Question about Steam

[Agelesslink 10]

just wondering what are the advantages of using steam? can u only play with people wwho have their games on steam? do the mods work with steam?

[Baff1 0]

You either play on Steam or the game doesn't work in my experience

The advantages are for the publisher.

[Agelesslink 10]

so it would be better to use steam then?

[Big Dawg KS 6]

just wondering what are the advantages of using steam? can u only play with people wwho have their games on steam? do the mods work with steam?

Steam is just a digitial distribution and copy protection system. Though there are different levels of Steam integration, only a few games utilize all of these features. Everything else about the game would be exactly the same as if you bought it in a box. It's in most cases much more convenient, that is when it's not burning out your hard drive...

[Baff1 0]

Steam is a very expensive games outlet to buy from.

You can typically buy a game they are offering from an online retailer for about half as much.

[cri74 10]

I would say better to run atleast Arma2 in DvD or DL version - not steam in other words.

Since there are so many addons and extras used in amra2, editing of files etc. Better to keep it simple and stupid (KISS). I would think by not using steam you spend less time used to find the files steam creates and searchin forums for a steam solution to your problems :)

[maturin 12]

The data arrangement for (non-Valve) Steam games is usually almost exactly the same. In general, buying from Steam is very expensive but if you buy a Steam game retail for cheap, then you can download it on any computer with an internet connection, anywhere you go.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Since there are so many addons and extras used in amra2, editing of files etc. Better to keep it simple and stupid (KISS). I would think by not using steam you spend less time used to find the files steam creates and searchin forums for a steam solution to your problems :)

First I'd like say that the acronym KISS means Keep It Simple, Stupid, not "keep it simple and stupid."

Second, like maturin said steam keeps the same directory system and files as you would get if you bought it retail, it's just located in a different spot (but easy enough to find).

Steam is a very expensive games outlet to buy from.

You can typically buy a game they are offering from an online retailer for about half as much.

That probably depends on your region. In the US, new releases on Steam go for pretty much the same price as any online retailer.

[Archamedes 10]

I have to admit im definatly not a fan of steam. i bought aliens vs predator for pc and after installing it, i was forced to be online to play single player game. I am not interested in going online downloading crap for the game or playing multiplayer. I am also using an internet dongle and sometimes can only connect to steam between midnight and 4pm. I think its wrong for them to do this because there are still people out there that have computers but dont have the internet. And secondly i dont think anybody would bother trying to pirate aliens vs predator anyway

[Baff1 0]

Can you not set the Steam client to run in "offline mode" and still play the game.

You can in Left4Dead for example and Red Orchestra.

I use my games for LAN, so I multiplay them all offline. I still have to launch Steam but I have it set to offline mode.

This still screws me up when Steam tries to autoupdate my software. At which point it just becomes pointless trying to have a 20 minute game and I bin it.

I CBA Aliens Vs Predator, if it was going to be easy to network and not a smegfest with Steam, I'd probably have bought it long ago.

[maturin 12]

That probably depends on your region. In the US, new releases on Steam go for pretty much the same price as any online retailer.

But barring the occasional sale, which can include ridiculous cuts, the prices of aging games practically never goes down. The Half-Life Episodes are still much more expensive than what you can get from Amazon.

[Baff1 0]

Steam prices are approximately double the price of online game purchases in Europe.

They are the same price as can be found in the most expensive high street shops.

Pretty poor considering you don't get a box or a disc or a manual, that it doesn't have to get shipped to the store and then to you. That the retailer doesn't add 33% for himself and have to pay shop frontage to keep it on display.

It's a massive rip off Steam.

[Archamedes 10]

This is what they see as the price of piracy. Even though they still make their millions in actual sales they screw over the rest of us just to protect their own products, yet the pirates still win. Because the steam version of Modern warfare 2 was completely hacked and still able to be installed with no disc required and all steam copy protection bypassed. And due to the large amount of complaints/problems with DRM world in conflict (and its expansion soviet assault) even had the drm disc check removed with the latest official patch so any pirate could just download the whole game and patch it up.

[mosh 0]

I have one game on steam, Men of War, and the patching mess in that game alone will keep me from further steam purchases. I don't like the new client either. I know it is probably more the developer's fault and not steam with MoW, but still, it's enough to aggravate me.

I use about any download service out there (Direct 2 Drive, metaboli, petergames, Sprocket, etc) and have had no problems... other than me being impatient.

just my 2 cents

[oyman 0]

just wondering what are the advantages of using steam?

it eats up your hard drive I/O reads and writes

[dunedain 48]

Well personnaly I think Steam is great until publishers start to put others DRM beside Steam's, worst being when it stops you from using the offline mod, Steam has the only DRM I tolerate, others don't get my money. Plus that it's really nice to have all your games in one unique account and that you can download them from everywhere. :)

Games are often much more expensive than on retail but it's all up to publishers to lower their prices and there is regularly special offers. However it's really annoying how games are usually more expensive in the Euro zone than in US or UK, also there is different prices depending on the country you live in and France is probably one if not the one to pay the huge bill. :(

Edited May 6, 2010 by dunedain

[Zipper5 74]

Personally, I'm a huge fan of Steam, but that's because where I live, games take months or even years to arrive here as hard copies. Heck, I have to get each BIS game shipped to me either from the US or the UK. They're the only games I buy hard copies of anymore. Everything else comes from Steam. The prices are also the same prices as they are in shops around me (once converted) and are also the same price as they're advertised in the US.

