You still don't understand what I am criticizing. 30+ million is not the world. But that's what you wrote. How can you know what the remaining 6+ billion think about Steam? I am for one don't like it. So write as if would be a truth that all customers like Steam. That would be most true and we should all agree on this no matter if we like Steam or not.

I agree to the poster above. I always thought that steam was a very good and reliable way to buy games and manage them. They are rather cheap and offer a good service. Sometimes the servers are to busy or some minor bugs, but nothing to be concerned about.

Only sometimes when a new highly awaited game is released, the servers are so slow. But that is normal.

Also today there are still other online distributors available, like Desura, Origin, Impulse etc.

I find that GoG and Steam are my favourite ones. Desura is also great, but not so developed.

Your thinking is far too black and white.

I don't like Steam, yet I continue to use it. Why? Because I tolerate it. The issue of DRM and server unavailability is always a concern to me (you know that, because we've debated this at length already in another thread), yet I tolerate it because I like to support indie developers, because Steam has become so ubiquitous that any disappearance of Steam's servers will be acted upon relatively swiftly, and because I know that if Steam pisses me off any more than it has that pretty much all of the games can be cracked and I will never have to use Steam again.

That's the crux. I know that GabeN is not holding a gun to my head, but Steam is one of those unavoidable things if you want to be an active PC gamer. You ask any number of gamers that don't spend their time hawking around the Steam forums and you will find that the general perception of Steam is not as something good or bad but as a "necessary evil".

Yes, I know that the pure haters will always vent their sheer hatred of Steam on Valve's forums and other places of exchange. I also know that the Hammer Legionnaires will always be out in full force on the Steam forums. But the vast majority of us live in that rather large grey zone in-between.

OK, that's fair. you don't have to love it and you don't have to hate it.

i know i come off like a Steam fanboy at times. and the truth is i like Steam. a lot. but that's not blind fanboyism, but the result of a long time of thinking and deliberating and reading. when Steam launched, i hated it. i installed it only for HL2 and deleted it after i beat the game. i didn't use it for years afterwards, until i re-discovered it and for one reason or another started to appreciate it.

there are good reasons to like Steam, and somebody who does like it is not necessarily a blinded fanboy. just like somebody who criticizes Steam is not automatically a blind hater. he may have good reasons for his criticism.

Well at least we can agree on that. I use Steam, and I may appreciate some of its features, but I don't like the necessity of it to play my games. I prefer my games to be DRM-free, so Gamersgate and GOG are always the better options for me; I'm also not going to buy a game via Steam if I don't have to - voting with my wallet. It doesn't mean I'm not going to abstain from a game just because it's Steamworks based - I just prefer it to not be so, so it's a necessary evil to me.

Maybe I'm just unlucky, or my Internet service is awful, but when one's got a pretty unhealthy streak of not being able to access Steam games due to a fault on Steam's end, well I'd say that person's got a right to be wary of it. 30 million fans of Steam isn't going to replace my burnt weekend because Steam decided to auto-update New Vegas and lock me out from the game.

Have a look at Desura if you haven't already.

Sorry, but you Sir are unable to have a civilized discussion. I argue and you are getting personal and deprecate my person. Independent of who likes Steam or not that is not acceptable.

Once again and for the last time: Your generalization is wrong. You are making a mistake which invalidates your arguments to some extent. Much better would be if you had said that Steam is liked by many customers instead of saying all customers. Then I wouldn't have objected. But somehow you don't even seem to realize that there is a difference.

Let's just leave it as it is.