Steam

[Droc]

Another great (or shitty?) thing about Steam is that you will buy games that you wouldn't otherwise buy because they are on sale for $5-10.

Lots of indie or under the radar games get recognition that way though. If it wasnt for steam doing that, we wouldnt know of any games outside of what EA decides to advertise on IGN.

 

[rflcptr]

Yet.

Yeah ... with a peak of 3 million concurrent users ... yeah ...

 

[Direwolf20]

I vote +1 for steam.

Never had an issue with their service
Lots of great deals ($5 or $10 games)
Fast Download Speeds
Easy access to all my games without needing to keep track of CD's or Keys

Occaisionally something will be more expensive on steam than somewhere else, but not often. And honestly, if its $5 more on steam, I might just spend that extra $5 for the convenience of having it through the service.

YMMV

 

[Jellylesg]

Rarely pay extra to have access to all my games where ever I am and never have to worry about discs, cd-keys, or patching. Now that I have Steam it is the only messaging program I use. I get games so cheap on Steam is would take more than effort than it is worth to sell them.

That being said Steam was a horrifying piece of shit on release. It has come a long way to be something I don't want to live without.

Never pay extra to have access to my games wherever I am and never have to worry about discs, cd-keys or patching, because of foresight.

Of course, nowadays even a lot of retail games use Steam for authentication (and try to make you download the game from Steam even if you have the disk - Civ 5 I'm looking at you).

Yeah, and it's not unique in this. Oddly, people kicked up a set of shitted underwear over Ubisoft and others making their games follow the same system, but because Steam gives you achievements and a nice little chat menu people don't seem to object to it, despite it being precisely the same kind of DRM they had a strop about before.

 

[jiminator]

you cannot compare steam to ubisoft. ubisoft requires an always on internet connection, steam does not. even when online it will only authenticate at the beginning and not while playing your game. ubi will disconnect you. now no doubt you will say that only happens to people with inferior internet connections to yours. so out of the 30 days I played AC II my internet was up and down only 1 day. But that day was damn annoying as hell. Even better is when you are running (space) and your internet drops. You have an instant CTD. Why? Because the UBI screen says to wait or press space to exit. Lots of LOLs there.

 

[Climber]

Yeah, and it's not unique in this. Oddly, people kicked up a set of shitted underwear over Ubisoft and others making their games follow the same system, but because Steam gives you achievements and a nice little chat menu people don't seem to object to it, despite it being precisely the same kind of DRM they had a strop about before.

It isn't remotely the same and you know it. Steam gives you, the player, the option on how to run your games. Uplay does not..

 

[DDigital]

Lots of indie or under the radar games get recognition that way though. If it wasnt for steam doing that, we wouldnt know of any games outside of what EA decides to advertise on IGN.

Unless it's called Minecraft

 

[Jellylesg]

It isn't remotely the same and you know it. Steam gives you, the player, the option on how to run your games. Uplay does not..

The fact is, simply, that it is restrictive DRM which dictates what you can do with your purchased product. People shat themselves over it before but are happy to take it from Valve. I don't know why, some are fanboys and some just don't have any foresight. Who knows.

 

[piscian18]

The fact is, simply, that it is restrictive DRM which dictates what you can do with your purchased product. People shat themselves over it before but are happy to take it from Valve. I don't know why, some are fanboys and some just don't have any foresight. Who knows.

It's two lines of thinking

DRM is here to stay

or

DRM will go away if we just keep complaining and wallet voting.

For those like myself who have seen the trends in DRM and just feel like it's not going anywhere Steam is the best we're gonna get it. It's a great chat/buddy client, manages all your game installs, and doesn't play CD Key/authorization game that drives people nuts.

This can be seen polarized in DRM platforms like GFWL and GameComrade which are limited and atrociously buggy. I've literally given up on playing some games because I couldnt get GameComrade to install them properly and then went and bought them on Steam to save myself the misery.

If you've been a PC gamer for the last 10 years it's difficult not to be a Steam Fanboy. Even if there wasn't a Steam Store I'd still have steam installed for the ingame friends/chat and browser. Getting a scrim together with my Clanmates or getting people together for a game of Borderlands or even god help me MW2 is just far easier with Steam community.

By all means fight the good fight and F*** DRM but I literally haven't seen a game out in the last two years that didn't have it in some form(-Indie games)

 

[Oldie]

The fact is, simply, that it is restrictive DRM which dictates what you can do with your purchased product. People shat themselves over it before but are happy to take it from Valve. I don't know why, some are fanboys and some just don't have any foresight. Who knows.

