Steam Required?

[tecknomage]

OK, I play single-player games, or versions, ONLY.

I consider ANY GAME that requires Steam to be installed as Infected :thumbsdown:

So, is Diablo 3 Steam Infected?

[korialstraz]

We don't know yet.

In what way do you consider it infected? Or is it that you just plain don't like steam?

[sicilian]

I know I had some troubles at one point with Steam, where it wouldn't let me play Half-Life 2 (the single player portion) in offline mode. I haven't tried recently, but I assume that has been fixed. If it hasn't, I can see where it would be a problem for people that like to play offline.

[Mizantrop]

There is already a topic for Steam and D3 discussion. You can find it right here (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=704462&highlight=steam).

[tecknomage]

We don't know yet.

In what way do you consider it infected? Or is it that you just plain don't like steam?

You got it. I hate Steam :devil:

Having ANY online service REQUIRED just to play single-player is a Black-List game for me.

[Raging_Zealot]

Considering Blizzard already has their successful battle.net system, and we know D3 will run on B.net2.0 which is adding lots of features, I highly doubt that D3 will require Steam. I also think Blizzard realizes that single player play is important in the Diablo series, and thus wouldn't make B.net2.0 be steam-like in requiring you to sign in just to play single player.

[Garbad_the_Weak]

Steam is spyware and I will never buy any game that requires it.

[slickr]

why would D3 require steam? Be logical.
Blizz sees steam as their worst enemy and they are trying to push bnet 2.0 as the best online service.
Blizz also have an online store, so no steam.

[Funkopotamus]

why would D3 require steam? Be logical.
Blizz sees steam as their worst enemy and they are trying to push bnet 2.0 as the best online service.
Blizz also have an online store, so no steam.

I can agree with the OP in that I hope Blizzard doesn't make any kind of Steam analogue then requires it to play.

[Rancors]

it shouldnt be on steam, and if u play single player, u dont even need it.

steam is good if u dont want to go to the store to get the copy. blizzard hasnt provided online game download service yet.

[Norrit]

it shouldnt be on steam, and if u play single player, u dont even need it.

steam is good if u dont want to go to the store to get the copy. blizzard hasnt provided online game download service yet.

yes they have, you can make an account @ blizz website and punch in your cdkeys to download any game you want directly from their site

[ginNtonic]

I've been using Steam for over seven years and my system is fine.

Also you can toggle it to start in offline mode.

You guys are very anti steam :crazyeyes:

But get realistic. Why would blizzard do that?

[Phranx]

I'm not going to get into it but the only reasons I can realistically think someone wouldn't like Steam is if they:

Don't have any internet access, at all, ever. i.e. no one on this forum.
Pirate their games.


If being part of a free online software suite with heaps of benefits is the only type of DRM the game has then how could you possibly want it any other way?

You got it. I hate Steam :devil:

Having ANY online service REQUIRED just to play single-player is a Black-List game for me.

Even if you originally download the game through Steam you do NOT need steam to be connected to play any Steam game in Single Player mode.

Also, welcome to the Diii.net forums!

[Killafornia]

Steam has not required for you to be online for some years now, so I don't even see why you would make this thread, and even when it did there was still a way around it.

Besides that I believe it was Wilson that already said in an interview they will not be releasing any of thier games over steam.

[Raging_Zealot]

it shouldnt be on steam, and if u play single player, u dont even need it.

steam is good if u dont want to go to the store to get the copy. blizzard hasnt provided online game download service yet.

Yes they have. Blizzard already has everything Steam offers between their online store and Bnet2.0, why would they use a competitors online service?!

[Dahmer]

Steam is used to buy/download games, good for that, I agree but there are a few things I don't get.
1) why does it boot with your pc by default?
2) why does it connect by default?
Can't think of anything else now, guess my mind blocked it out of my memory cause it pissed me off too much.

Never liked it and never will, it's almost as annoying as the piece of **** rockstar games thing that installed with GTA4.

