Opinion of Valve's Steam

[liquidmetal]

Its got alot better over the years and is convenient. Steam overlay doesn't work for me though with ati tray tools

[barry2811]

It's a nice idea but I do prefer to look after things myself.

That said I did look at it to get updates for my old Half-Life Opposing Force after switching to 64-bit Windows.

Upon registering my product key I was told that it was already in use by somebody else and that I had to send $10 for their trouble and post them the key as proof. I don't mind sending them an electronic picture of the key but posting it to America and sending them $10 is absurd for something I can buy for less using their client. Uninstalled it right there and won't use it again.

[Spookie]

Upon registering my product key I was told that it was already in use by somebody else and that I had to send $10 for their trouble and post them the key as proof. I don't mind sending them an electronic picture of the key but posting it to America and sending them $10 is absurd for something I can buy for less using their client. Uninstalled it right there and won't use it again.

Silly reason to uninstall. For the $10 that cost you'd re-coop that in the sales that they do! I got L4D for only £12 a full £10 off retail.

[Mutley]

Good grief.

This is a thread-resurrection-and-a-half.

I guess the issue/question is still live.

As the OP, what do I think? It has grown on me, I think it is a lot better that it used to be. I still think it is a a bit heavy-weight and I don't like that you can't sell your games to others. That clearly is a business decision (and a sound one at that).

It is pretty reliable these days, although download speeds can vary a lot. There is fantastic choice. They support indy game developers well.

[barry2811]

Silly reason to uninstall. For the $10 that cost you'd re-coop that in the sales that they do! I got L4D for only £12 a full £10 off retail.

It didn't cost me $10 as I didn't pay it. I would never play Half-Life these days anyway. I've seen the sales recently but nothing really grabs me - certainly not enough to use Steam anyway.

I'm more interested in older games these days anyway and more specifically their inner workings, so I don't see me using Steam any time soon.

[Ganty]

use to hate steam, avoided it as best i could, but recently its become something i like/use alot.

[danroyle]

i like steam, it keeps all my games safe got it when half life 2 came out and my disc is long since dead but still have access to my games.

I was not keen on buying from steam until recently they have done some very good deals.

[Oobie-]

Man... I was reading this thread for quite a while before I realised it was from 2005. Grrr.

Same LOL.

Would I be out of line saying that this beats the pants off of GFWL? Cause its does. Spent 6 mins updating gfwl when just wanting to play bs2. Got bored and went and did something else. SIgining into the damn thing just to play is annoying and gets in the way more than anything else. Hate it.

My 2cents:
I dont find it bloated, I have very few issues with it (sitting with a bunch of chat windows open and its only 5890k) - Only issues experienced came from updates when installing steam due to overload on their servers, and updating a few games (It has been maintained very well I must say)
Its crashed once in the 4/5 odd years of usage and exited itself magically a few times. Nothing thats hindered me.

Originally I hated the idea that once/if steam goes(down) you cant get any of your games back or play them, but that doesnt seem to be an issue right now.
Of course thats easily avoided by getting hard copies! (of that games that arent specific to valve -_-)

I usually just look for the best deal by waiting. I have very few games on steam that arent hard copies.

The auto updates on games is a massive plus and the fact that you can simply copy over the GCF files/common folder to effectively reinstall the games is just great too.

Dont have a problem with it at all.

Also I do agree that a lot of the games are not fairly priced for digital downloads compared to retail hardcopy - Theres no overhead for packaging and disc distribution etc! what are they doing.

[TooNice]

I wonder if people who voted that it's rubbish in 2005 have now changed their mind (or vice-versa I suppose). It took me a long time to give Steam a go (L4D, actually - i.e. last year), and it's not quite the horror I was somehow preparing for.