Steam is absolutely a form of DRM, it would be silly to argue otherwise. At the end of the day though Steam appears to me to be miles beyond other DRM schemes out there. Most of the rest simply penalize you and make you jump through hoops for absolutely zero additional content/features for the customer, the publisher alone reaps the benefits. Steam at least provides: automatic updates, server based storage of your media accessible almost 24/7/365 from any PC, cloud support for settings/saves on several titles, integrated chat/community system, etc.

Instead of just saying "here's our product, we locked down how you can use it, screw you" Valve said "here's our product, we locked down how you can use it, but in exchange you get...". There's a big difference.

 

[SixtyWattMan]

Steam is DRM with a lot of positive points and not many negative.

 

[Jellylesg]

Steam is DRM with a lot of positive points and not many negative.

Depending on your needs and situation, that is. It's not possible to argue definitively that Steam is good or bad and I'm not trying to do that. But the guy asked about Steam and people are always ready to talk the thing up without considering the potential downsides and hamstringing that come with it.

By all means fight the good fight and F*** DRM but I literally haven't seen a game out in the last two years that didn't have it in some form(-Indie games)

I remember Fallout 3 being a big deal because it used absolutely no DRM or copy protection and still amassed notable sales and critical acclaim. The fact remains, as games like that show, that a good product will carry itself. Steam doesn't stop games being pirated, as New Vegas shows, but that's irrelevant if you make a good product. People will want to buy it, same as with the Stalker series.

 

[Mokkat]

I gotta commend the New Vegas over Steam deal. A game like that will always need alot of fixes, and Steam does it for you automatically + you will get Steam benefits though you buy the game at a cheaper retailer.
At the same time, you can easily get the cracked game by pirating, but with only steam doing the patching, and a 200-fixes patch right after launch, pirates have a tougher time getting the optimal game

 

[Parmenides]

I gotta commend the New Vegas over Steam deal. A game like that will always need alot of fixes, and Steam does it for you automatically + you will get Steam benefits though you buy the game at a cheaper retailer.
At the same time, you can easily get the cracked game by pirating, but with only steam doing the patching, and a 200-fixes patch right after launch, pirates have a tougher time getting the optimal game

Yeah, the patching will keep the pirates a step behind in versions. But the greatest DRM is a mod..... Oblivion/Fallout Script extender. I would miss out on half of the best mods out there if I pirated the games.

 

[Spectrum17]

I like that it is easier to find DLC for games, and not having to worry about patching is a godsend. More and more for older games that I simply must still have when I do a complete rebuild/reinstall, I buy on Steam for a very cheap price, like Rome+xps, which would not install and patch properly from disc for some reason. I've done that with older games I have missed, too, like the Age of Wonders series. No worries about Win 7 compatibility either. The other thing I like is that I can browse and find games (especially Indie titles) that I might never had even heard of otherwise.

There is one thing I don't like though: the interface. It is just clunky, ugly, and harder to use than it has to be.

 

[Climber]

I remember Fallout 3 being a big deal because it used absolutely no DRM or copy protection and still amassed notable sales and critical acclaim. The fact remains, as games like that show, that a good product will carry itself. Steam doesn't stop games being pirated, as New Vegas shows, but that's irrelevant if you make a good product. People will want to buy it, same as with the Stalker series.

Fallout 3 used SecuRom. Granted they only used it for a disk check, but they used DRM nonetheless. It was just as non-invasive as Steam was and is.

 

[Jellylesg]

Fallout 3 used SecuRom. Granted they only used it for a disk check, but they used DRM nonetheless. It was just as non-invasive as Steam was and is.

I never even experienced a disk check with FO3. Whack it in, install, remove DVD and play.

I wouldn't say that Steam was as non-invasive as this, though. Bear in mind I'm not just speaking on it from a DRM standpoint.

 

[Disposed]

I never even experienced a disk check with FO3. Whack it in, install, remove DVD and play.

Either you remember wrong or pirated it. FO3 had DRM in the form of a disc check.

 

[Jellylesg]

Either you remember wrong or pirated it. FO3 had DRM in the form of a disc check.

I reinstalled it about three weeks ago and I swear there's no check required. I can boot it now without the disc in the drive. Maybe they removed it in a patch and I'm mis-remembering it.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I keep saying this...steam is a digital distribution platform and as such protection of the content is really a given, you know what you're getting when you buy a game on steam, you need their client to play.

If I buy a game from a B&M store I expect to get a game I can play without any additional bloat ware or connection requirements.