[SlechtWeerBeer]

You can choose which programs boot automatically.
Start "msconfig" with the Execute command (should appear in the Start menu), and look through the list on the fourth tab. I'm not 100% sure Steam will be in that list, since I don't have Steam, but it has all auto-boots I have.

[Dahmer]

I know you can disable it and I know how, my point is that it's a program people are selling off here as something you can use to buy/download games while it wants boot & connect by default while there's no need for that at all but it still does it.

[korialstraz]

I don't see why that is such a huge problem. If you don't want it to run at startup then disable it. Not a big deal imo.

[Dahmer]

Not a big deal no for people that have half a brain, sadly the last lan party I went to had a huge bunch of people that didn't know how... connection turned to absolute **** thanks to steam.

This is what happened :
We (group of 10 people) went to a lan party that was expecting around 800 gamers.
We showed up rather early, installed our pc's, got everything connected and friend of mine asked me to download a driver. The download started at about 500 KB/sec and after a few seconds was staying around 400 (ok speed to download a driver for his new graphics card).
While downloading that another group of people showed up, they installed their pc's, connected everything and suddenly my speed dropped to 50 KB/sec with 50MB to go. Turned out they were a counterstrike clan and obviously had steam running. (joy) So I went to the lanparty crew and explained the problem. They made an announcement for everyone to put steam offline and a minute or two after that my speed went back up to about 400. Few minutes later that more people showed up, got connected....and at that point my speed didnt go down, it just ****ing stopped.

One note, speed didn't change one bit when a clan showed up that came to play call of duty and didn't have steam.
I swear in terms of networking and hogging resources/connection steam sucks some serious ***.

Also because of people not listening and keeping steam online I had to wait for the cs kiddies to turn off their ****ing pc's before I could check my emails, nothing worked when they had their ****ing steam running and the connection was supposed to be good enough to provide normal internet traffic for 800 people.

That's about everything that happened during the weekend and there's not a thing anyone can say to make me change my mind about steam, either it's spyware or it's **** and I can't think of any other way to explain a program creating that much traffic while you're not even doing anything.

[Raging_Zealot]

I know you can disable it and I know how, my point is that it's a program people are selling off here as something you can use to buy/download games while it wants boot & connect by default while there's no need for that at all but it still does it.

I think the reason that it boots/connects by default is to keep the games patched. I'm not saying it is a great reason, but if you play Team Fortress 2 online you have to be patched, and if they have a large update push through, I think they want users to be able to play right when they want to, instead of connecting to steam, then having to sign on, realize you have to wait 30 minutes to patch instead of play with your friends, etc. etc.

I typically don't like things running in my system tray, or connecting w/o me doing so manually either, so I see your point, just playing devil's advocate a bit. I originally felt the same way about it, but when I was playing the games more often and signing in more, the experience was better than when I first got Half Life 2 and it seemed like I always had a long download awaiting me before I could play. Yes, if you are strictly playing single player, then you may not care about having the newest patch, so it may not apply directly to you, just pointing out a reason why Steam might make it do so by default to be good for what they see as the majority of users. Also, if you don't have Steam save your password, it cannot connect automatically without you :)

I can understand your frustration about the LAN party situation, and that may be an oversight on Valve's part, but when you are sharing a connection with hundreds of people, stuff can happen. Seems more like people not used to sharing a connection and realizing the impact of everyone downloading updates at once. Either way I can understand how it's annoying to have your resources sucked up (especially by other people beyond your direct control), but it is a moot point anyway since it is extremely unlikely D3 will use steam.

[Gorny]

Small bit of advice for everyone while posting on these boards:

Stay away from the swearing, cursing and excessive use of language.It can get you into trouble with us moderator types. While it may be censored by asterisks, it's not needed in postings.It's also insulting to other members of the forums.

[Killafornia]

Not a big deal no for people that have half a brain, sadly the last lan party I went to had a huge bunch of people that didn't know how... connection turned to absolute **** thanks to steam.

