stupid question but steam?
- Thread starter i5aces
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A a side note once you have got steam, Team Fortress 2 is now a free download.
Another game to look at is Alien Swarm, again free but is more fun with friends (is a 4 player birds eye view co-op
i will look into them tonight,
i have 2 weeks off work comming up and was after something to do.
im planning on ahving a go at making a NAS out of a old pc and now i have some game to play to.
Desura is far better for Indie stuff than Steam in my experience.
On topic, I'm stunned this question is being asked in 2012, but Steam is a client that allows you to buy and download games and ultimately contribute to the decline of GAME.
GAME made their own downfall by not moving with the times, they should have moved into digital downloads LONG ago, they didn't, they fell behind, the collapsed. Their own doing.
I can see both sides of that.
I can see the appeal of just downloading it and not having to worry about the disc getting scratched. But I also hate handing money over for something I can't touch. I much prefer to have a disc in my hand.
I can see the appeal of just downloading it and not having to worry about the disc getting scratched. But I also hate handing money over for something I can't touch. I much prefer to have a disc in my hand.
best way I can describe it is, digital distribution service where your games are accesable online even if you lose your physical disk, has a lot of features like xbox live or PSN where you can earn achievements in games also tracks what games you have, origin doesn't have achievements yet but I can see it coming in the future also you can add non steam games into your game libary for quick launcing and cross gaming chat text and voice
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Steam is PC gaming.
imo.
imo.
Steam is the PC Games equivalent to the Playstation Network and Xbox Live.
You download a small program onto your computer that allows you to buy games over the internet and play them without the need to buy the game on disk in a shop. This means you dont have to have a DVD in the disk drive to play a game each time.
Steam is - in my experience - very reliable and stable, I got on the Steam train (no pun intended) quite late too as I thought it would take ages to download games. As I found out, it dosent take long at all, obviously it depends on your internet connection speed but I normally average about 1.2mb per second download, so I can download 10gb in about 138 minutes (2 hours, 18 minutes) approx. About the length of watching a movie.
There are similar services to Steam, such as Origin by Electronic Arts, however, Origin is exclusive to EA games, whereas Steam distributes games from many different developers. In recent times Origin has made some of its games exclusive to Origin so you cannot buy them on Steam, like Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, Crysis 2 and others.
The beauty of Steam is that they sell you a CD Key/Serial Number for the games, these activate on Steam and you download your game. However, you can buy Steam Serial keys/numbers from other online retailers. Meaning, you can shop around for the best deals of the same product. For example, if Modern Warfare 3 is £39.99 on Steam, you can no doubt find it cheaper from a different online retailer that will sell you a MW3 serial number that will work on Steam even though you didnt buy it directly from Steam, this is not illegal and is perfectly normal.
As others have said, if you are into PC Gaming, then Steam will soon rule your wallet, all the online retailers, including Steam themselves do deals on games all the time and they do seasonal promotions too, like Christmas and Easter etc, where you can buy games at a fraction of their original price in daily deals.
A good example is a current deal on Steam at the moment, for the next 15 hours from the time this post is made Portal 2 is available for £7.49, a few weeks back, this was £19.99. The game is considered to be awesome and received very good reviews. Id recommend it if you like the look of it.
You download a small program onto your computer that allows you to buy games over the internet and play them without the need to buy the game on disk in a shop. This means you dont have to have a DVD in the disk drive to play a game each time.
Steam is - in my experience - very reliable and stable, I got on the Steam train (no pun intended) quite late too as I thought it would take ages to download games. As I found out, it dosent take long at all, obviously it depends on your internet connection speed but I normally average about 1.2mb per second download, so I can download 10gb in about 138 minutes (2 hours, 18 minutes) approx. About the length of watching a movie.
There are similar services to Steam, such as Origin by Electronic Arts, however, Origin is exclusive to EA games, whereas Steam distributes games from many different developers. In recent times Origin has made some of its games exclusive to Origin so you cannot buy them on Steam, like Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, Crysis 2 and others.
The beauty of Steam is that they sell you a CD Key/Serial Number for the games, these activate on Steam and you download your game. However, you can buy Steam Serial keys/numbers from other online retailers. Meaning, you can shop around for the best deals of the same product. For example, if Modern Warfare 3 is £39.99 on Steam, you can no doubt find it cheaper from a different online retailer that will sell you a MW3 serial number that will work on Steam even though you didnt buy it directly from Steam, this is not illegal and is perfectly normal.
As others have said, if you are into PC Gaming, then Steam will soon rule your wallet, all the online retailers, including Steam themselves do deals on games all the time and they do seasonal promotions too, like Christmas and Easter etc, where you can buy games at a fraction of their original price in daily deals.
A good example is a current deal on Steam at the moment, for the next 15 hours from the time this post is made Portal 2 is available for £7.49, a few weeks back, this was £19.99. The game is considered to be awesome and received very good reviews. Id recommend it if you like the look of it.
Can't see it? That is it's main advantage! No more dinosaur era cd's/dvd's.
No more annoying setups or ''please enter cd2''.
Click buy, click install, wait 15 mins, click play, done. Hassle free.
All games in 1 place, on any pc.
Of course, yeah it's not that great if you have rubbish internet...
Steam Benefits
* when you buy a game on steam, you can download it onto however many computers you own. Even better, the games are stored inside your steam folder. You can copy this folder to another computer, click the steam.exe, and withing a few minutes, have all of your games accessible. No need to dig up dozens of disks, spend hours redownloading, etc.
* some steam games support steamworks, these store your savegames in the cloud, so you can log off your desktop, jump on your laptop, and resumke the game from the same point.
* Games at release are often a little more expensive than at retail. However, steam has a one game on sale every day, an extra game at midweek, one or more extra deals at the weekend, and several times a year they have massive, massive sales, where most of the catalog (hundreds, maybe thousands of games) are reduced, by 66%, 75%, even 90% or more in rare cases. Steam sale events are awesome (not so good for your bank balance).
Here's an example of a weekend event
Then there are the achievements, game forums where you can check out people's opionons of games before you buy them (and so avoid stinkers), the in-game overlay which allows you to SHiFT+TAB out of a game to chat or visit a webpage, and much more.
* when you buy a game on steam, you can download it onto however many computers you own. Even better, the games are stored inside your steam folder. You can copy this folder to another computer, click the steam.exe, and withing a few minutes, have all of your games accessible. No need to dig up dozens of disks, spend hours redownloading, etc.
* some steam games support steamworks, these store your savegames in the cloud, so you can log off your desktop, jump on your laptop, and resumke the game from the same point.
* Games at release are often a little more expensive than at retail. However, steam has a one game on sale every day, an extra game at midweek, one or more extra deals at the weekend, and several times a year they have massive, massive sales, where most of the catalog (hundreds, maybe thousands of games) are reduced, by 66%, 75%, even 90% or more in rare cases. Steam sale events are awesome (not so good for your bank balance).
Here's an example of a weekend event
Then there are the achievements, game forums where you can check out people's opionons of games before you buy them (and so avoid stinkers), the in-game overlay which allows you to SHiFT+TAB out of a game to chat or visit a webpage, and much more.
Must admit i was all very anti installing it on my PC back when it was released roughly around the MW2 so 2-3 years ago but i even link all my games through it now.
Its is very good and 100 times better then origin although origin is still beta on my list
Its is very good and 100 times better then origin although origin is still beta on my list
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its like xbox live but for pc, you can buy, download and play games with friends