Steam.

[Dick Fitzwell]

Oh, steam. I used to hate steam with a passion when I got Half Life 2 when it first came out, and required steam to run. But now? I would have nothing but good things to say about it. The friends feature is cool where you can just join in with a friend playing a game. There's now a control panel update that reminds me of facebook. It lets you know when someone of your friend list joins a new group, adds a friend, buys a new game on steam, gets a new achievement.

And the best part I've been sucked into lately? Weekend deals. If there is a game that I want that is out on PC, I look to see if it's released on steam right away*. Pretty much the only complaint I would have with steam lately is that with some of the newer games, it has a limit of 5 installs. Normally that isn't such a big deal, but It's really nice to just click on a game to download and install it right there without needing to find missing discs or CD keys, or even finding out that one of the install discs is scratched up.

Edit: Just wanted to point out that the install limit is put on there by EA and other companies themselves and valve did not make the decision to do that.

Do you use it, and if so, about how often would you play games on steam? Do you prefer Steam or retail?

My account: http://steamcommunity.com/id/desaluta
















*with the exception of Fallout 3 because I wanted the lunchbox and collectors stuff.

[Jun]

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197997379568

I don't play on steam much. :P

[Dick Fitzwell]

Jun's games: The orange box

[Sibek]

Getting rid of CD keys and disc drive requirements are certainly a godsend. The extra stuff that comes with games really isn't useful to me. It's just swag that stays in a box collecting dust. This is why if a game shows up on Steam while its at retail, I'll choose the Steam version everytime. Though the ownership idea does tend to fall in place.

Still, if you want to compare this to something like iTunes, you can pay 9.99 or more if you want a specific album that will be compressed and far from bit-perfect comparison to the CD variant, which is why I still buy CDs (and encode them to FLAC) since there are very few distribution options that offer FLAC. Digital Distribution via Steam is lossless, the game you buy at the store and steam are the same. If you want to burn your games to disc, you can.

The philosophy of having things tied to an account instead of a machine is a much more ideal and is the basis behind PSN. Wii's digital distribution is awful if you own a wii jointly. Very true if you buy games on a friend's or dormmate's wii.

My only problems with steam is that the browser for games is built from IE7 making it a hog on memory. Also, I wish steam would open the overlay to other to get some neat widgets working. That way I don't have to Alt-tab to go between ventrilo, IRC, or winamp.

[Dick Fitzwell]

So the Left 4 Dead demo is out. Is anybody else jumping on this?

[moogle]

I remember upgrading my Half-Life (1) installation ages ago with Steam, and it corrupted all my save files, so I'm not very trusting of the service.

And I agree with Sibek for the most part, I probably would prefer to have my games tied to an account rather than a single console/PC, but not everyone is able to have constant Internet access (believe it or not). I would prefer to have a physical disc that verifies ownership rather than checking back with a server. I want to play the game on my terms since I paid for it.