This is what happened :
We (group of 10 people) went to a lan party that was expecting around 800 gamers.
We showed up rather early, installed our pc's, got everything connected and friend of mine asked me to download a driver. The download started at about 500 KB/sec and after a few seconds was staying around 400 (ok speed to download a driver for his new graphics card).
While downloading that another group of people showed up, they installed their pc's, connected everything and suddenly my speed dropped to 50 KB/sec with 50MB to go. Turned out they were a counterstrike clan and obviously had steam running. (joy) So I went to the lanparty crew and explained the problem. They made an announcement for everyone to put steam offline and a minute or two after that my speed went back up to about 400. Few minutes later that more people showed up, got connected....and at that point my speed didnt go down, it just ****ing stopped.

One note, speed didn't change one bit when a clan showed up that came to play call of duty and didn't have steam.
I swear in terms of networking and hogging resources/connection steam sucks some serious ***.

Also because of people not listening and keeping steam online I had to wait for the cs kiddies to turn off their ****ing pc's before I could check my emails, nothing worked when they had their ****ing steam running and the connection was supposed to be good enough to provide normal internet traffic for 800 people.

That's about everything that happened during the weekend and there's not a thing anyone can say to make me change my mind about steam, either it's spyware or it's **** and I can't think of any other way to explain a program creating that much traffic while you're not even doing anything.

You might be the one with half a brain for not dling the driver until you get to the LAN party. Who expects to use internet at a massive LAN at high speeds honestly.

[Synchrotron]

I doubt Blizzard will use steam. Its impossible to play on battlenet with a pirate cd-key and even with a system like steam preventing pirates to play offline its still very easy to crack and play single player.

[Phranx]

Here is a couple of points to think about:

Steam starts with your PC by default for convenience, if you don't want it to start by default you can simply disable it through the programs settings, no MSconfig even neccessary. Steam is NOT the only program that starts at boot up with default installation settings.

If steam is sitting in your system tray by default it isn't using bandwidth, it will use bandwidth however if you are downloading/updating/playing a game. If you don't believe me check it out on any PC that has Steam installed.

Somebody else already pointed out the irony of complaining about others leeching the LAN Party bandwidth while drivers were being downloaded that should have been done the day before.

I know for a fact people who oppose Steam will either think of other reasons why my statements are wrong or will simply ignore them because they don't want to hear them but I would rather have a discussion with informed people.

[Killafornia]

Here is a couple of points to think about:

Steam starts with your PC by default for convenience, if you don't want it to start by default you can simply disable it through the programs settings, no MSconfig even neccessary. Steam is NOT the only program that starts at boot up with default installation settings.

If steam is sitting in your system tray by default it isn't using bandwidth, it will use bandwidth however if you are downloading/updating/playing a game. If you don't believe me check it out on any PC that has Steam installed.

Somebody else already pointed out the irony of complaining about others leeching the LAN Party bandwidth while drivers were being downloaded that should have been done the day before.

I know for a fact people who oppose Steam will either think of other reasons why my statements are wrong or will simply ignore them because they don't want to hear them but I would rather have a discussion with informed people.

Steam is the revolution of online gaming. I can't see why anyone wants to get left behind.

[slickr]

Why i don't like steam:
It defaults to start-up without having an option to choose yes or no, it defaults to start running and connect online without having an option to allow it or not.

There is no option in steam to disable auto-start and auto-connect, so you have to resort to 3rd party tools or manually disabling the start-up, or if you want it to start up, but not connect to the internet you need to block it through a firewall.

Also its very ego-centric, if steam was a live person it would be the biggest ego-centric, self loving person that walked the earth. By this i mean the steam specific games, you can't download the game as a stand-alone game in its own right, it has to be tied to steam, meaning you can't play the game without steam, you can't patch the game with a normal patch, it has to be specific steam patch and for a lot of games it requires steam connection for single player.

