Steam can sometimes be alright however when there is a game which is on sale it can be intriguing to buy the game. Sometimes this can result in wasting money on a game that you wouldn't want or like the idea of the game. In my games list there are some games that I wished that I never brought and now they stay in the games list for forever. However I would like to hear what the community thinks about this!
Steam
Concept »
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.
What do you think of Steam?
As a shop, it is superb and we owe it the flourishing of PC gaming once again. the sales are too good to be true
as a gaming interface, out of this world. the screenshots, the friends, the integrated system.. again, amazing
however, technically speaking, I don't like how it restricts my games and puts a "steam stamp" on them.
Me Three Years Ago:
"Audiosurf? Sounds like a cool game. I need Steam for that? Ok, I guess."
Me Today:
"I have over 300 Steam games in my account and a ton more on my wishlist. Touche, Steam."
The best digital service available. Their games prices are incredibly inflated but worth it for the sales.
Steam is amazing. I know what you mean about buying games you wouldn't buy otherwise, but for the prices I'm glad I tried a lot of them out. Some I finished. Others I didn't. But I'm glad I got them. It's also great to have a service that stores and organizes all your games, and automatically applies updates. Steam Cloud is also really cool. So yea, all around I love Steam. I hope EA decides to support it again. I have the previous two Mass Effect games on Steam and I'd like to add the third.
I think Steam is great, it's an easy way to install games on multiple PC's and makes it easy to reinstall games when you have bought a new Hard Drive, though it isn't always the fastest... and during sales you can't always download games at all.
But those sales, they are the most amazing part of Steam, I have bought so many games while at the same time spending so little money thanks to the Steam sales.
Sometimes the fact that you have to have Steam running to play your games gets in the way, but for the most part it isn't really an issue.
Steam is pretty fucking amazing. I am generally against monopolies, but steam is so FUCKING PERFECT.
It feels great to throw out all my physical games crap. I just use GOG and steam.
I would pirate a billion games, but steam stopped my "Warez days" dead in the tracks. The convenience and the low prices make steam number one.
I've got about 190 games on Steam and consider the store my primary go place for any and all pc games. Does that answer your question?
It's generally p great, but getting support for non Valve games on Steam can be pretty frustrating, least in my experience.
"This game is currently unavailable. Please try again at another time."
You picked a poor time to ask me this question.
I love it, but it will randomly just stop responding and lock up from 5 seconds to several minuets before it unfreezes and I can use it again. There are tons of little things I hope they add to make the program easier and more user friendly, but that's the only real "problem" I have with it.
If it wasn't for Steam the PC market would be an extremely different place, ie. it wouldn't exist, and no matter what they do I will always be grateful to them for standing by us when every other company was doing nothing but shit on PC gaming. Now that Valve has done the hard work all the fair weather companies are trying to jump on by copying what Valve is doing I refuse to use them unless they have some super amazing god dam mind blowlingly good deal like when Live were selling games for $1. Still mad I missed Viva Pinata during that sale. Hope they do it again.
"This game is currently unavailable. Please try again at another time." You picked a poor time to ask me this question.Does that happen often for you? It will randomly do that for me, but if I just wait a few minuets or keep trying by the third or fourth time it goes through.
I have the same problem.I love it, but it will randomly just stop responding and lock up from 5 seconds to several minuets before it unfreezes and I can use it again. There are tons of little things I hope they add to make the program easier and more user friendly, but that's the only real "problem" I have with it.
As for the little things you mention, I find it extremely obnoxious that I have to repeatedly pass through age-gates. One time I accidentally entered the wrong year and was locked out of looking at a game even though I'm an adult who already owns games like Doom 3, Amnesia, Left 4 Dead, and Metro 2033 through Steam. Why can't they remember my damn birthday?
@crusader8463 said:
@Spoonman671 said:"This game is currently unavailable. Please try again at another time." You picked a poor time to ask me this question.Does that happen often for you? It will randomly do that for me, but if I just wait a few minuets or keep trying by the third or fourth time it goes through.
