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.
This has been discussed before ad nauseam. Most of us will buy a game regardless of whether it's on Steam or not. The thing is, Steam is a great platform with incredible sales. It doesn't feel like DRM at all; in fact, it greatly enhances the experience of playing a game on PC: friend lists, Achievements, automatic patching, cross-game chat, etc, etc, etc. Besides, most of us like having all our games in one place, avoiding the need to have multiple accounts on multiple services.
But something tells me you're not really interested in a proper answer, right?
People love steam so much because it is a genuinely good piece of software. It is also a big deal if PC games don't get put on steam because the PC sections in brick & mortar stores are so tiny now (Not including the huge "2 for £15" "3 for £10" sections in GAME) and they're usually more expensive in shops!
A) I already bought into the platform a long time ago so it has most my games
B) The friends list and community stuff is pretty damn good now
C) Steam sales!
D) Instead of having to have multiple clients open, with separate friends list I can have everything in one place (ideally)
E) Games are just there. If I feel like playing something I just double click the game in my list and spam enter 3-4 times, then the game starts downloading and automatically installs. No fuss, no muss.
D is the reason I don't want Origin, but I'm gonna have to use it for BF3 it seems. Bit annoying to launch a client just for one game and have to add people to an entirely different friends list for that service. Oh well.
Easy, Steam is very comfortable. All the problems of manually searching for patches, sitting through long installs, having to have a disk in the drive and so on don't happen with Steam. Steam also has good integration of forums and such. The problem is that a service as Steam can only really play out its advantages when it's the only service around, if you have five different online stores, apps for each of them, they just become annoying, as you having to login into a new service for each game you wont to play. People simply don't want more shitty shop apps on their PC when the stuff they have already works perfectly fine.
There are two sides to Steam: The one where it is the greatest platform to ever happen to PC games because of their prices and support, interfaces and user friendliness, and the one where it turns the PC into a zombie console platform that revolved around ease of use and exclusivity
While I love Valve and Steam for single-handedly keeping the platform alive and well, I dislike how PC gamers now do not fathom the brain cells to mess around with game files and update shit on their own.
It makes it easy to find and download games. It's convenient, you don't need to go to the store, and there are some pretty good sales on there. I'm not a PC gamer because my computer sucks, but what few games I'm able to play I downloaded off of steam.
I can take it or leave it - Steam doesn't add any value as far as I'm concerned. I'd buy every game direct from the developer / publisher if they offered that option at a competitive price.
In addition to all of the above it arguably saved PC gaming from a dark place it was headed towards.
Personally I don't care if the game isn't on Steam, per se. But retailers in my area suck, so buying PC games from them is frequently not an option and other online retailers also suck in terms of ease of use and how good they are at handling credit card transactions.
I live in a country where PC gaming is virtually nonexistent and finding physical copies of PC games requires going to speciality import stores that charge ridiculous prices.
As someone who as just had an absolute nightmare trying to buy Trackmania 2 off NADEO/Ubisoft's own purchasing system, it's given me even more appreciation for what Steam does. I've been spoilt with how easy it is to purchase and download games with Steam. Just sad that so many companies are getting all upset with Valve lately.
But if you want to know why PC gamers love Steam so much, it's simply a situation where no one as done it as well as Steam.
I prefer buying retail boxes of PC games but I love when they also support Steamworks because I can resister the game on Steam and play it without the disc :)
Because it's awesome to have your pc games easily installed, uninstalled, all in one place, easily updated, gaming statistics, community aspects etc etc etc etc. I'm mainly a console gamer by the way
I can take it or leave it - Steam doesn't add any value as far as I'm concerned. I'd buy every game direct from the developer / publisher if they offered that option at a competitive price.
Same here. But yeah, Steam is a neat service, even though I much prefer GMG and other cheaper ones. I mean, it's 50% cheaper, Steam isn't that good. But I do like the community features a hell of a lot.
It's a handy service. Has nice community features and the sales can lead to some fairly cheap prices. I wouldn't avoid a game that I want if it wasn't on steam, but if it is on steam that's probably where I'll go to get it.
It's a good service, but It's too cheap sometimes, which i feel dirty about, weird as that sounds. As for for the other, of course i don't care if the game I want is on Steam or not, as long as the provided DRM or whatnot is not a pain.
