Poll: Anybody here refuse to use Steam?

Anybody here refuse to use Steam?

  • I use steam and am happy to use it.

    Votes: 463 83.6%

  • I use steam but don't much like it.

    Votes: 60 10.8%

  • I will not use steam and will skip games because of it.

    Votes: 12 2.2%

  • I'm not interested in anything steam has to offer.

    Votes: 19 3.4%
  • Total voters
    554
I'm in the 'I love steam camp'. Currently have around 120 games on it and barely launch a game without it. Though I think out of the 120, I've maybe paid the full price for a game all of twice. Steam sales for the past few years have been excellent and really the only time I purchase anything from them. Automatic updates, a great community, friends listed with what they're playing, no more need for discs (Have found myself buying games again just the have them on steam, though these have been cheap). What's not to like.
 
A game gets patched so much over along period (WoW as an example), that even the physical possession of the disks doesnt mean the process of installing becomes any quicker. I have the WoW disks but always use the download installer because its quicker.

Which is why i use Steam for all my other games.
 
My Steam account is now over 200Gb, I use it all the time, I'm happy to pay a little more to buy my games on Steam and get them quicker, patched automatically and since a lot of new game shave steam achievements that is great too.

I LOVE STEAM!!!!
 
When I first started using it back in 2004/5 I was a bit weary of it, I instantly thought of it as another program that was just going to annoy me by filling up my hard drive and not proving to be useful in any way, all I wanted to do was play Half Life 2.

Young and wrong, I was.
 
Steam has revolutionised pc gaming and makes life much simpler. These days I find it odd when a game does not come with steam integrated into it and manually add it to my steam anyway.
 
I started using Steam when HL2 was released, origionally i found it annoying, as I only had dial up and HL2 needed to download stuff, which took a while on dial up. I never really disliked it though, it was just a slight inconvenience when first installing HL2, although at this point I still didn't really use it much as it was only a few valve games that I had on there.

I love it now though, the only games I have that arn't on Steam are Blizzard games, which I havn't used the discs for as it was easier just downloading the clients from their website before I actually had the games, and other random discless games like Minecraft, Corsix TH etc.

I can't stand having to use CDs/DVDs, and the auto-patching is nice.

I've only bought a few of full price games from Steam though, BC2, ME2, Super Meat Boy and Torchlight, I didn't mind paying a bit extra for the convenience of having these games available on Steam, my other hundred or so games on there were bought in the sales.
 
The reason why I say I don't much like it is because it is nowhere near as competitive when it comes to new games. It's almost like they hook you with some of the deals they do with older games, get you used to using their no disc needed system (which is fantastic), before you know it your buying your new games off them for at least a fiver more then the shops, just for the convenience. They're crafty ********.

I usually end up with two copies of my favourite games now. One copy on disk, on release, and one copy bpught for £3.75 12months later in a Steam sale.

This is why I think Direct2Drive, Gamersgate etc. should be supported more, Steam needs some competition so it changes its pricing policy.

There is no doubt however, that it is great for PC gaming in general. As some of the deals are so cheap even pirateers might buy them, so at least the publishers get *something*. Plus it's a great platform for all the indie developers.
 
davewhite04 said:
The reason why I say I don't much like it is because it is nowhere near as competitive when it comes to new games. It's almost like they hook you with some of the deals they do with older games, get you used to using their no disc needed system (which is fantastic), before you know it your buying your new games off them for at least a fiver more then the shops, just for the convenience. They're crafty ********.
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Publishers set the prices, not Steam.

I'm don't mind paying a small premium on Steam games anyway. I usually end up rebuying games I enjoy on Steam anyway when it's on sale cheaper negating the price difference. I'm barely saving anything going the cheaper option first, so I may as well benefit from the great features of the Steam version from the beginning.
 
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Meridian said:
I have one major issue with Steam, and it's a rather esoteric one: I hate the fact that they don't sell you the game, they sell you the Steam version of the game. If I buy a Steam version, and the company that makes the game produces an expansion, I have to get that via Steam or it won't work. Similarly, if I bought the original the old-fashioned way then I can't buy the expansion from Steam unless I buy a new copy of the original. I hate the fact that Steam locks me in: they should just be one source of many. I really don't care one way or another about their version of DRM and whether it's great or not - but I won't buy any version of a game which is not fully kosher.


M
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I bought the Steam copy of Fallout 3 and installed the expansions from the retail disks without any problem whatsoever
 
Squark said:
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I bought the Steam copy of Fallout 3 and installed the expansions from the retail disks without any problem whatsoever
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Some games can be like Fallout, where you can use say Retail game and Steam expansion, others you have to use either Steam game and expansion or retail game and expansion.
 
Steam games use a different exe, so most games dlc doesn't work, fallout/oblivions does because it's just a "datafile" that's added in though the launcher, but the obse etc didn't work for a while until valve got some of it's devs to make a compatible one.
 
I like it fine, but would appreciate an alternative verification method to allow me to play games when not online a password or secret question would be good.
 
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