Not really. I think I might have encountered it once before, but this time it's refusing to work. I went ahead and verified the game integrity (right click>properties>local files) and that seems to have worked.
@Spoonman671 said:
@crusader8463 said:I love it, but it will randomly just stop responding and lock up from 5 seconds to several minuets before it unfreezes and I can use it again. There are tons of little things I hope they add to make the program easier and more user friendly, but that's the only real "problem" I have with it.I have the same problem. As for the little things you mention, I find it extremely obnoxious that I have to repeatedly pass through age-gates. One time I accidentally entered the wrong year and was locked out of looking at a game even though I'm an adult who already owns games like Doom 3, Amnesia, Left 4 Dead, and Metro 2033 through Steam. Why can't they remember my damn birthday?
Ooh yeah that's a good point.
Also sometimes during sales, steam will just decide I'm filth and not accept my credit card, but that's probably because I'm retarded and instead of building up a cart, I just go mad and rack up a ton of separate 1.50 purchases. Eventually it all got ironed out by itself though.
Oh yeah it was when Guild Wars was on sale, that's when it didn't want my money. That was a dark moment in time for me.
@swf567 said:
When there is a game which is on sale it can be intriguing to buy the game. Sometimes this can result in you like the idea of the game. In my games list there are some games that I wished that they stay in the list for forever. I would like to hear what the community thinks about this!
There, edited.
When a game which is on sale it IS intriguing to buy the game! And they do stay in the list for forever! I, as part of the community, think good things about this!!
The other one that drives me nuts is that the videos don't have a slider for the audio level. My audio is perfect on everything, but when I try to play a video on Steam it almost blows out my ear drums every time because it's so dam loud.
Steam have created the precedence where nobody buys games on launch day and wait for it to be deep discount @ 50%.
Also it have created a precedence for dumbass to call Steam "stupid" for not making every game $5.
And finally it created a lot of Steam fanboi who pooh-pooh other online store.
Steam and valve are the saving graces of PC gaming. Steam is the closest thing to a perfect download service, and it is constantly improving itself even though its competition is miles behind it.
The only thing that can compete with Steam is Steam itself, and the winner of that endless self competition is customer.
Without Steam, I wouldn't have any way of playing games here in Italy. My Xbox is NTSC, so about two years ago I just started buying everything I wanted for the PC when they were on sale. The sales! They are incredible! I can't imagine a life without Steam now. The only setback is that some games, like You Don't Know Jack and From Dust, don't come out here. But it's a small drawback considering that I can always have my full collection of PC games with me always, on any computer I own.
By the way, the fact that EA has set up it's own digital distribution hub is laughable. I feel so sorry for the poor engineers who had to create such a useless program, they could have been doing something worth their time.
It keeps me full of games, and Valve full of money. And while I do like being full of games, I do occasionally miss that money. Damn my lack of self control! Also, if you're not careful, you'll wind up accidentally buying shit like Secret of the Magic Crystals without knowing how you got it. My guess is a bundle, but hey, I could've just been really drunk. That's how I ended up with Jeopardy for the PS3.
When you don't treat your customers as some random number but instead as people by listening to them. The result is something amazing, thus we have steam.
After the dark days of it heralding the death of CS 1.3 and not actually being a shop, Steam has grown into a service that is absolutely amazing.
It has the occasional frustrating bug (damn you ClientRegistry.blob, damn you!), but it has set the bar incredibly high for downloadable systems, and Valve have set it equally high for customer service and content.
WELL. I THINK IT'S NOT AS GOOD AS EA'S ORIGIN CAUSE THAT HAS BATTLEFIELD ON IT. ALSO I THINK EA IS A COOL GUY THAT DOESN'T AFRAID OF ANYTHING.
I like steam.
I own almost 450 games on Steam. My only complaint is mostly the bullshit with patching from certain developers, the failure to note that "this game no longer works on modern operating systems" for some games and the extra bullshit hoops that some publishers require to play their games or access their games (registrations, extra serials, external websites to go through -- EA/Bioware, I'm especially looking at you).
Please Log In to post.
This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:
Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.Comment and Save
Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.
Log in to comment