I don't really like the amount of ill-though troll threads that have been popping up lately.
how is it a troll thread. im just asking why someone would deny themselves a game just because it was not on steam.
The same reason people would say that they would boycott MW2 because it wouldn't support dedicated servers and then go on to buy it anyway, because this is the internet and its easy to take an issue to hyperbole for no reason.
Steam sales are fantastic often putting games on sales before retail price drops, also at 75% discount you can just "try" out a game witout feeling bad even if it does turn out complete crap.
Infinite installs
Browsing your games becomes as easy as browsing youtube!
PC gamers love steam because it is the best digital distribution system period, bar none. It blows the console DD systems out of the water, and even other PC DD systems are consistently playing catch up to steams features, and very few can match the price of steam games during steam sales.
At the end of the day, PC gamres love steam because steam competes more with itself than it does any other service, they refuse to sit on their laurels and are constantly improving a service that is already well ahead of the competition.
Honestly though, I really do not like Steam. I prefer D2D because I would rather download the .exe file and not have any programs controlling or launching my software.
I have a lot of games on Steam but I have a lot of games from D2D too.
'cause having a hard on for a mega corporation is bad! gotta support the indies yo!
Actually that doesn't really have anything to do with it. Steam comes from the Valve Corproation so it's run by a mega-corporation to begin with and it supports both indie titles and titles from huge corporations.
People like Steam because it has a lot of useful features that can be easily accessed during any game and there are lots of good sales. As for people wanting certain games on Steam that's because it means all your games are in one place, and it makes the games all easily manageable. For some having games on Steam also helps them keep down less desirable rival services like Games For Windows Live and EA Origin. In the specific case of some people not wanting to buy games from Origin, it may also have something to do with the fact that the EULA on Origin basically gives permission for EA to run spyware on your computer. Steam may do data collection on your system but it's not as aggressive and you can opt out.
Steam has it's good parts and some bad parts. The prime features have already been mentioned. What sucks about Steam is that it's tentacles are reaching everywhere to the point of being forced to install a Steam client in order to activate games purchased at retail on Steam as well which is just plain wrong IMO. Another bad aspect to Steam is that all of your games will become useless data should Valve ever decide to pull the plug.
Because unlike a certain thread, it doesn't suck. And yes I would really not buy a game if it wasn't on Steam. I want BF3, but not enough to sign up for Origin so I said screw it, there are plenty of other games anyway. I do make exceptions though as I bought WoW, Guild Wars(at the time I wanted to buy it, it was a lot cheaper to get elsewhere), and LotRO from their respective services.
steam's pretty great, yo. the only thing i actively dislike about it is buying a game at retail and then finding out it's only an activation code which doesn't install from the disc.
Because unlike a certain thread, it doesn't suck. And yes I would really not buy a game if it wasn't on Steam. I want BF3, but not enough to sign up for Origin so I said screw it, there are plenty of other games anyway. I do make exceptions though as I bought WoW, Guild Wars(at the time I wanted to buy it, it was a lot cheaper to get elsewhere), and LotRO from their respective services.
but whats so bad about Origin. will you not be playing Diablo 3 as that won't be on Steam either. does battle.net offend you too
You know it blows my mind how many people bitch about "retailers in my area" on a video game website on the internet. Every retailer on the planet is "in your area". i have bought plenty of games from europe, asia, etc in the past and got them at 5-10 dollars more than normal retail including shipping. PC games have never been hard to find, they weren't before steam, they aren't today, and they wouldn't be if steam imploded tomorrow. Truthfully steam is DRM, it is just really good at pretending it isn't, and the mega corporation thing.... do you really think Valve is an indie developer???
So why is steam so important? Because PC gamer internet culture thinks it is. Myself? I hate DRM in all forms, and when i boot up a game if it makes me run a third party app well then.....
If I buy a Steam game it feels permanently mine, forever. Any other service and I don't get that feeling, hell even with retail I don't get that feeling.
but you do realise that is just a feeling and is not actually reality.
I pretty much use steam and GOG for all my pc gaming. Much better than having a fuckton of discs sitting around and worrying about them getting scratched and dirty.
Because it makes me feel like I still own my downloaded games even after I delete them. Much more of a hassle to recover them with other services. And the sales are great.
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