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Hey there Dakka,

So I've been thinking of gaming online with my PC for DOW these days and I hear that a steam account is required. I looked through the wiki page about it and all the services and etc look great, but there's one thing I didn't find:

Is it a paying service? Lets say I bought DOWII retribution and I try to play online with it through steam, do I have to pay for a steam account, like Xbox live or is it free lke PSN?

Steam is a service similer to Gamespy or Battle.Net that is run by Valve. Many games you buy today require you to authenticate through the steam servers(as a way to cut down on piracy).

Steam is basically a game-launch platform, which can download updates automatically and also has community forums, applications and other various tools. It's a free platform so far (I didn't pay for it when I got it)

i havent paid for steam in the past 7 years so i think its free admittedly they have had a lot of money out of me for games x.x

The vast majority love steam. I think me and like 3 other people don't. But that's just because I don't have the internet on my gaming computer, so Steam is essentially useless for me.

So aslong as you have a decent Internet connection, it should run grand.


Steam sell thousands of games ranging from the top 10 chart, to games released by independent programmers. They also have massive sales over the summer. But, primarily it is used for social gaming, and to keep all your games in one 'easily' used programme.

Toastedandy wrote:The vast majority love steam. I think me and like 3 other people don't. But that's just because I don't have the internet on my gaming computer, so Steam is essentially useless for me.

So aslong as you have a decent Internet connection, it should run grand.


Steam sell thousands of games ranging from the top 10 chart, to games released by independent programmers. They also have massive sales over the summer. But, primarily it is used for social gaming, and to keep all your games in one 'easily' used programme.

As you and the "3 other people" have been told, you can set it to run offline.

Kanluwen wrote:

Toastedandy wrote:The vast majority love steam. I think me and like 3 other people don't. But that's just because I don't have the internet on my gaming computer, so Steam is essentially useless for me.

So aslong as you have a decent Internet connection, it should run grand.


Steam sell thousands of games ranging from the top 10 chart, to games released by independent programmers. They also have massive sales over the summer. But, primarily it is used for social gaming, and to keep all your games in one 'easily' used programme.

As you and the "3 other people" have been told, you can set it to run offline.

You and other people have been told, it is useless in offline, its just as glorified folder

What rock did you crawl out from?

It's free, and it's great.

Also, for the whole offline problemo... 20 bucks can fix that (switch + network cable).

What's the point of a PC without internet in this day and age..?

Steam is great, shortly upon downloading it however you will own more games then you could ever consevibly play...

Catyrpelius wrote:Steam is great, shortly upon downloading it however you will own more games then you could ever consevibly play...

I need two lives in order to catch up on my backlog. And they just keep coming!

Steam is Famous for offering preorder deals along the lines of:

Preorder Popular Game 3, get all of the other games and DLC that came before it for free.

Steam is pretty good
it keeps up on updates for you and puts all your games in one place.
Their anticheat was good to begin with and the danger of being banned from /every/ steam game you've ever bought kept people leery but more recently it has turned to being near useless.

Toastedandy wrote:

You and other people have been told, it is useless in offline, its just as glorified folder

Breaking news: Online service found not functional without internet connection. Grannys with 56k modems rioting across world.

I used to dislike Steam greatly. I resent the hell out of the concept of DRM of any variety, however, when it's something along the lines of Steam, where it 'just works' and you can always redownload your games (and put them on multiple computers at once), I have no problem with it. Plus, in addition to the prerelease deals, they occasionally have bundle deals where you can get stuff like every id/Bethesda game ever made from Fallout 3 all the way back to Wolfenstein 3d and Commander Keen for 90 bucks.

It's a good thing, and I don't find myself saying stuff like that often.


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Plus I put my ancient half-life key into Steam and they gave me the expansions for free. Granted it's an ancient game, but that's just cool.

Toastedandy wrote: But that's just because I don't have the internet on my gaming computer

How is that even possible in this day and age? A computer without an internet connection is useless to me.

Toastedandy wrote:The vast majority love steam. I think me and like 3 other people don't. But that's just because I don't have the internet on my gaming computer, so Steam is essentially useless for me.

So aslong as you have a decent Internet connection, it should run grand.


Steam sell thousands of games ranging from the top 10 chart, to games released by independent programmers. They also have massive sales over the summer. But, primarily it is used for social gaming, and to keep all your games in one 'easily' used programme.

I do not like it either, but that is mainly the reason, because it needs a LOT of capacity.

Platuan4th wrote:

Toastedandy wrote: But that's just because I don't have the internet on my gaming computer

How is that even possible in this day and age? A computer without an internet connection is useless to me.

Computers can do other stuff ya know. It just doesn't have a wifi connection thing, so I can't connect it to the internet.

The only thing to add (other than my opinion of steam) is that of the three DoWII titles out there only DoWII Retribution runs solely on steam. DoWII and DoWII Chaos Riseing both require a windows live account as well.

Steam is alright I suppose, better than windows live anyway. However I don't have a very fast internet connection or a very good computer, or very much money. Thus steam is quite useless to me and even an annoyance when it comes to playing games.

Ma55ter_fett wrote:The only thing to add (other than my opinion of steam) is that of the three DoWII titles out there only DoWII Retribution runs solely on steam. DoWII and DoWII Chaos Riseing both require a windows live account as well.

By windows live do you mean a hotmail account or the actual live account installed on the computer? Cause if that's the case...

Lord Rogukiel wrote:

Ma55ter_fett wrote:The only thing to add (other than my opinion of steam) is that of the three DoWII titles out there only DoWII Retribution runs solely on steam. DoWII and DoWII Chaos Riseing both require a windows live account as well.

By windows live do you mean a hotmail account or the actual live account installed on the computer? Cause if that's the case...

Worse, you needed this

Is that only for online play, or do I need to install it even for singleplayer?

Lord Rogukiel wrote:Is that only for online play, or do I need to install it even for singleplayer?

As well as being a community service, and online store, it's a DRM (digital rights management) program, so you'll need it installed to verify your copy of the game, even for single player.