Had a few problems with Steam;
Updates your games even when you tell it not to update. Might be tied to client updates; not sure, didn't care enough to look into it.
Last year I was happily playing my games in offline mode bought off steam and all of a sudden Steam wants me to go online because I was offline for 2 weeks.
Yesterday I tried to play skyrim but the launcher kept launching itself. Turns out there was a sneaky 18 mbs update and Steam decided to delete TESV.exe in the process. Verify game cache: it worked although all my tweaks are gone.
With all those bundles and discounts and worst of all Steamworks games it's really hard to ignore Steam. Buy a real product on a dvd in a case; nope you need Steam to play.
I don't really hate it but if I have to use the client it should have been a much better product after all these years.

i have bunch of problems with steam as well.

But i like it. Not a fanboy but i prefer to by via them than any other digital shop except gog. easy to use, lots of useful options, cheap prices.

I like Steam, it made me play some of my favorite games all time like VVVVVV or Super Meat Boy.

It's just not Nostalgic, and therefore I don't feel as passionate to them as I do to GOG

Great platform for for indie game developers.

Don't care about it as a gamer (I'm slowly finishing all games that I have on Steam, so after that I won't be using it. Not that I use it now).

I like Steam. I don't have any big problem with it. In fact I like a lot of thing in Steam, like the buddy list, achievements, steamworks support, etc. I have around 250 games on Steam.

Only 1 thing I don't like in it and that is you need to be online at some point to play the games (at least at the install and activation).
Yeah, I think Steam saved the indie community.

I use both services and am not involved in too many flame wars. Basically, you have to understand the differences between both services and decide what you're willing to give up in order to have the service's benefits.

Every Steam game requires that you run Steam before you play it. It's actually like a DRM platform, but it offers many services, so it feels like you're gaining something instead of losing it. Your games are pretty much neatly located in one place, they patch and update automatically when you run the application, they have an online store that runs pretty good deals (daily, midweek and weekend deals and also on Summer, Halloween and in december for Christmas). You can chat and voice chat with friends on your list and it has some social tools that allow you to put screenshots in your profile, comment on other people's profiles, review games, save games in the cloud, create groups, play multiplayer games with them, etc...

The reasons many people don't like it are plenty. Though you can set Steam to play games offline, you can't leave it like that forever and eventually Steam will want to reconnect online. Your games are tied to your Steam profile and if you've done some misdemeanor or if it's done by mistake, Steam CAN ban you from playing your games. While you can back up games on GOG and play them even if you never return to GOG, you could potentially lose all your games if you're permanently banned from your account. I've never heard of anyone being permanently banned, but there have been times I've read about people being temporarily banned (two of them here and a third one on another forum).

You can back up your games on Steam, but you'll need the Steam application to run them. Even though Steam is by far the most successful online game distributor, people worry about what will happen if it ever closes down. Supposedly they'd release the games without the client if it ever happens, but this is the reason many people claim you don't really own your games, you just rent them. I've been renting my games since 2009 and don't worry about returning them any time soon, but certain compatibility issues may eventually arise, like Steam stopping to support a specific OS (what's the point of having games that run on an old OS if Steam itself doesn't run in it?)

Some games have 3rd party DRM besides Steam itself. Sometimes Steam glitches in my end and it takes a while to connect... and I'm starting to run out of cons. In the end, you decide what you're willing to put up with. I think the platform is excellent for buying games I'm not overly enthusiastic about. If you're kinda social, like multiplayer games and like deals, it's a pretty good option. If you're very anti DRM, have a poor net connection or an old machine and prefer single player experiences, there's not much you'll get from it apart from the deals.

I hope that was neutral and informative enough.

For me there's no point using it. I can understand liking it for the sales but i buy retail almost all of the time and other than that it's just a burden. Before i got my new internet connection it was really terrible to use and i feel for any dial-up users left.

Tsk tsk tsk.

I personally don't really buy the "indefinite rental" argument. First of all, it's not like Valve is in danger of shutting down anytime soon; they're the biggest players in the digital distribution field and make a ton of money from Steam. Sure, one company having a monopoly on DD isn't great, but the biggest concern for customers is that the company will shut down and stop offering access to the customer's games (as GOG wonderfully demonstrated...) so popularity/sales helps to reassure about that.

Also, Valve's stated that they've built a kill switch into the Steam DRM that, in the event that Valve had to shut down, would remove the Steam requirement from the games and, in theory, allow you to redownload any game and make a physical back up for a limited time.

And unlike Origin, being banned for cheating in multiplayer on Steam will just ban you from multiplayer; you don't get locked out of your game totally. The only times people are banned from their account are from bounced payments or adding stolen codes, both of which can be resolved without too many issues. You will never be banned from your account for cheating in multiplayer or being banned from the forums.

I mean, contrast Steam with Origin's two years policy, where they can remove a game from your library, that you paid for, that you haven't played for more than two years. Now that's what I think of when I think indefinite rental.

How is that at odds with the word "indefinite"?


I'm not emotional about the topic, I can acknowledge the arguments of both sides, pro and contra Steam, but this argument is a claim I've never seen backed up in any of the past Steam-Yay-Or-Nay discussions I've followed with mild interest. I'm still waiting for a link to the official statement before I put my money on it.

I don't think they have ever stated this. At least I never saw it and I'd love to see an official statement on this. I believe it's just a myth started by Steam fans, just like there are myths on the opposite side. Just because something like this would be common sense to you or me, it doesn't mean a big company would see things the same.

Personally, I wouldn't hate Steam as much if it weren't for the spread that it's represented. It's not just Vavle games, but tons of other games. Not just downloads, but retail discs as well.

If they removed the DRM though I'd probably become a raging fanbois within minutes. The platform is by and large nice, I just don't like the amount of control and influence they exert.

I've told people this multiple times that even if his quote was true it is irrelevant.

Companies do not go under in a vacuum. Assume Valve gets into financial trouble because Gabe invested all of Steam's assets into the new Half Life Episode 3+Cheetahmen 3 The Movie/Game/Toy franchise and bankrupts the company. What happens. Do you honestly think existing companies like Gamestop/Amazon/Gamer'sGate/Origin/etc would just sit back and go "oh yeah no need to buy them out". Or what about companies that don't have online store that might want to 'get in the game' Activision/Blizzard and such. Do you honestly think these companies would not want to purchase a financially troubled Steam. Or that Steam wouldn't reach out to potential buyers if it was in financial difficulties? Who wouldn't want to buy out a company with millions of subscribers with a ton of games tied to their service? All those users will migrate to you in a heart beat rather than lose all their games. It's a total win/win for both the company and the consumer.

The idea that Steam would suddenly implode and leave all their games unplayable is simply not a scenario that it going to happen. You'll simply be migrating over to whoever buys out Steam.

Download, copy-paste, replace exe, exit Steam... and there you go, they have no control over your games.