No, not always. See the YouTube video I posted earlier in the thread. And even if they did always run, that wouldn't disprove that they were defective; "it always runs" is a pretty low standard for that, if you think about it.

Any form of digital restrictions management is something added on to the software with the deliberate effect of reducing its functionality. That's a built-in defect. It is disturbing that so many gamers have come to regard such things as acceptable and even normal. With any physical product it would rightly be regarded as outrageous (and would probably be illegal); with other digital products, too, that has been the reaction, hence the music download stores' abandonment of DRM.

You mean like not only needing a physical key to turn on your car's engine, but needing to have said key being programmed for your car's specific engine? Damn, I knew my car was deffective...

They have fixed this part at least partially to my understanding. If a payment for a game goes bad for whatever reason, that game is locked from your account until the issue is cleared up and you can no longer buy stuff or trade, but you can access your account. Valve never announced it and people had to find out through a second had post on the forums.

This issue happening to me is what made me weary of steam to begin with. I bought a gift for someone about a year ago. The payment went through and the game was activated on their account. I verified the payment was ok with my credit card company, then right after they got the gift my account got locked. After 3 days of back and forth with steam support it was unlocked. After I asked why this happened when the payment cleared all I was told was "Be careful who you gift to in the future."

I never signed it. :P I took my desktop steam install and put it into offline mode, then blocked steam with my firewall since even in offline mode it tries to update and connect. The fact they would even do that to begin with is what made me say screw it with dealing with them. Out of all the other digital distribution companies I've delt with on my PC and on consoles, Steam was the only one to try to fully lock me out of my purchases for clicking I Disagree on a new EULA after a point of sale.

I was also unaware of the DOSBox issues with them in the past. It was an interesting read that I thank you for sharing.

Edit: To add, I realize I might come off as "No DRM or else!" but I actually don't have a problem with DRM as long as it works and doesn't cause me hassles. Steam apparently works without any hassles for a large amount of people. However out of all online services it has been the one that caused me the most headaches, which is what drove me elsewhere.

No, that's completely different. It benefits the owner by protecting against theft. That is not comparable with DRM on a game.

I have the physical goods (car/game), I have the means to access it (key/cd-rom) and I have to go to the company to ask permission for it (key program/online verification).
My car is defective, damn you for letting me know it :(

Er, no, in the case of the car you don't.

Opel Corsa model 2005, had to have a new key made. Once the key was made (any locksmith can copy it), I had to go to the company so they would program it. One time verification by the company.
Go on, tell me again how I don't need to do that to access my car.
Edit: also need it if you somehow manage to mess up your key, learn to stay away from strong e/m fields

Interestingly, I have personalized experiences from Nintendo and even Blizzard (with their WoW). Why? It is because they actually spent money on customer service. Valve spends little if anything on customer service. Valve's approach is leverage their customers to do their work for them. This is why they have 'volunteers', and it creates the mess that it does.

GoG also is no longer small. It has been growing rapidly.

Valve has lately been on the defensive as more and more people are questioning why Steam should even exist. Valve is deliberately choosing the DRM method for games when they have the option to put out DRM free versions of the games. Valve is spending much money on viral marketing which is why you see all the strange 'Gabe Newell' photos posted everywhere as if he is the savior of gaming. But as more and more people question Steam, all the viral marketing is being torn to shreds.

So why use Steam? Valve is trying to get DOTA 2 and TFT 2, out free, to keep leading people to use the store. You don't see Wal-Mart or Amazon give out free products to get people into their store.

Why use Steam? For the sales? All it does is cause the gamer to make bad purchasing decisions hence a ton of games bought that the gamer doesn't play.

Steam is a sinking ship.

Fair enough; I'd never heard of such a thing before. But my previous point still stands: that has a function, i.e. protecting the owner from theft. It benefits the owner. DRM doesn't.

You call that "debating the other side"? I call it pulling "facts" from his ass - when someone makes a statement and you weren't there, you don't go "oh I bet you did this and this and this, see, you're wrong". No, I wasn't wrong and I'm not wasting my time on a retarded sad fanboy who has some weird need to defend arrogant moderators who are known across the Internet as being among the most power hungry of any big forum. The whole Steam forums have such a bad reputation it's not funny and the moderators are part of that bad reputation.

EDIT: actually I should add that GOG makes a good example of how a forum SHOULD be run. They don't ban or warn people for being critical and actually USE the criticism to learn from it instead of acting like Gestapo and abusing their power to silence people - I've seen a lot of people get banned for next to nothing on the Steam forums and I barely even go there!

Yes very fun when 6 of my friends had a MBR failure in a span of two days and they all used Steam and all had Nforce chipset mobos and all had to reboot after Steam updated itself ... and all had an error about no drive being detected after reboot and Steam rushed out another patch mere hours later and deleted any topics from the forum asking about it. Funny ... I'm sure. *facepalms* You retard.

For me its very interesting to find people trying to defend any big corporation whether its Valve, Blizzard, EA, GOG, ... etc As Simon added (although he was defending Valve for some unknown reason) big corporation don't care about customers or if people are upset or not, they just care about making as much money as possible.

I can understand you find steam convenient to your needs but frankly going ahead and defending an evil corporation is beyond me.
I am usually more leaning on the customer complaining side as I am expecting big corporations to screw their customers all day and I even support spreading this info as more people need to wake up from the naive assumption that Valve or Blizzard or GOG is out there for the good of their customers and they put customers before making money.

Who's defending them as a corporation? Most people are just refuting some of the absolutely ridiculous arguments being put forth in this thread. they aren't all bad, but some of you...WOW.

Well, at least privately owned companies aren't legally obliged to be evil, unlike public companies :)

The term "maximising shareholder value" has such nasty implications...

I love Steam. I can enjoy great games and great sales. The rest is unimportant. ;)