hlhbk: 1. I will give you this.
2. There is no reason what so ever to believe Valve wouldn't take care of you. They always have taken care of their customer. BTW I have been part of a service shutting down before and received retail boxed copies of all the games I had bought through a service.
Either way nothing points in the direction of losing your games.
3. Witcher 2 auto patches straight out of the install, so it's the same thing for new games from CD Projekt now apparently.
4. False. I have been using Steam for a long long time, and the only time I have ever seen downloads suspend are during the xmas sale and that happens rarely. When it does happen there are always servers that are available and you can download at 1+ meg a second.
5. If you are really following the EULA so are GOG and any other digital download store's games.
6. Yet plenty of people love this feature. Paranoid much?
7. Yet I have never had a game not run for me via Steam. Which version of the Witcher crashes? Oh that's right the GOG version.
8. So am I, but this isn't a valid argument regardles since the Witcher 2 auto patches as well.
9. When has Steam been down for any significant amount of time? How about GOG? Oh yeah you must have forgot their stunt earlier this year. When you download the game via Steam it is auto installed, so it is the same as not having your games downloaded from GOG when they "shut down" earlier.
10. Yet games like Half-life, Portal, Counter Strike, Transformers War for Cybertron, Elder Scrolls III and IV, and just about any game I can think of that has mods I can use them via Steam.
11. Compared to other DRM out there (Ubi's always online, or limited activations anyone?) I would gladly live with Steam's. I hate to tell you this but things will only get worse in terms of DRM in the gaming industry.
1. They're such a rip-off, they can be double the price of a DVD delivered to your door.
2. I'm not willing to risk my 300+ games, a hobby I love, to "no reason Valve wouldn't take care of me". And it might not be up to Valve.
3. No, you don't have to autopatch, and I wasn't comparing Steam to GoG, I was merely listing the disadvantages of Steam.
4. Rubbish, "downloads suspending" is one of the most complained issues on the Steam Forums.
See for yourself:
[url=]http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enAU347AU348&q=steam+download+suspends[/url].
And just because it doesn't happen to you, that doesn't mean it's not an issue.
The world doesn't revolve around you.
5. I'm not talking about the EULA. For a start, they're not universally legally binding.
It depends on the court and the EULA.
Some courts have found them illegal and unconscionable.
BTW, where is the GoG EULA?
6. Just because some people love it, that doesn't mean everyone has to.
It's about individual choice, and with Steam, it's taken away.
Would you like your choices removed, just because it's convenient for others?
7. Runs fine for me and plenty of others. Obvious the problem is yours.
Regardless, it's very simple.
The more layers of software, the more chance of problems, that can't be denied.
8. I wasn't comparing it to The Witcher 2, I'm speaking generally about Steam.
And GoG has the advantage of time, so when a game is released, it won't have patch issues.
Whereas with Steam, you're a guinea pig. If a patch breaks the game, bad luck.
9. Steam's activation servers are regularly down for maintenance.
When I purchased Metro 2033, I couldn't even play it for almost 24 hours because of this.
Check the Steam forums for times when they shut their activation servers down.
As usual, it doesn't affect North American users much because of the time zone, but it affects me.
And BTW, when GoG's site was "gone", I could still install and play my games.
With Steam's down, I can't do either......
10. I never said Mods were impossible to use, I said it's harder to work with Steam games.
If you want to argue this point, then you're obviously new to gaming.
11. And compared to GoG, Steam's DRM is draconian.
You actually have to find the worst DRM to compare Steam to, to make it look good?
Regardless of what the state or future of DRM is, that doesn't mean I have to like or accept it, nor does it make Steam any more palatable.