Where I don't like steam is when people integrate their games with steam but then sell those games from physical stores, if you buy a game from a store on a disc then it should not require steam, preferably have steam integration as an option for those who want it, but generally speaking everything you need should be on the disc with no online component needed. I try and avoid physical copies now anyway, steam is good enough for me, it has its issues like everything else but is generally usable.

 

[mas]

Never pay extra to have access to my games wherever I am and never have to worry about discs, cd-keys or patching, because of foresight.



Yeah, and it's not unique in this. Oddly, people kicked up a set of shitted underwear over Ubisoft and others making their games follow the same system, but because Steam gives you achievements and a nice little chat menu people don't seem to object to it, despite it being precisely the same kind of DRM they had a strop about before.

so basically what you're saying is, that you prefer to crack/clone all your games instead of running a drm client, and you like manually hunting down patches. not that there's anything wrong with this imo, but at some point you have to ask yourself, what exactly is the difference in the way of restrictions? if you think about this objectively, you're not going to find much. sale and trade, that's about it, so I guess it would depend on how much that is worth to you personally. and what about multiplayer drm? I'm sure no amount of "foresight" will get around that, unless you deny yourself this feature altogether.

then think about what you get in return. achievements and chat, that's all you could come up with? how about free storage of all your games on demand, with unlimited downloads? this in combination with unrestricted gameplay promotes a greater feeling of "ownership" to me, than having a disc in my hand or some other form of unsupported digital release. "chat" is also a huge understatement for the community features you get here, let's not forget group hosting, tracking, joining of those contacts. not everyone likes proactive patching so let's not go there, maybe you prefer to do this on your own time.

The fact is, simply, that it is restrictive DRM which dictates what you can do with your purchased product. People shat themselves over it before but are happy to take it from Valve. I don't know why, some are fanboys and some just don't have any foresight. Who knows.

sane, educated, and well adjusted people don't shit themselves over drm, what they don't like is drm that prevents them from playing their games how they want. point out one reasonable situation that steam would deny your right to play a game you own? besides the obvious requirement to run the client with your game, you don't even need to be connected online.

ubisoft/uplay and similar forms of drm are basically the polar opposite, they carry every conceivable restriction revolving around your internet connection, all the way down to local files and executables. no live connection? forget it, you ain't playing the game in any way shape or form. let's delete the game executable and all your saves, every time you exit the game, just to be sure this doesn't happen without our permission. reinstall the game too many times? your disk is now worthless, unless you call and beg for permission to install it again. want to switch computers? nope sorry, you are to be banned for any dupe instances of one account, your cd is now a coaster, and the serial is useless.

comparing these two in the same class of drm, you must be joking, or blatantly trolling, there's really no excuse for ignorance either.

 

[Windwarr]

Thanks, all you guys for an informative, excellent Thread.

If I buy Fallout3 NewVegas----do you guys recommend I buy online from Steam?
Or should I buy the $50 Boxed-copy at my BestBuy store? (It has DVD disk).
I'm not worried about cost.
Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[Jellylesg]

so basically what you're saying is, that you prefer to crack/clone all your games instead of running a drm client, and you like manually hunting down patches. not that there's anything wrong with this imo, but at some point you have to ask yourself, what exactly is the difference in the way of restrictions? if you think about this objectively, you're not going to find much. sale and trade, that's about it, so I guess it would depend on how much that is worth to you personally. and what about multiplayer drm? I'm sure no amount of "foresight" will get around that, unless you deny yourself this feature altogether.

then think about what you get in return. achievements and chat, that's all you could come up with? how about free storage of all your games on demand, with unlimited downloads? this in combination with unrestricted gameplay promotes a greater feeling of "ownership" to me, than having a disc in my hand or some other form of unsupported digital release. "chat" is also a huge understatement for the community features you get here, let's not forget group hosting, tracking, joining of those contacts. not everyone likes proactive patching so let's not go there, maybe you prefer to do this on your own time.



sane, educated, and well adjusted people don't shit themselves over drm, what they don't like is drm that prevents them from playing their games how they want. point out one reasonable situation that steam would deny your right to play a game you own? besides the obvious requirement to run the client with your game, you don't even need to be connected online.

ubisoft/uplay and similar forms of drm are basically the polar opposite, they carry every conceivable restriction revolving around your internet connection, all the way down to local files and executables. no live connection? forget it, you ain't playing the game in any way shape or form. let's delete the game executable and all your saves, every time you exit the game, just to be sure this doesn't happen without our permission. reinstall the game too many times? your disk is now worthless, unless you call and beg for permission to install it again. want to switch computers? nope sorry, you are to be banned for any dupe instances of one account, your cd is now a coaster, and the serial is useless.

comparing these two in the same class of drm, you must be joking, or blatantly trolling, there's really no excuse for ignorance either.

