Valve's Pipe Dream, Five Years Later

said by AdamB:

Did they get the medic achievements out yet? I haven't played in a week since I've been busy with school and seeding Ubuntu.

said by Vathral:

Steam is one of the greatest thing to have happened on the internet. Not because I'm lazy or anything to go the store but I've bought just about every game off Steam.

Last night's TF2 update downloaded in a few minutes.

said by Ryno:

Wow, all these people who say they love Steam could not have been around back in the WON days. Mods and gameplay was better, and way less crashes or issues.

Steam is simply a distribution network to make money, unlike the older ways of simply hosting games for fun gameplay.

said by cbrigante2:

I remember on the boards of this site, it used to be the "hip" thing to do to bash Steam.

said by Vathral:

I think the biggest gripe everyone had was the friends list. Think everything else was okay...was for me atleast. This community thing with friends really made up for that drama.

said by Nightfall:

for Steam to make it just a tad bit cheaper to buy a game since you aren't getting an actual disc. Still, instead of charging $50, charge $45.

said by KrK:

I agree tho, games from Steam (or online in general) SHOULD be cheaper.

You go to the store, you get a nice box, the art, the manual.... but you get something else, too. The item has actual financial value. You can keep it as a collector's item, or if you grow tired of it, you can sell it to someone else or trade it in. Try doing that with some burned DVD-R of a Steam download.

One other thing, also connected to physical value. Let's say you have a disaster, and your house is damaged, destroyed, computer burned, etc whatever.... The software you bought at the story is covered by insurance. Your downloaded files? GOOD LUCK ever getting a penny for them....

Therefore--- games downloaded should be WAYY cheaper then the store... All the savings the manufacturer has from not paying retail stores, not having to ship, no phyical media or packaging--- ALL THAT EXTRA MARGIN should be taken off and passed to you.

IMHO.

Course.... it will never happen.

said by Nightfall:

As for the second point, that is incorrect. Lets say a tornado comes through and wipes your house out. You get insurance money for a new computer, and when you log into Steam you can redownload your game and play it. Really, you don't need to get anything for them because they are always available to you.

said by KrK:

but if your computer was wiped, and you're on a new PC, new ISP etc how can you recover your Steam Login?

said by KrK:

Well that is interesting, and kinda cool... but if your computer was wiped, and you're on a new PC, new ISP etc how can you recover your Steam Login?

I think I'd still prefer to have the physical item somewhere. Course Steam has an advantage if you have kids in one regard. Kids always seem to lose, scratch, and trash the discs. If you have Steam, well, not a problem. Still tho you can't trade or sell the games....

said by KrK:

I agree tho, games from Steam (or online in general) SHOULD be cheaper.

You go to the store, you get a nice box, the art, the manual.... but you get something else, too. The item has actual financial value. You can keep it as a collector's item, or if you grow tired of it, you can sell it to someone else or trade it in. Try doing that with some burned DVD-R of a Steam download.

One other thing, also connected to physical value. Let's say you have a disaster, and your house is damaged, destroyed, computer burned, etc whatever.... The software you bought at the story is covered by insurance. Your downloaded files? GOOD LUCK ever getting a penny for them....

Therefore--- games downloaded should be WAYY cheaper then the store... All the savings the manufacturer has from not paying retail stores, not having to ship, no phyical media or packaging--- ALL THAT EXTRA MARGIN should be taken off and passed to you.

IMHO.

Course.... it will never happen.

said by norky:

They have to cover bandwidth costs

said by Tomek:

Here is a quick thought, what if you loose that damned disc?
You could easily be out of luck. With Steam I never have to worry about discs or those pesky serial numbers.

said by Nightfall:

The only complaint I have would be for Steam to make it just a tad bit cheaper to buy a game since you aren't getting an actual disc. I would say "because you aren't getting a manual" but I haven't seen a well written game manual in ages. Still, instead of charging $50, charge $45.

said by Waffle_SS:

No way... if you really used Steam since day one you wouldn't be saying that! It was sooooo buggy when it first came out!

said by houghe9:

I love not having to dig out game disks and pass codes everytime I reformat my computer.

said by Anonymous:

They need to lower the price. Also I am disappointed nobody hacked their protection.

said by Fluker:

Steam should have broken down the dialup users further. I bet a good number of people are still stuck with 26.4kbps using pair gained phone lines.

That's pretty harsh that 21% are downloading updates over worse than 33.6

said by Fluker:

Steam should have broken down the dialup users further. I bet a good number of people are still stuck with 26.4kbps using pair gained phone lines.

That's pretty harsh that 21% are downloading updates over worse than 33.6

said by tim_k:

I'm still not crazy about Steam. With satellite internet I don't play online games yet I still have to connect to Steam to play single player games. What was worst was when I was on dial up. I bought the boxed version of HL2. I knew internet access was required, but thought it would be like other games where you just activate it or otherwise verify the game is legit. But not with Steam. As soon as I installed it it insisted on downloading a huge patch before it would let me start playing it. It took 5-7 hours over the course of several days before I could finally start a single player game of HL2. No matter what I did it still required Steam to connect to the net before getting back into a saved game too. So I had to kick everyone off the phone in order to connect to Steam first. And I'd have to wait for any other patch to download before playing any saved game. After the game was loaded then I could disconnect the modem. For that I will always have a distaste for Steam.

said by HRM:

That isn't true, but you have to set up things properly. THen you can play without a connection, or like me, play faster without having to wait for anything. I find that very annoying too.

From support site:

»support.steampowered.com/kb_arti···GCB-2555

What is Offline Mode?

said by Smith6612:

I don't know why people say Steam is a load of crap when I've found it to be very useful.