And last but not least is that steam by itself does not have any functionality.
There are some specific game clients that have a variety of options, like chat, ranking, safe-list, ban list, PM's, game rooms, etc...
With Steam its all dependent on the game, if the game didn't have any online option, you can't just license steam as a technology for providing an online experience, because its just does not do that.

Last but not least is the information gathering, I would understand if you had an option to allow or deny that info to be sent online, but having no control over it is spyware in my eyes. Where do you think steam gets all that hardware data from?

[SlechtWeerBeer]

Steam is the revolution of online gaming. I can't see why anyone wants to get left behind.

What's so revolutionary about it? >.>"

And now for something completely different [/reference]

Steam starts with your PC by default for convenience, if you don't want it to start by default you can simply disable it through the programs settings, no MSconfig even neccessary. Steam is NOT the only program that starts at boot up with default installation settings.

Why i don't like steam:
It defaults to start-up without having an option to choose yes or no, it defaults to start running and connect online without having an option to allow it or not.

There is no option in steam to disable auto-start and auto-connect, so you have to resort to 3rd party tools or manually disabling the start-up, or if you want it to start up, but not connect to the internet you need to block it through a firewall.

Which is it?
Anyways, it's easy to disable autoruns within Windows (I explained that already); no reason to use a third party program o-o"
Also, if Steam really has the option to disable autorun built-in (I don't have Steam, so I can't check), you'd have to disable it manually anyhow.

[Phranx]

Why i don't like steam:
It defaults to start-up without having an option to choose yes or no, it defaults to start running and connect online without having an option to allow it or not.

There is no option in steam to disable auto-start and auto-connect, so you have to resort to 3rd party tools or manually disabling the start-up, or if you want it to start up, but not connect to the internet you need to block it through a firewall.

Disable Startup: Settings -> Interface -> Run Steam when Windows Starts.
Disable auto connect online: File -> Go Offilne.

Also its very ego-centric, if steam was a live person it would be the biggest ego-centric, self loving person that walked the earth. By this i mean the steam specific games, you can't download the game as a stand-alone game in its own right, it has to be tied to steam, meaning you can't play the game without steam, you can't patch the game with a normal patch, it has to be specific steam patch and for a lot of games it requires steam connection for single player.

As far as I'm aware, each Steam game is sold in box format as well.
If you want to play a game that is "tied to Steam" you can click on the desktop shortcut just like you would for any game you have ever installed, and if Steam is required it starts in the background.
I'm not sure why you would need to patch a game with a normal patch, I haven't seen a developer release a stand alone patch without releasing the same thing on Steam, even if they did it would be outside the control of Steam anyway.
You never have to connect to Steam for single player if you choose not to, see above for starting in offline mode.

And last but not least is that steam by itself does not have any functionality.
There are some specific game clients that have a variety of options, like chat, ranking, safe-list, ban list, PM's, game rooms, etc...
With Steam its all dependent on the game, if the game didn't have any online option, you can't just license steam as a technology for providing an online experience, because its just does not do that.

Uhh, Steam by itself DOES have tons of functionality but I can see that is not the point you are trying to make. You are absolutely correct that some games have more interactive options through Steam than others but that is the developers decision not Valve's. You may notice a lot of games just released in box format end up on Steam at some point anyway (the reasons why they end up on Steam are irrelevant for this conversation) but this scenario obviously shows the game wasn't written with the Steam backbone in mind. If they did however expect to use Steam from the start I am sure they would have taken the chance to add more content to the game utilising this technology.

Last but not least is the information gathering, I would understand if you had an option to allow or deny that info to be sent online, but having no control over it is spyware in my eyes. Where do you think steam gets all that hardware data from?

I don't personally have solid proof of what information Valve collect (although I have no proof of what any company collect from me on my PC) but taking their word that it's just hardware information, I think that is a brilliant idea and I would opt into telling any gaming company what hardware I use to play games (I haven't checked if you can opt in or out via the program settings or during install because honestly I've never felt the need to hide wha type of PC I use).

