Windows 7: Is PC gaming Being Done Away With?

I also prefer digital. So much easier and I don't have to explain to the wife what is in the bag when I get home

I backup my steamapps folder on my external a few times a year just in case. This saved my a** one time when I had a hard drive failure.

Length of time to re-install over 90+ games on Steam with a backup = under 1/2 hour

Length of time to re-install over 90+ games with physical copies not to mention the patches = I don't even want to know

There's always going to be the "what if" factor in life so that equals all things out in the end.

Anyway my opposite argument to yours is this (which I actually use).... if you do partitions like most people do, you can have your Steam directory installed on a different partition. Than say you need to reinstall Windows, which is on a different drive/partition… Well, once Windows is reinstalled, all you need to do is reinstall the Steam App (a 1.5 meg 30 second install file) and wholla... all your Steam games are there and accessible.... NO re-downloading, just ready to play!

You don't necessarily have this option with "hard copy" games, which usually require reinstalling because of missing registry strings due to an OS reinstall.

Anyway there’s always a pro and con to everything so….

And I too like my hard copies but for a different reason as I like to collect things. And yes, it is easier to install a hard copy than depend on a server’s speed to get your game files.

On the other hand cloud/server based systems like Steam can save tons of download time if used like I discussed above.

As to the original question... Is PC Gaming being done away with? No, it just becoming part of the universal port... games are made with consoles in mind, then ported to PC.

My two cents.

Since I was born!

I don't think they are dying but I do think they are changing and for the worse... instead of First Person we are now getting Third Person, instead of making us use our head and think, we are now taken by the hand and told when to press our buttons so we can get out of the chokepoints with our limbs intact. Instead of having a fun Campaign with some plot, we got a bunch of cut scenes to make the game seem awesome.

Oh and make sure you revise your PC every 6 months,buy the latest GPU and CPU onlly to find out that your card is not even supported because it is TO NEW or just play with the same graphics that used to WOW you back in 2002 because we are porting the game from the Xbox.

We are told that 95% of PC gamers pirate the games and that is illegal but, it is ok for them to give us mediocre or even unfinished games and still pay full price for them... sad thing is people think this is OK and normal!

In a way, YES, I do believe they are being done away with and Yes, you are correct... I am a little hurt by it.

Then again, I only play Shooters and Campaigns so I don't know anything about the other genres.

PC gaming market is on the rise, IMO, but the gameplay quality (not the visuals as they are slowly improving on that area) is gradually becoming worse as more and more games are released with more bugs and invasive anti-cheating/piracy activation software known as DRM.

Torrents and the like lower the quality of games. The more games or programs people steal the less money the company that make those games or programs has to keep the quality standards that everybody wants.

While you have a point in that we the consumers are often getting broken, unpolished games from game companies, the DRM issue is dead as far as I'm concerned. Really when was the last time you (general) had a DRM issue? I can't even remember the last time I had one and I've bought a great deal of games.

Personally I feel the only anti-DRM voices out there now are the pirates who find it increasingly harder to get "free" software. I'm not saying you're one of them I'm just making a point.

Anyway the unfinished, unpolished games that are heaped upon us is what irks me. We really have become paying beta testers.

In many older pc games, you can just load the disc to be able to launch the game, but today's games like battlefield 3, you must install and run background services that hamper user experience and performance such as PunkBuster, and the dreaded Origin. And then after installing all that, you must install a friggin browser plugin to lauch the game. And as you say that we become paying beta testers, that is very true and I agree since after installing all of that plugins, origin, punkbuster, you have to download a massive patch for the game and keep updating all those anti-cheating, DRM software. If these torrent users not sharing these games for free, we wouldn't have to deal with those additional bloatware/nag-ware that new games require to play.

How are the torrent users playing bf3 on origin?

Not true i had trouble with drm when installing gta iv and borderlands and had to go through a bunch of steps from there website to get the secure rom crap to work how it should

They can't you need a legit key to even connect and a orgin acount that has that key registered,idk what this guy is talking about unless its some way that they play with each other but not with legit users.