The community features are a small concession for having to put up with STEAM. Unless Strike Suit infinity is multiplayer, I can just as easily compete with family members when it comes to high scores as I do over bejeweled (local high scores stored on the PC, not the online iPad version).

I also have a STEAM library large enough as is, and I’m not forking over any more money for anything that installs using STEAM or requires it in any way, I’ve hit my limit.

Again, if this is a single player game that is being talked about (just now reading about Strike Suit Infinity) why in the world would I want community features added to a game that doesn’t allow me to interact with other players while playing it? Is this the EA approach being applied to push DRM (see the latest Sim City game)?

Steam has NO true offline mode, you ALWAYS have to authenticate at least once.. so if say a decade down the road VALVE/STEAM is no more and you want to INSTALL it and a STEAM-dependant game.. you’re out of luck. Offline mode also works until it doesn’t, if one of those session files gets corrupted (had this happen) it requires you to re-authenticate to go BACK into offline mode… which then requires you to “allow” it to update everything in your games library if you want to ever run them again (if an update is detected)… oh yeah, on THAT topic: it’s (STEAM) version management system is still as bad as it was in the early days.. at least GOG’s downloader gives me a choice to download the update, not just apply the update or don’t run the game.

Meh.. I’m done STEAM bashing… STEAM is something you either like or you don’t, and some random blip on the Internet like me never changes anyone’s mind…

I don´t play on a single pc, neither does my wife, half my friends are not even living in the same country anymore, and I have a decent amount of online acquaintances as well. So the community features do make sense. Even more actually in a single player high score game than in a multiplayer title.

Let me give you an example. Our little Thursday evening gaming group started to play a while ago Orcs must die. All separate from each other. Orcs must die 1 is a fantasy tower defense and is a strictly single player game. So it was not on our program for our weekly co-op play sessions. Yet, we did talk a lot about strategies, levels, etc of the game, just because we did see each others high scores in the game. A few weeks actually it became a real sport to beat each others high scores, replay the levels and try out new stuff and new tactics. In essence we had a real blast with it.
Without this easy way to share this kind of information this would not have been possible, those simply community features increase the value of the game dramatically for us. Strike Suit Infinity as a high score chaser is very similar in this regard.

For the steam offline mode, will it still is not very good, but hey, the forced updates of games are at least a thing of the past. So nope, its not has bad as it was in the early days. And somehow I am quite sure that running steam will work just fine without valve if they ever have to stop their service. I am betting some money on it actually, just like every steam user ;-)

Quick comment on Steam as DRM: it seems customary to do a check if Steam is running before the game gets too far. While linking with Steamworks is not mandatory, many developers still seem to do it, regardless if they use Steamworks features or not. I think I can also assume that many developers, for Steam versions, will not do Steam presence checks when using Steamworks APIs and likely crash something, nor implement a standalone Steamworks replacement in the case it fails. That said, there are some games on Steam that actually don't care if Steam is running or not (e.g. Psychonauts), or uses the Steamworks wrapper around a non-Steam adapted executable (e.g. Project Freedom), and that's just pointless except for easily removed DRM (Project Freedom extracts the original EXE and runs that).