A digital distribution service owned by Valve Corporation. Originally created to distribute Valve's own games, Steam has since become the de facto standard for digital distribution of PC games.
@kratier said: Lol. People were banned for a week from ALL games they owned that incorporated VAC. The free game was an apology, not a "service". (and a perfect example of why having all your games tied to 1 account login is a bad thing)
Well, No they were banned from Modern Warfare 2. All of their games were fine except this. VAC bans by engine, someone with a 5-dig Steam account would know this.
@kratier
said: Steam sales are a joke
Weird, These seem like major games that were on sale. These sales were only this year! http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=518670
@kratier said: And moving forward you guys keep mentioning garbage features like cloud sync which completely breaks most recently games. Fallout new vegas> broken by cloud sync. Black Ops> broken by cloud sync How is this Valves fault that the developers did not implement it correctly? The developers promptly released a patch addressing these issues.
I've had a Steam account just as long as you, I can see that this platform SAVED PC gaming. If Steam did not exist in this day, there would be no PC gaming.
Brick and mortar stores ignore pc gamers, Steam rises to fill pc gamers needs and sell them games, brick and mortars realize that people still want pc games and get mad when people buy from steam instead of themselves, they raise their impotent fists and shake them at Steam, Steam laughs all the way to the bank. Did I miss anything?
" Brick and mortar stores ignore pc gamers, Steam rises to fill pc gamers needs and sell them games, brick and mortars realize that people still want pc games and get mad when people buy from steam instead of themselves, they raise their impotent fists and shake them at Steam, Steam laughs all the way to the bank. Did I miss anything? "
No, I think you summed it up pretty nicely!
@Darkstar614: @wolf_blitzer85:
Oh yes, I remember Steam when it was launched. It was way better than what CS used to have for updating, purely update-wise, but hell, I hated Steam then. It's hard to believe that it's the same platform when looking at it today.
@ShiftyMagician: That was always my concern with digital distribution. There is always a possibility (however small) that for some reason or another the servers could get knocked offline or destroyed. How will I play my PC games during WWIII?
For me, Steam embodies what is good about PC gaming. Dedicated servers, comfortable interfaces with quick and easy access, room for modding and an easy, functionable way of playing games both single and multiplayer. Even if you don't buy your games on Steam, as mentioned, they can actually be found cheaper elsewhere, games with multiplayer proponents will always be better off using Steamworks until someone comes along with something better. Until then, you're destinied to gobble up the pieces of shit you so seem to despise. "
I think this definitely deserves the standing slow clap. "
Yeah, I agree as well. Games seem to function way better when Steamworks is integrated, and are updated way more frequently with patches.
Though I don't really know if something better is going to come along. Valve struggled immensely with Steam when they first launched it with CS 1.6. It was a horrible service back then with friend's list working a mere 10% of the time(not an exaggeration). But they have come such a long way and refined the platform into what it is today. So anyone saying that Valve just showed up at the right time in crazy, they spent a lot of time and effort to make Steam what it is today, even under constant fire from the community. Someone else coming out with a service/platform that can rival Steam is a pretty wild fantasy. "
I've been a member since Sept 14th 2003, and when Steam originally rolled out, I was pissed off that 1.6 wasn't going to use WON (remember that shit?) and it was buggier than hell. I can't even remember how many times I had to reinstall windows because Steam fucked my computer so hard.
GFWL has that same potential, just Microsoft needs to actually care about it and developed it into something that doesn't resemble a barren wasteland.
Steam made the PC market what it is today. With most major companies and retailers supporting consoles more than PC and not allowing you to return games because you can copy them (They are too stupid to realise that you can copy console games as well) I'm glad that steam got bigger and bigger over the years gaining more developers and companies willing to cooperate.
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