I'm not anti steam so much as I dislike Valves approach of using DRM to kill second hand sales and locking PC gamers into their propriety system with all that entails. Digital delivery is one thing, being locked into one dominating company with alll the associate DRM and requirements is quite another.
Yes Steam supports impulse buying, but then if I have a new release pre ordered I get it on day of release and often before Steam anyway. If I order a game from somewhere like Amazon it arrives tomorrow and will almost inevitably be cheaper than than buying it from Steam, and I can sell it when I'm finished with it.
Whilst the Steam sales is interesting it tends to be full of games I would never have bought in the first place. How many people buy a bunch of games in the Steam sale and then never play them (or play for 20mins). Yes there are some bargains but i wonder how often that is. I shudder when I look at my Steam library and see how many games on the list are even installed much less played
DRM'd up to the eyeballs is anything but a fantasy, I can't do anything with my games that I've paid for without having to use Steam. I can't sell or loan out the games i own. If I do something that upsets Valves T&Cs for some reason I can lose access to every single game I own with a Steam ban, irrespective of if whatever I did was in a single game. All without appeal to anyone other than Valve who carry out the ban in the first place. In additional to and EULA or conditions from the game publisher I now have to conform to a set of additional T&Cs that Valve impose if I want to continue to play the game I bought.
SteamOS is indeed free and an interesting idea to play around with but then if I can dual boot with Windows which gives me access to an order of magnitude more games with no locked in requirement to use Steam for them why would I chose the SteamOS option? There seems to be few reasons for using SteamOS beyond curiosity, perhaps with the exception that if I can afford two gaming PCs and I could Stream games from the Windows on to the Steam one because I can't get the game on SteamOS. Which then begs the question why not just run Windows on the second PC and have access to all the games (including Steam big Picture if i want to run it under a TV). I'll say if the streaming works well on a low powered PC like a laptop the ability to play games remote from my "gaming PC" might be interesting although the experience with Onlive suggests whilst the idea is interesting the practicalities end up leaving a lot to be desired. SHame about Onlive not seeeming to take off by the way, it really was/is an interesting take on PC gaming that deserved to succeed.
So no, I'm not "anti steam" per se, I've been a PC gamer since Playing Falcon AT in the late 80s (and the usual gaming computers before). Steam is fine way of buying games quickly and easily if you're prepared to take a hit on pricing usually. I just dislike the way that Valve is trying to turn the diverse PC gaming market into a another "console like" locked down DRMd market with one dominating company to rely on. SteamOS to me seems a very clear intention from Valve to want to "own" PC gaming as closed eco system like a console where they own the OS, games, and service from top to bottom.
Maybe that's the way PC gaming has to go but it seems a shame, if Steam is expensive now I dread to think what it will be like if they manage to push out the few remaining competitors. I have a sneaking suspicion we'll end up with £49.99+ console pricing.
it's not meant to be an "Anti Steam" moan as such, I use Steam and it's a great service in a lot of ways. I do think they need challenging a little though and the direction they are heading is a little concerning. /shrug
