So how does steam work then?

vintage-x

vintage-x

vintage-x

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I have decided to give PC gaming a go again after so many years and have seen a lot of bargins on the Steam website.

Im just wondering how does it work? Do you pay for the games, download them and then install them?

What happens if you format your Pc?

Do you need to be connected to the internet to play them?

Can you install on say your main PC and then your laptop or is it one PC only?

Sorry about the questions but I have been out of the PC gaming scene since 2005
 
vintage-x said:
I have decided to give PC gaming a go again after so many years and have seen a lot of bargins on the Steam website.

Im just wondering how does it work? Do you pay for the games, download them and then install them?
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Yes
What happens if you format your Pc?
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Your games are linked to your steam online account. If you format, you will have to install steam again, login and re-download the games to your PC. That is unless you backed them up using the steam back-up facility, or you copy your steamapps folder.

Do you need to be connected to the internet to play them?
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To download them yes, but I don't believe you have to have a constant internet connection for a singleplayer game. However, you won't get any updates if they become available if not connected to the internet.

Can you install on say your main PC and then your laptop or is it one PC only?
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Not exactly sure, but I believe the games are tied to the steam account. So its just a matter of installing steam and downloading the games to each computer, and then logging into the steam account (of which only 1 can be logged in at a time).


Hope thats all right
 
It's basically a program that you can download and run games from. You can also use it to download media (probably game videos). You'd buy a game from the website and then either register it to your Steam account or it'll register itself. Then you can download and play the game. If you format you PC it doesn't matter as the info on what games you have are stored at Steam's HQ not on your computer so when you've formatted and got back into Windows you can just redownload it when you want.

You don't need to be connected to the internet to play most of the games, although some obviously you do like Team Fortress and some games require you have internet access when you first load the game probably for security checks.

It depends on the license of the game whether you can install it on multiple computers at the same time, such as things like Bioshock have a limited amount of computers that it can be installed on at one time, but other games don't have that.
 
after you have paid for and downloaded the game there is no need to install. It's all setup ready to go when the download has finished.
 
I download mine at night during the week (off peak bandwidth and seems faster) it can crawl when there's a massive spike, say a weekend deal or a new game :)
 
vintage-x said:
How are the download speeds??
Im on a 3 mb connection.
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Shakey, depends on the time of day you download the games. Sometimes I get my full 1mb/s (10mbit) download rate, other times I'm as low as 300 kb/s. It's never really bad though.
 
On the note of multiple systems.

You can download games to as many PC's as you like but as you need to log in you can only play on one at a time. This can be gotton around by disconnecting one from the internet.

Download speeds, 1mb/s average for me.



A small warning: DO NOT USE EA DIRECT DOWNLOAD
 
Fenris said:
On the note of multiple systems.

You can download games to as many PC's as you like but as you need to log in you can only play on one at a time. This can be gotton around by disconnecting one from the internet.

Download speeds, 1mb/s average for me.



A small warning: DO NOT USE EA DIRECT DOWNLOAD
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I agree, EA's download service is rubbish.
 
cHk4 said:
Why?
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Limited time download and you have to pay for more time, inability to work with multiple hard drives or partitions, crappy download manager, slow download speeds.

Also EA has from my experience the worst customer support of all time.

It's just aweful.
 
vintage-x said:
I have decided to give PC gaming a go again after so many years and have seen a lot of bargins on the Steam website.

Do you pay for the games, download them and then install them?
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Welcome back to PC gaming :) An exciting time indeed.

The beauty of STEAM for me is that there is NO "INSTALLATION" process as such, the client downloads the game files and that is it.

The client does the backend work so no "install" procedure is needed so it just downloads the core game files to the STEAM folder.
 
Steam's great, love it :)

All your account details are on Steam's servers, so if you re-format you can either just download the games again, or copy the steam folder onto the new install.

Can have games on multiple systems at once, but only use one at a time.
 
manic111 said:
Can have games on multiple systems at once, but only use one at a time.
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Mostly true.. I have the Steam client set to offline mode on my g/f's PC so she can play games like Plants vs Zombies whilst I play online :)
 
I too have just come back to PC gaming after a few years of consoling. Recently bought BioShock, Fallout 3 and ArmaII and was wondering if there were any other games you would recommend to me as a must?

On the steam note, i love it. all your games together, no real installation process, saved details in case of system failure/format etc.

Thats a nice offline/Online trick, *gives it a go*...
 
uv said:
Mostly true.. I have the Steam client set to offline mode on my g/f's PC so she can play games like Plants vs Zombies whilst I play online :)
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Fair point; only problem is that if Steam catch wind of that then you're risking your account...not worth the risk in my opinion :)
 
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