with the game, not the service.

If you want Steam Cloud to do more than store a random blob of files, then you suddenly introduce game-specific code to the service itself, and that opens up a huge number of other issues and questions which makes that approach unrealistic.

You can argue that Steam Cloud perhaps shouldn't be used for some games, or even at all - but that's an entirely different discussion. All I'm saying is that if it's going to be there, this is the sanest possible approach. That doesn't mean it can't be tweaked (e.g. allow multiple sets of save files), but the underlying principles will stay the same, and you will still need some form of user intervention when things go wrong (which they will do on occasion).

I don't see how storing data with defined generic types (savegame, settings, statistics, etc.) makes the code "game specific".
Can we then agree that Valve in this case uses their own functionality in a suboptimal manner?

If it was that simple, then it wouldn't.

However, there are *some* settings you probably would like to sync - if we take a Source game, something like closed captions would make sense to keep the same on all computers.

This means you now need two configuration files: one for non-synced stuff and one for synced stuff. Adding such a change is not necessarily very easy if this hasn't been thought into the game design from the beginning (and since both TF2 and Source predate Steam Cloud by quite a bit, it wasn't), but it is entirely possible. Steam Cloud doesn't pick up on any files unless they're accessed through the API, so the developer has complete freedom to bypass it and store local-only files in the "normal" way (like they would have done without Steam Cloud).

Certainly! I've never intended to claim otherwise. ;)

True, I didn't think of that.
Hehe, sorry. I jumped to an unjustified "Valve Fanboy" conclusion, when in fact you were only commenting on the functionality of cloud sync with no hidden agenda. My apologies ;-)

What next? You are going to argue that snow is black?

Steam is the first business that has successfully beaten piracy due to the service it offers. That is an undeniable fact. That you don't like it is your problem, but the world sees it differently.

I have to have running Steam all the time even with games that are not Steam-only. I can launch very few games without Steam running (old X-com). To launch other games I have to run Steam. I can run it in offline mode, but still, it have to be running.

And I didn't say that Steam is better or worse service than GOG or whatever. I said that it's less convenient than illegally downloaded games.

You don't have to run any client to play them.
You don't need to create any account to play them.
You don't have to turn on any offline mode to play them.
You can install them even when you are offline. And what if I don't like Steam? I use it, because I have to (Steamworks games). I don't like it because plenty of my games do not work abroad. I'm moving out of country soon and I will have to rebuy them even tho I paid full European prices for them. They are worth a lot of money for me and it's all practically lost. Maybe for you Steam is all dandy and shiny, but for me it's DRM service with a regional block, that prevents me from playing my legally obtained games. For the record - I would not post a single whiny topic about Steam, if not Steamworks that forces me to use it.

Oh really. Any sources for that.

Have you pirated any games recently? I pirated Black Ops to avoid a bad patch and have pirated several new games for my host-brother here in Georgia and it's a MASSIVE pain in the ass. Steam is ten times more convenient.

My entire library is available and works fine here in Georgia, all of them purchased in America. On top of that when I launch Steam I get the US store with all of its appropriate deals and availability.

On the other hand you're prone to coming across these issues with illegal downloads:

Nuked copies.
screwed up RAR files.
cracks that don't work at all or didn't take into account DRM working later on in the game.
having to wait for patches to be cracked.
highly variable download speeds.

Illegal copies aren't always more convenient.

I didn't. I'm saying this based on what pirates say. I don't know how much hassle it is, but I know that my friends that pirate games usually finish games before I can even play them (European release dates rocks!) ;).

For you and many others, Steam may be convinent. For me it isn't, even tho I admit that it helped PC gaming in one way. But also it's bad for PC gaming in other. I would call it great and brilliant service if Steamworks would not exist and I would not have to use it unless I would want to.

Because subscriptions from top regions (US and EU1) work everywhere. Subscriptions form lower regions doesn't always work everywhere. Just try google "steam region locks" and stuff like that - you will find a lot of whiny topics.
In Open SteamWorks ( http://cdr.thebronasium.com/ )you can find which subscription can be bought where and where can be run them.

We just need to realize different people have different priorities. I never play online, have no need of friends lists, don't care about achievements and would rather control my patching. This means I don't care about what Steam offers generally and thus see it as DRM. I assume you are similar.

Most people disagree with us though, and like SimonG they are generally smart people with good reasons born from different priorities. We can't scream at them and pretend we know better than they do, all we can do is acknowledge we are a minority and move on with our lives.

This. I'm really not fond of Steam at all. It has no features I want, and a lot of restrictions I don't want. However, I'm not stupid enough to claim that nobody wants those features, or that everybody cares about the restrictions, since that would be an obvious fallacy. I just have to accept that I'm in the minority, and that voting with my wallet makes absolutely no difference in my case.

But I like it when we two scream at each other. ;-P