I kind of skimmed this because I think most of it I've covered earlier on. The "foresight" basically refers to either storing patches on disc or not being a child with my DVDs and scratching them up. When they're not in the computer they're in the case, that sort of thing.

I do prefer using discs for a variety of reasons, but appreciate that some like Steam. I personally don't find it much of a challenge to download patches and often am able to do so in less time than Steam would take to download the update.

There's also the advantage of being able to do so when I choose instead of a program doing it automatically in the background when I don't want it to. More than a few games have had patches introduce errors as well as fixing them, and Steam's model doesn't allow you to avoid this if it updates to the latest version without a choice.

 

[Rebel44]

Thanks, all you guys for an informative, excellent Thread.

If I buy Fallout3 NewVegas----do you guys recommend I buy online from Steam?
Or should I buy the $50 Boxed-copy at my BestBuy store? (It has DVD disk).
I'm not worried about cost.
Thanks in advance for your input.

Buy from Steam - no need to drive to BB + developers get more money from sale over Steam.

 

[Disposed]

developers get more money from sale over Steam.

No, they dont. Publisher might but the developer certainly dont.

 

[Rebel44]

No, they dont. Publisher might but the developer certainly dont.

Income split between developer and publisher is AFAIK (based on my talks with several developers) most of the time written in contract as same for both retail and digital distribution - and income from same priced copy sold over digital distribution is higher.

Quote from another company (1C) about retail vs. digital sales:
http://www.mcvuk.com/features/808/OPINION-Retail-vs-Steam

Since 1997, when 1C’s gaming division was founded, the company worked on a model whereby a title developed and sold by 1C in Russia was then sub-licensed to our great publishing partners.
As a generalisation, retail would pay these guys a maximum of 40 per cent of what they made. So on a £29.99 game the publisher would receive about £12 (and on a sub-licensed deal, we would then only get about £4.25 of that) – minus return, write down and consignment costs.
When would we get that money? Well, payment would be by the end of the quarter.
So, let’s say £10 per unit sale goes to the publisher, £3 to the developer/sub-licensor, and it’s in your bank five months after the customer has paid out £30.
Compare that to the digital model. On a £29.99 sale, the digital partner will pay the publisher – or in many cases direct to the developer – between 60 and 70 per cent, by the end of the month following the sale.
Wow. To recap: on a sale over the counter today, we can have our £3 by the end of March, or on a digital sale, we can have £20 by Christmas.

 

[Windwarr]

Buy from Steam - no need to drive to BB + developers get more money from sale over Steam.

I forgot to mention this (my bad) ---but I only have DSL service, NOT Cable.
My DSL "download speed" is maybe 150kb/sec.
So, won't it take me a ton of time to download FO3-NewVegas from Steam online?
Won't it be FASTER if I buy the Box copy at BestBuy store (game is on DVD disk) then install it to h/d---then go online to Steam and 'activate' it? No? Yes?

 

[Parmenides]

Impulse downloads are faster than Steam's

I know what you're saying, BB can be faster for some people.

 

[Forceman]

I forgot to mention this (my bad) ---but I only have DSL service, NOT Cable.
My DSL "download speed" is maybe 150kb/sec.
So, won't it take me a ton of time to download FO3-NewVegas from Steam online?
Won't it be FASTER if I buy the Box copy at BestBuy store (game is on DVD disk) then install it to h/d---then go online to Steam and 'activate' it? No? Yes?

Yes, although some games (like Civ 5) will still try to download the install files through Steam, even if you start the install from the disc. There is a way around that, though, you can check the steam forums for the workaround.

 

[Rebel44]

For people who have slow internet Steam might be slower than other options.

btw:
How can people live with such crappy internet? Here in former "eastern block" countries like Poland and Czech Republic its rare to find ISP to offer service which is slower than 8Mb/s.

 

[TIWizard]

btw:
How can people lie with such crappy internet? Here in former "eastern block" countries like Poland and Czech Republic its rare to find ISP to offer service which is slower than 8Mb/s.

I subscribe to DSL AND cable. DSL is constant at about 150kb per sec download. It dies when someone calls on the phone. Cable is sometimes 2mb/s download speed, but when it rains or snows it goes to 20-50kb/s download speed. The upload speed never changes from 200kb/s. Unfortunately, there are no other options and I have to live with physically switching my router between the two services.

