Steam good or bad?

Night Hawk said:

You have to watch yourself with Steam/Source. You can end up with a few game disks that will become unusable if you should have the need to reinstall Windows at some point and the "duplicate cd key" message appears with a relinstall on a fresh copy of Windows.

If you buy a new disk and want to create a new account the disk will automatically detect and activate itself to any other account automatically during the installation! Support will even lock up the first account when trying to disconnect the new from the old! This is one reason why some are GGGrrrrrrr... as far as Steam is concerned having been "steamed over Steam"!

This is the problem in a nutshell, for me it was after five installs of my Crysis wars it told me that I was using the CD key too many times and it wouldn't run.

That was until I went into the Crysis game files and used the Crysis bin64 application file which allowed the game to run for me without the hassles. I would much rather have the CD myself. The advantage with Steam is that the patches and updated 64 bit versions that don't come on the CD install automatically.

chev65 said:

This is the problem in a nutshell, for me it was after five installs of my Crysis wars it told me that I was using the CD key too many times and it wouldn't run.

But that's not down to Steam. That would be EA and their DRM, surely you would of come across the same issue with the game on the retail version. A lot of games come with limited installs and you have to contact the provider to get more when you use them. I think it's a terrible feature myself but no fault of Valve's. So that's not a problem with Steam and more an issue with 3rd party developers / producers.

Edit: Also, one other pro, the in game overly is great. There's a web browser and you can manage and chat with friends among other things.

steam used to be a pain in the ass a few years ago but now it has improved alot and i almost have no problems with it. great program.

Wishmaster said:

In the past, I have had bad experience with D2D for example.

I used D2D once and found it to have truly terrible DL speeds. Also used EA Download Manager and hated ever second of it. Though it's speeds where sweet. Also used GFWL and whilst I like it as an interface that is linked with your Xbox 360 their Digital Download system is terrible.

Solarstarshines said:

I see alot of good things being said about team in this post and little any Cons on the Subject

In general i think alot hate steam because it is a growing trend not the fact that it works or not most people hate anything that other people like anyway or that goes Mainstream as steam did

So the non mainstreamers will avoid steam till one day steam will control most game apps where you will be forced to use it

That would be a very scary thought if it actually happened. I prefer physical media to Steam because I don't like having extra software running in the background on my PC. Additionally, Steam itself is kind of clunky and slow for my taste. Additionally, I hate forced updates because there are instances when updates actually will screw up a game for one reason or another and I would rather see other people test it before I choose to update rather than be forced to update.

It's not Steam becoming mainstream that's a problem; it's just the fact that with digital purchases, you don't have something proving your purchase. If your account gets hacked or what not, you have to fight to get it back. There's too much hinging on just that account. I'd rather just have CDs for my games and if I happen to lose one, well, that's just too bad, I can replace it but if I lose my account, I've lost all my games. It may be paranoia to a degree but it's one of those things that always sits in the back of my mind with Steam.

Additionally, I've noticed that with games that have mods, mods can only be installed with the retail version of the game, not with the Steam version.

Night Hawk said:

kylehimself said:

As for this comment,

You have to watch yourself with Steam/Source. You can end up with a few game disks that will become unusable if you should have the need to reinstall Windows at some point and the "duplicate cd key" message appears with a relinstall on a fresh copy of Windows.

I'd have to disagree. All your Steam games are linked to your Steam account. So long as you have the game and are logged in you can DL and play and it doesn't matter what machine you are on. So essentially you could have it on any amount of computers you want but could only log on to one at a time.

Edit: I know people like to have the hard copy in their possession. Boxes, manuals and the like. I'm one such person, but I have a 360 for all that. I'm happy to go digital on PC.

That was the same account created at the time for the exact same disk. When moving ouf of the 7 beta builds into the RCs the duplicate error was constant even after being logged into the account since you have to log on first before you can do anything.

Later FEAR2 went onto the same account without any problems incliuding not only moving from RC to retail but different clean installs between the last and the new build. But FEAR2 was bought on disk not simply a download you can't replace if a drive needs to be wiped of fails on you.

Disk cases, paper inserts, booklets can be annoying at times especially if you have a large cd case for storing dfisks in sleeves rather then stacks of plastic casses. But all that still means something to the collectors eventually.

when you buy it on disk and insert your key the first time, it will be in the games section to be downloaded. the cd is just the quicker way to install it.