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I'm considering buying a couple of games for the PC and was wondering what your opinion of Steam is, since I saw they have most of those games.

Pro's
- No need for a physical CD/DVD
- All games in 1 place, accessible from any computer
- Some good deals

Con's
- What happens if Steam shuts down/bankrupcy etc
- Some games are double in price compared to getting it physically

So whats your take on Steam, is it worth it or just get all games the "normal" way? Do people play other games than CoD or CS?

It's awesome and I very much doubt that valve will go bankrupt

It is very good though I agree the prices can be quite high.

corpsesarefun wrote:It's awesome and I very much doubt that valve will go bankrupt

Yeah its not very likely but who knows in 10-15 years what will happen

Arken Vul'tan01 wrote:It is very good though I agree the prices can be quite high.

Yeah, for example Borderlands GOTY on Steam is 49.99€, while some shops have it for around 30€.

Any other + or -'s I forgot? Any way to see how many players there are on each game?

I like the client. Steam's little marketplace is good whenever they have sales, which is quite frequently.

When I can and if the game isn't integrated into Steamworks, I prefer buying games off of Impulse. The service doesn't quite have the same great deals, but the fact that I don't have to have it running on my taskbar to play and they run without having to connect to the internet makes it a better service in my mind.

You don't have to connect to the net to run games on Steam.

Some games you do. DoWII won't boot unless I have an internet connection. It's the only Steam game that does it for me, and I have a few.

Wolfun wrote:Some games you do. DoWII won't boot unless I have an internet connection. It's the only Steam game that does it for me, and I have a few.

That's because it uses Games For Windows. DoW2: Retribution dumped GFW as it's an archaic and rather craptastic system.

My 2 main problems with steam is no lan play support unless your online, and not being able to play in offline mode when you have some updates for games.

Otherwise I have no problem with steam.

Melissia wrote:Steam's little marketplace is good whenever they have sales, which is quite frequently.

This. Steam's annual Christmas sales, are golden. And usually they start selling a game super cheap when the sequel is about to release. Their normal prices might be high in some cases, but rarely absurd, and the sales are worth checking into steam weekly for.

Yak9UT wrote:My 2 main problems with steam is no lan play support unless your online, and not being able to play in offline mode when you have some updates for games.

Otherwise I have no problem with steam.

You can turn off the automatic updates for games by right clicking on said game -> properties -> Click the Updates tab -> In the drag down box select "Do not automatically update this game."

AresX8 wrote:

Yak9UT wrote:My 2 main problems with steam is no lan play support unless your online, and not being able to play in offline mode when you have some updates for games.

Otherwise I have no problem with steam.

You can turn off the automatic updates for games by right clicking on said game -> properties -> Click the Updates tab -> In the drag down box select "Do not automatically update this game."

Yeah I know about that funtion but sometimes the steam client will need updates and disallow me to go offline mode so it can be still annoying.

Melissia wrote:I like the client. Steam's little marketplace is good whenever they have sales, which is quite frequently.

This. I can't tell you how many deals they have.



Only problem I have with it is when the Internet goes out or what not I am completely out of gaming on my computer, since all my non MMO games were bought from Steam.

I don't see Steam as more expensive - if anything I've saved hundreds of dollars over the years, and I've been a Steam user since it originated. The bundle deals are awesome especially around the holidays, and although the client was extremely dodgy until quite recently I haven't had any real problems with it crashing or causing errors during updates.
That used to be an absolute plague but I really can't fault it any more.

I still remember the Steam beta days. A while ago, people still used to think Steam was acting as badly as the beta even though is was quite stable.

I've been using Steam since the beta days and am amazed at how much it has added to PC gaming.

Slarg232 wrote:

Melissia wrote:I like the client. Steam's little marketplace is good whenever they have sales, which is quite frequently.

This. I can't tell you how many deals they have.



Only problem I have with it is when the Internet goes out or what not I am completely out of gaming on my computer, since all my non MMO games were bought from Steam.

Yeah, this was rather inconvenient, but not the end of the world. I didn't have internet from Sunday through friday night, so I couldn't play any game sans Dragon Age 2.

I have been with steam since 2003, it will never go bankrupt, and is an excellent service.

You can always go into offline mode?

Can you?

Oh wow.....

It was a rhetorical question for the posters above.

Dunno, I've never had a problem going into offline mode when I had internet problems... ever...

Melissia wrote:It was a rhetorical question for the posters above.

Dunno, I've never had a problem going into offline mode when I had internet problems... ever...

You can't go into offline mode if you aren't connected to the internet.

Uh, yeah you can? I do it all the time on my laptop...

Weird. I've never been able to, as have many people I know.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1689375

People with the same problem as me. D:

Never dealt with it before. It makes piracy a from what I've heard, so that makes me inherently dislike it.

It's DRM in disguise, that people can still pirate games from anyway and causes hell to people without an internet connection since some games are required to have the connection to INSTALL your single player games.

It's ok, could be better though.

Seems that in general, people are pretty pleased with Steam. Just hoping that people play other games than CoD, like DoW or Borderlands... man I love that game

AresX8 wrote:I still remember the Steam beta days. A while ago, people still used to think Steam was acting as badly as the beta even though is was quite stable.

I've been using Steam since the beta days and am amazed at how much it has added to PC gaming.

This.

Also, I wouldn't worry about Steam going anywhere. If I recall right, it got bought out by Google. Google will stick around for a while. If not then I'm out $300ish worth of games, though I have spent probably half or less than that thanks to the bad-assing sales.

Steam bought by google? Why would Valve sell its biggest cash cow?

EDIT: Wasn't this a rumor going on a few years ago that got debunked?

Well, this wouldn't be the first time tonight I was wrong Lord, .

ED: Saw your edit. I think so, I could have sworn reading somewhere the deal actually happened, though.

Yeah. I checked. There's an article on 1up from 2008 debunking a rumor that google planned to buy Valve.