FWIW im no fan of steam (im currently trying to divest all my spare steam crap and have stopped buying from there with very few exceptions - certainexclusives which are unlikely to ever come to gog :/ ) -- be careful when your installing a game that activates with steam.If your on a capped download plan make sure the installer is installing the data off your disk and not downloading via steam client - it happens randomly with different games that come on disk - check the forums if you have problems installing directly from disk ( data via the client should only be patches and for activation if your installing from disk).

My net connection is utter shit - doesnt stop me.

I've been to Poland but only for a short time and my mind was mostly focused on all the really cheap PC games.

Fixed it for ya.

"Which of course brings us to its shining achievement—Steam. To sum up Steam’s unpopularity in 2004 would leave no words left to describe ebola, lawyers, or Piers Morgan. And not without cause. It was buggy, it was ugly, there was no missing that Valve was outright forcing it down our throats out of nowhere, and the much crappier bandwidth of the day made being told to download games of this size almost offensive in its arrogance. It would be a long, long time before Steam even got close to the service that at least most of us know and love today, instead of its name just getting tacked onto the words ‘ing pile of shit.’

But. With Half-Life 2, Valve had a game that managed to get the necessary traction to create the service we know today, and while nobody would claim it’s perfect, nothing else has done so much to legitimize and make digital distribution work. Much as it took Apple to break the music industry’s obsession with DRM on MP3 files, it took Steam to show the whole industry that the game had changed. The idea that you’d be able to redownload your games in perpetuity for instance was heresy to companies that at best wanted that to be another service. Being able to download them onto any machine instead of them being locked to a single PC, or maybe three, or five? That just wasn’t done. Valve was the first major company to build a digital download service that people actually wanted to use, that made the experience of buying games online better" http://www.pcgamer.com/the-legacy-of-half-life-2/

:)

Being connected to Steam is one thing. Having an enjoyable experience with Steam is another thing.

Aside form all their problems and warts, they are doing a few things right. They got more hardware manufacturers to care about Linux with their SteamOS, they got gaming avaliable when the alternative was download and hope it wasn't actually a virus. And if you can stand the client, it's a decent way to chat with friends and keep up on eachother's virtual achievements.

They have done some good. I wouldn't say they are doing that good right now, as they are full of themselves...

Oh no... has Gabe eaten himself again?

People say that *so often* but I think it must really come down to bad luck on their part. I worked in Afghanistan for two years; the only internet access I had was 32 kbit, and had on average a 2,000ms ping, +/- 10%. I never once had a problem with the Steam client or games.

Yeah, one game locked up and took weeks to download some updates, but that was because I didn't know enough to turn off auto-updating. If you have a dial-up speed internet connection available to you a few times a year, and you bother to turn off all the automatic "helpful" features, I really don't think Steam is going to give you a problem. It certainly didn't for me.

[url= But I also have almost 300 games on GOG, so I don't think I can be called a Steam fanboy - indeed, for the first few years I wouldn't use it - not until the offline mode got implemented and started working well. As much as I like DRM-free games, I don't think it's useful to regurgitate old stories about how bad things used to be for this one guy we knew. Steam screws up enough stuff to keep me entertained, anyway. Also, if you know how to create and use VMs then Steam basically *is* DRM-free. ][/url]

I'm referring to steam now being the common dumping ground of shovelware products...

And I am referring to Gabe Newell being fat.

It kinda depends on the game. In case of some games you can install a large portion of the game from disc, at least that's how it was in the early years of Steam - frankly I haven't even tried doing it in ages, though, due to the amount of data that will usually be downloaded anyway. I've also seen at least one or two games where the disc, despite containing some game data, doesn't do anything except installing/launching the Steam client. Friends of mine have also reported such cases.

In my opnion there are no real practical benefits to boxed Steam exclusives. Even if you go in telling yourself that you will continue to use discs - soon after you will develop the habit of activating your serial on Steam and downloading the game, without ever touching the disc.

Frankly I don't know what people are really talking about. There are privacy settings for your profile which determine how much information about you and your Steam library others can see. To be honest I'm not aware of any options that determine how much Steam itself "spies" on you.

I have a copy of Skyrim (gifted for a Christmas some 2-3 years ago... I forget when), and it contains a decent portion of the game. Course the installer refuses to even start unless you're on Steam. So beyond having a physical copy, and being able to ignore the first 5Gigs of downloading because you already have it locally...

I guess if you have a really low cap or internet through a hotspot where they charge for the gig then having a physical copy would be beneficial... or just downloading what you're allowed for the month and then waiting...


I know some friends who are stuck on Verizon hotspot (charged per gig) like that, great speed, 5Gig cap. Both Netflix and Youtube INSIST on streaming HD content which eats their bandwidth up in a matter of days or less. Upon request I downloaded a bunch of lectures from YT in low quality on writing theory for them.

Also got them a copy of Tetris because the flash tetris they were playing was using bandwidth, each time to download and it's own little high score system.... ugg...
Shouldn't they sell the keys then like on little scratch-off phone cards instead? Activating the key should be a simple matter of notifying the company or steam that it got money and the key's valid...

As others have said, it really depends on the game. Some games have a substantial amount of data on the disc, while others are little more than boot discs.

Personally, for the few Steamworks-enabled games I have bought (though I no longer do even that, since between GOG, older retail games and whatever free games I can gather, I have more than enough games to play as is), I always bought them on disc. Not just because I'm willing to crack them if Steam ever goes down (hey, nobody will care in that case and they ARE games I purchased), but also because I like to minimise the amount of stuff I have to download. My internet connection isn't bad, but it still takes several hours to download a relatively modern game and I'd rather be playing the game ASAP.

I think buying a game on disc is most worthwhile if it's a primarily single-player title. When it comes to multiplayer ones, even if the disc shaves off some downloading time, chances are that the game will be updated and changed so much that it will be almost as if you're downloading it from scratch anyway. That's what happened to Red Orchestra 2; the game was overhauled so much that, even if you install the game from the disc, the subsequent download is still as big as the files you installed.