 

[TheGreySpectre]

If you have multiple computers say for example a laptop and a desktop it is very easy to install your games on both as you just have steam on both and you have access to your library. (you just can't be logged in onto your account on multiple ocmputers at the same time)

Also it should be noted even for games without steam you can create a shortcut to them from steam and have access to the friends list and browser and stuff (you just won't be able to use join server for example)

 

[Disposed]

I subscribe to DSL AND cable. DSL is constant at about 150kb per sec download. It dies when someone calls on the phone. Cable is sometimes 2mb/s download speed, but when it rains or snows it goes to 20-50kb/s download speed. The upload speed never changes from 200kb/s. Unfortunately, there are no other options and I have to live with physically switching my router between the two services.

WTF do you have going on in your house. Phone calls should not disrupt DSL and rain and snow should not affect your cable at all.

 

[mas]

WTF do you have going on in your house. Phone calls should not disrupt DSL and rain and snow should not affect your cable at all.

well it does in a way, if your area is overly saturated then bad weather makes it worse when people are inside and on the computer. that's why it's such a common misconception that it's actually the weather affecting your connection, nothing to do with the weather itself but people that are more likely to be on it just create more traffic.

phone calls can affect dsl connections that have bad filters and splitters somewhere along the line, since this line is shared between them, still it should not be happening if everything is working right.

I subscribe to DSL AND cable. DSL is constant at about 150kb per sec download. It dies when someone calls on the phone. Cable is sometimes 2mb/s download speed, but when it rains or snows it goes to 20-50kb/s download speed. The upload speed never changes from 200kb/s. Unfortunately, there are no other options and I have to live with physically switching my router between the two services.

yeah definitely something wrong, you should have it fixed by isp. check this for what you can do to figure out who's end the problem is on:

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/13361?r=0.542995294594345

it's much easier to fix if you call them up with a problem they can look for, otherwise they're more likely to just run you around forever with turning things off and on and replacing modems that aren't broken.

 

[TIWizard]

The problem is, cable company never comes out to fix anything (two years ago the speed maxed out at 200kb/s period, then didn't work 60% of the time, wasn't able to find anything wrong and blamed it on us), and the DSL company also is never able to find anything wrong. Really sucks, but at least I can download Steam games when the internet is fast

As for the oversaturation, it is certainly possible since no one wants to use the slow DSL and the only two options are Dsl And cable...
And this is a perfect exampe of why Ubisoft's DRM will never work with me...

 

[Disposed]

The problem is, cable company never comes out to fix anything (two years ago the speed maxed out at 200kb/s period, then didn't work 60% of the time, wasn't able to find anything wrong and blamed it on us), and the DSL company also is never able to find anything wrong. Really sucks, but at least I can download Steam games when the internet is fast

As for the oversaturation, it is certainly possible since no one wants to use the slow DSL and the only two options are Dsl And cable...
And this is a perfect exampe of why Ubisoft's DRM will never work with me...

Then the million dollar question is why the hell are you still paying them for this service?

 

[Windwarr]

Buy from Steam - no need to drive to BB + developers get more money from sale over Steam.

Thanks for the advice.
One last question: I dunno how big the game is in GB.
If I bot it from Steam online, how long would it take my 150kb/sec DSL service to download it? Like forever?

 

[pigwalk]

If it's the same price I'd buy the box copy. Just because I like boxes.

If I had to DL a 8gb game at 150k down? I'd definitely lean more towards the boxed copy.

 

[jiminator]

do you mean kbits or kBytes (capital B) ? a standard 1.5 dsl connection will download at about 150 kBytes. 150 kbits though, is about 3 to 4 times faster than dialup. it would probably take 6+ hours for a cd rom worth of content. standard dsl should get you a dvd within a couple of hours. go to speedtest.net and post the results here.

 

[TIWizard]

Then the million dollar question is why the hell are you still paying them for this service?

I have to, or no internet for me, and I can't live without the internet :O

do you mean kbits or kBytes (capital B) ? a standard 1.5 dsl connection will download at about 150 kBytes. 150 kbits though, is about 3 to 4 times faster than dialup. it would probably take 6+ hours for a cd rom worth of content. standard dsl should get you a dvd within a couple of hours. go to speedtest.net and post the results here.

I mean kBytes. Right now, this is my speed on Cable:



^^^ This is a good(ish) day.

During the summer I will sometimes get three times that speed.



Here's a bad day:



DSL is pretty consistent speed wise (1.5 megabits), but it goes down with the phone... The DSL is really just a backup for when the internet is completely unusable on cable.

I am right on the edge of Clearwire. Supposedly we don't have coverage, but it is something to look into -.-