Lets have a look at what this means for them the developers and us the consumer. When they go to make a game they arn't going to make the system requirements something so powerful they alienate most of their users, they want to sell as many games as possible.
Because this company collects this information and uses it to judge how resource intensive their games are (and it's not just their games, anyone including other developers can look at this information) then we the consumer win because those with lower end PC specs will be able to play a game they potentially would have missed out on were this information not available.

I am happy to explain anything else you are unsure about but honestly the easiest way to see why Steam is by far the best DRM you could possibly ask for is to try it out for yourself, there are plenty of free games available on Steam that you can use to do this.

[NKlint]

I'm not going to get into it but the only reasons I can realistically think someone wouldn't like Steam is if they:

Don't have any internet access, at all, ever. i.e. no one on this forum.
Pirate their games.


They have a slow connection, like Dial-up or have for some reason exceeded the terms of their broadband's F.A.P. and they are forced to download an enormous patch full of Multi-player fixes for their game before they're permitted to play the Single-Player version

Not like I'm bitter or anything, I'm hoping that Cable or DSL moves into my area soon. :D

[slickr]

Disable Startup: Settings -> Interface -> Run Steam when Windows Starts.
Disable auto connect online: File -> Go Offilne.



As far as I'm aware, each Steam game is sold in box format as well.
If you want to play a game that is "tied to Steam" you can click on the desktop shortcut just like you would for any game you have ever installed, and if Steam is required it starts in the background.
I'm not sure why you would need to patch a game with a normal patch, I haven't seen a developer release a stand alone patch without releasing the same thing on Steam, even if they did it would be outside the control of Steam anyway.
You never have to connect to Steam for single player if you choose not to, see above for starting in offline mode.



Uhh, Steam by itself DOES have tons of functionality but I can see that is not the point you are trying to make. You are absolutely correct that some games have more interactive options through Steam than others but that is the developers decision not Valve's. You may notice a lot of games just released in box format end up on Steam at some point anyway (the reasons why they end up on Steam are irrelevant for this conversation) but this scenario obviously shows the game wasn't written with the Steam backbone in mind. If they did however expect to use Steam from the start I am sure they would have taken the chance to add more content to the game utilising this technology.



I don't personally have solid proof of what information Valve collect (although I have no proof of what any company collect from me on my PC) but taking their word that it's just hardware information, I think that is a brilliant idea and I would opt into telling any gaming company what hardware I use to play games (I haven't checked if you can opt in or out via the program settings or during install because honestly I've never felt the need to hide wha type of PC I use).

Lets have a look at what this means for them the developers and us the consumer. When they go to make a game they arn't going to make the system requirements something so powerful they alienate most of their users, they want to sell as many games as possible.
Because this company collects this information and uses it to judge how resource intensive their games are (and it's not just their games, anyone including other developers can look at this information) then we the consumer win because those with lower end PC specs will be able to play a game they potentially would have missed out on were this information not available.

I am happy to explain anything else you are unsure about but honestly the easiest way to see why Steam is by far the best DRM you could possibly ask for is to try it out for yourself, there are plenty of free games available on Steam that you can use to do this.

Again, its not weather or not you can actually disable steam from start-up, heck if US ministry of defense can be hacked sure thing that steam can be disabled to not auto-start, the point being is that the program itself does not have it optional, or don't have options to do so from the program itself.
And some people just don't know how to manually disable it from starting, heck i bet there are some that don't even know how to disable it, if there was a build-in option in steam.

And I'm not talking about starting a game from the icon, thats silly just assuming i would say that, i'm talking about say using steam to download the game, say the game is not available in my country from shops and i choose to download it from steam, if i uninstall steam I would not be able to play the game!

The other thing is say i didn't pay my cable internet for the month and get disc, i can't just go download the normal patch for the game on a different computer and apply it to the game, since its steam-tied.