I also love the user interface, especially the new one. It's very easy to use, and has a lot of nice features exclusive to Steam games, or even to games you run through Steam. So yeah, I find it to be a great program. The only issue I've had with Steam recently is they're allowing money-whores like Activision and Square Enix to charge for DLC on the PC.

Edited May 6, 2010 by Zipper5

[h - 169]

I'm a relatively new Steam user, and I was very very very critical about when it first surfaced and years after that, the reason I got into it was when I bought MW2.

At least here I don't really see big difference in game prices, the few I've checked can be a couple of €'s more expensive (I don't check the prices unless the particular game interests me so I don't know if that's a trend or just some anomaly).

I have only 3 steam games though, and those just because the games I wanted to buy were out of stock where I do all my game shopping.

Haven't had one single problem with Steam this far.

That I/O bug was news to me, but then again I see no reason to run steam at all unless I'm playing some game so never really noticed if I also suffer that.

[edit]Well, had to check that really quick and it actually does that.. No more "Steaming" until they fix that then..[/edit]

Hmm, now to think of it, I also had a question about Steam and the DRM stuff: do games like the latest Splinter Cell that has the Ubi's idiotic DRM use that same DRM when downloaded from Steam? Just curious..

Edited May 6, 2010 by h -

[-Snafu- 77]

Steam prices are approximately double the price of online game purchases in Europe.

They are the same price as can be found in the most expensive high street shops.

Pretty poor considering you don't get a box or a disc or a manual, that it doesn't have to get shipped to the store and then to you. That the retailer doesn't add 33% for himself and have to pay shop frontage to keep it on display.

It's a massive rip off Steam.

Complete rip off. I got Napoleon Total War for far less from Amazon.

I always get hard copies of Steam only games because they are cheaper and I get a hard copy.

The only time I will download a game from Steam is if its on special offer (COH) or difficult/impossible to get a hard copy (HL1).

[berghoff 11]

The only time I bought games directly from Steam was last Christmas when they had some good deals (Defense Grid for example 2eu, hours of fun). Rest of the games I just buy from online shops since the 1€=1$ crap and because I still like physical games with manuals although good manuals, boxart and printwork are declining sadly enough. Recently bought Napoleon Imperial edition box for 20€ online. For the rest Steam is nice, you can play your games anywhere and keep your settings with Steam Cloud. And game updates are downloaded automatically so everyone has same version. Luckily they still have "small mode" since the last Steam UI update. :) All-in-all Steam is quite nice unlike some of it "competitors".

As for the I/O bug, didn't noticed it until I read oymans post, looks kinda bad for all those guys who installed steam on their SSD.

Edited May 6, 2010 by Berghoff

[dunedain 48]

As for the I/O bug, didn't noticed it until I read oymans post, looks kinda bad for all those guys who installed steam on their SSD.

According to jmccaskey from Valve people are over reacting on this I/O bug.

The write counter you guys are viewing is not physical writes (ie, actual writes to disk) but logical writes, ie, individual write operations to memory, which will be later flushed to disk. Some of these ios are also to memory mapped files, and very very few of the ios are immediate writes with buffering disabled. As such many of the logical writes are buffered into a single delayed physical write to the disk hardware. Steam isn't going to be killing your SSD disks any time soon.

[Archamedes 10]

remember the days back in the mid 90s where games such as space quest and monkey island came out in big cardboard display boxes? elite 2 frontier was the best as it came with manuals, story novels fictional newspaper stories everything. you couldnt get all that now without resorting to pdf

[Baff1 0]

I have one game on steam, Men of War, and the patching mess in that game alone will keep me from further steam purchases. I don't like the new client either. I know it is probably more the developer's fault and not steam with MoW, but still, it's enough to aggravate me.

I use about any download service out there (Direct 2 Drive, metaboli, petergames, Sprocket, etc) and have had no problems... other than me being impatient.

just my 2 cents

I've has no issues with the vanilla Men of War, was having a good co-op session on it the other day. Patched up and workign fine. I'm a big fan of the series.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

I have one game on steam, Men of War, and the patching mess in that game alone will keep me from further steam purchases. I don't like the new client either. I know it is probably more the developer's fault and not steam with MoW, but still, it's enough to aggravate me.

Yea, but that's entirely the publisher's fault. Even for non-Steam users, the 1.16 patch was never "officially" released.

Also, I agree with dunedain, one of the reasons I perfer using Steam is the copy protection/DRM. That, and the ability to install/play your games on any Steam client makes it really convenient.

Hmm, now to think of it, I also had a question about Steam and the DRM stuff: do games like the latest Splinter Cell that has the Ubi's idiotic DRM use that same DRM when downloaded from Steam? Just curious..

Unfortunately yes. If you go to the Steam store page for Splinter Cell Conviction it says it uses Ubi's new DRM. Looks like there's no avoiding that. The old Splinter Cell games don't use it though, which is fine by me since I prefer them over the newer crap.

[zigzag 0]

I like steam, its really easy to install and play games with it, and the friends list is good when you want to play with friends,

just left click and choose join server and you join the server your friend is on straight from the desktop.

And every weekend they have some special deals where you can buy games really cheap, like this week im thinking of buying the Sid Meier's Civilization® IV: The Complete Edition for 10euro.

And if you want to try CoD MW2 you can to that for free this weekend.