Steam and people's opinions.

[BomberAF]

I am buying a gaming rig in the next couple of months and was thinking of using Steam as the goto place for buying my games. I already have an account with steam and have bought a few games from their like monkey island and stronghold not much more. I find it quite a handy place to buy from cause you can delete and re download when wanted. I thought it would be possible to buy all games from there but apparently it is not.

Can you share your opinions of Steam with me and tell me the pros and cons of Steam and perhaps tell me were else I should go looking for games.

 

[Andreas W]

Myself have been using steam for many years and I love it.

Pro
no cd's
games in 1 place
easy to keep track on sales

Con
offline mode might be buggy, I rarely use it but I know some patches have been for that
no resale of games, this is the big thing but last I heard it might be implemented so it's possible to sell back games you have bought or trade with other steam users


That's pretty much all I can think of right about now

 

[Dude]

I agree with the comments above. I have used steam for 9 years now. Origin from EA although not as polished as steam is good too.

 

[Solarstarshines]

+1 on Steam This is what mine has gotten to over the years and not even all my games I own

 

[Andreas W]

After seeing Solarstarshines post it reminded me of a possible con might depend on how you see it but because of the daily sales and the easy access you are most likely to stack up on a lot of games, my total game list shows 71, I hardly got all of them installed or play all of those. And today Rome - Total War gold edition is on sale for 1£, sometimes you just buy games because they are cheap and not because you might play them

 

[Wishmaster]

Steam is great.

The only downside some may have is that once you buy a game, thats it. Its yours forever. No trade ins, exchanges etc.

However, they are often cheaper buying digital too.
And Steam has sales through the year, 2-3 major ones. Where everything is much cheaper. And the they always have something daily through the year.

I usually buy during the major sales. Buy a bunch of stuff and then play those until the next big sale. Unless something big comes out I really want.


I would highly recommend when building your new rig, you get at least a 1TB HD that you can dedicate to Steam only.
That would be in addition to the typical recommendation of SSD for OS/Apps and spinner for User DATA.

The reason is, after awhile Steam games really start eating up space. First big sale comes along, you'll see what I mean
Plus, its nice to have a HD for just Steam to live. Eventually you can do what I did and add a second smaller SSD for Steam as well, and move just the most played or high disk use games to it, leaving the majority on the spinner.

 

[BomberAF]

Steam is great.

The only downside some may have is that once you buy a game, thats it. Its yours forever. No trade ins, exchanges etc.

However, they are often cheaper buying digital too.
And Steam has sales through the year, 2-3 major ones. Where everything is much cheaper. And the they always have something daily through the year.

I usually buy during the major sales. Buy a bunch of stuff and then play those until the next big sale. Unless something big comes out I really want.


I would highly recommend when building your new rig, you get at least a 1TB HD that you can dedicate to Steam only.
That would be in addition to the typical recommendation of SSD for OS/Apps and spinner for User DATA.

The reason is, after awhile Steam games really start eating up space. First big sale comes along, you'll see

No need to keep them on you hard drive though is there?

 

[Wishmaster]

No you do not need to. I personally keep many installed (not all) that I will play.

One thing about Steam also.
When you buy a game and download it, you do a backup of the game and store it somewhere. You can set the size you want the back up to be. I/E fit aon a DVD or Dual layer DVD, or split it up into DVD /DL DVD sizes.
Then, burn it to disc.

You now have a physical copy of the game to store. I do this as well.

So thats another option if you want to do so. Just get some blank DVD, and DL DVDs for this purpose. Or BluRay if you want and set the size to 25 or 50GB.


Also, keep in mind that Steam MUST be online when you install a game. Either from a backup or DL from servers. Once that game is installed and launched 1 time ... you no longer need a internet connection.


This type of DRM I do not mind at all.

 

[Solarstarshines]

After seeing Solarstarshines post it reminded me of a possible con might depend on how you see it but because of the daily sales and the easy access you are most likely to stack up on a lot of games, my total game list shows 71, I hardly got all of them installed or play all of those. And today Rome - Total War gold edition is on sale for 1£, sometimes you just buy games because they are cheap and not because you might play them

I just got Call of Juarez Gunslinger for 14.99 I have the first call or Juarez too

 

[Wishmaster]

Yea, Im guilty of that myself.
I have a few games that show less than a hour played. I picked them up during big sales for like $5 or less and just never really got around to playing them.

Mine shows 163 games ATM ... But I joined Steam in 2006 or 2007. Not a very long time, but long enough to build up a decent sized library.

 

[sygnus21]

I've been using Steam since 2004 when I bought Half-Life 2. In those 9 years I think I may have had 2, maybe 3 issues, and nothing really serious.

Steam is pretty much the de-facto game delivery platform for many game developers for a myriad of reasons, including the stability of the platform.

One of the big pluses of Steam based games is that the game is always automatically updated... unless you stay off line. On the flip side, that can also be a bad thing, especially if a developer delivers a bad patch.

Also, a lot op people tend to blame Steam for game related issues when in actuality the blame lies with the developer, NOT Steam. Steam is merely the delivery platform, not the developer.

There is nothing wrong with Steam, and pretty much any serious gamer has it since as I said many game developers are using it as their delivery platform. Even EA used them till they started their own platform called Origin, which was to be competition against Steam, but so far that's yet to be seen. My opinion.

Steam = Good

 

[sygnus21]

Mine shows 163 games ATM ... But I joined Steam in 2006 or 2007. Not a very long time, but long enough to build up a decent sized library.

Man I've been with Steam longer than you but don't have nearly the amount of games you have. I'm only sitting at 33

On the flipside I tend to buy purchase physical copies of my games so not everyone is going to register through Steam.

BTW I forgot to mention another good thing about Steam is that you can activate certain games to register with Steam. I just added Unreal Tournament 3 the other day and would up downloading the Black Edition of the game, which includes extras.

Activating a Product on Steam. Only certain games can be activated though - Retail CD Keys

 

[Dude]

I've been using Steam since 2004 when I bought Half-Life 2. In those 9 years I think I may have had 2, maybe 3 issues, and nothing really serious.

Wow, exact same timeline as I have with steam.

There is nothing wrong with Steam, and pretty much any serious gamer has it since as I said many game developers are using it as their delivery platform. Even EA used them till they started their own platform called Origin, which was to be competition against Steam, but so far that's yet to be seen. My opinion.

Well said, very true
Steam = Good

Mine shows 163 games ATM ... But I joined Steam in 2006 or 2007. Not a very long time, but long enough to build up a decent sized library.

Man I've been with Steam longer than you but don't have nearly the amount of games you have. I'm only sitting at 33

Just looked, I'm at 33 too.

On the flipside I tend to buy purchase physical copies of my games so not everyone is going to register through Steam.

BTW I forgot to mention another good thing about Steam is that you can activate certain games to register with Steam. I just added Unreal Tournament 3 the other day and would up downloading the Black Edition of the game, which includes extras.

Activating a Product on Steam. Only certain games can be activated though - Retail CD Keys

Steam had it's breaking in period at first, people don't like change. Steam is very good and a model for others to try to achieve.

You can also add non-steam shortcuts to you list, and still be able to use steam functions in non-steam games.

 

[Gary]

I would by the DVD. I bought MW3 from steam and it took all day to download and if somethings happens to your PC and Windows needs to be re-installed, all of those games will have to be re downloaded taking a great deal of time.

 

[sygnus21]

You can also add non-steam shortcuts to you list, and still be able to use steam functions in non-steam games.

Yeah I knew about that part, I just forgot to mention it.

 

[Solarstarshines]

I would by the DVD. I bought MW3 from steam and it took all day to download and if somethings happens to your PC and Windows needs to be re-installed, all of those games will have to be re downloaded taking a great deal of time.

Yeah but being realistic it's your internet connection because I can get my games going under 20 min I would say the longest I waited had to be 45 min at the most be steam does very well downloading

 

[sygnus21]

I would by the DVD. I bought MW3 from steam and it took all day to download and if somethings happens to your PC and Windows needs to be re-installed, all of those games will have to be re downloaded taking a great deal of time.

What Solar said, plus you could always install your Steam games on a different drive so that should you have to reinstall the OS, all you have to do is reinstall the Steam app and point it to the games drive... whalla.... no steam games need to be downloaded again.

I've done it plenty of times.

 

[Golden]

Use the STEAM backup facility guys:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-yphv-2033

 

[Wenda]

I will only purchase games from a brick-&-mortar store, where I can get the physical media on purchase, and only purchase ones that do not require an internet connection to either activate/register or to play. They must be completely stand-alone. And once I buy a game, I want to be able to do as I please with it.

That immediately removes Steam and their ilk from the equation.

I don't game online, and am never likely to.


Wenda.

 

[sygnus21]

Use the STEAM backup facility guys:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-yphv-2033

That works I suppose, never used it myself.

Anyway if you keep your Steam games separated from the OS drive it's just simpler and quicker to just reinstall the Steam app and point it to Steam's game directory. With that, no games need to be re-downloaded since the drive was never touched.

I point this method out because as more and more people move to SSD drives, most will also wind up getting a spinner drive for the games. With this, you end up with your Steam games, and any other games, on a separate drive from the OS drive.