And steam as I said previously does not have online functionality.
You can't build a game without online feature and go license steam technology and have the online functionality, it has to be build within the game specifically.

As far for the info gathering where do you think steam gets all that hardware info from?

[Grug]

Steam is used to digitally distribute games, like for people that can't buy them normally. It's better than buying them at a store because A, it's usually cheaper, B. The money goes to the Developers instead of the store. And C. Logging into steam is to prevent piracy.

[korialstraz]

That's about everything that happened during the weekend and there's not a thing anyone can say to make me change my mind about steam, either it's spyware or it's **** and I can't think of any other way to explain a program creating that much traffic while you're not even doing anything.

So just because some people don't know much about comps you hate steam... :whistling:

[Killafornia]

Again, its not weather or not you can actually disable steam from start-up, heck if US ministry of defense can be hacked sure thing that steam can be disabled to not auto-start, the point being is that the program itself does not have it optional, or don't have options to do so from the program itself.
And some people just don't know how to manually disable it from starting, heck i bet there are some that don't even know how to disable it, if there was a build-in option in steam.

What he said is how you disable it through the program. You go to settings ON STEAM, and then you click the INTERFACE tab, and then you uncheck the 'Run when windows starts' setting. Again this is on steam, no third party programs or 'hacking' of any kind.

Seems to be people with limited knowledge on computers that hate steam.


As far for the info gathering where do you think steam gets all that hardware info from?

It's simple, for a few years they where sending out a request to people for them to do a survey on computer hardware about once a month. I haven't seen it for a long time, but I think they gave the option to allow steam to automatically collect hardware and I definitely accepted.

They've probably update their EULA now anyways so that using steam you agree they can collect hardware data from your computer. Which is a good thing. They want to know what systems they need to build minimum requirements for upcoming games. They aren't spying on you they make millions of dollars a year legit. They aren't collecting your bank account information to risk honest profit.

[Dahmer]

You might be the one with half a brain for not dling the driver until you get to the LAN party. Who expects to use internet at a massive LAN at high speeds honestly.1) I was downloading a driver for a friend mine of that just got a new graphics card.
2) I've been going to that same lan party for 4 years now and this is the first year that I've had such problems doing anything online. I didn't expect to download at a high speed, I just expected to be able to download before the lan was over and even that turned out to be more of a dream than reality.

First time was a few years ago with around 1200 people, not too many people playing counterstrike then, mainly unreal tournament, quake, couple rts games and racing games. Connection was fine, various sites worked 80-90% of the time, my msn was online almost the whole weekend.
One year there were bit over 1400 people and just about the same thing, everything worked fine then.
Now the last couple of times connection was just...****ty, you were lucky to get to a site and you were lucky to be online with msn for more than 5 seconds while there were a lot less people (700-800) and the main difference is that there were way more people that played counterstrike and had steam installed...

Now what is steam? According to people here it's mainly to buy/download games, right? Well then answer me one very simple question :
Why is it creating a lot of traffic when they're not even downloading any games?

I hate steam because I love my connection and don't want to see it get raped by a program causing too much unneeded traffic. I had it on my pc once for a few days, uninstalled it and it's never coming back.

[Phranx]

Again, its not weather or not you can actually disable steam from start-up, heck if US ministry of defense can be hacked sure thing that steam can be disabled to not auto-start, the point being is that the program itself does not have it optional, or don't have options to do so from the program itself.
And some people just don't know how to manually disable it from starting, heck i bet there are some that don't even know how to disable it, if there was a build-in option in steam.

That is the thing, people have repeatedly stated that Steam has it's own option to disable itself on startup, it also has it's own option to not connect to the internet when you start it manually. I have personaly said this 3 times now in this thread.

And I'm not talking about starting a game from the icon, thats silly just assuming i would say that, i'm talking about say using steam to download the game, say the game is not available in my country from shops and i choose to download it from steam, if i uninstall steam I would not be able to play the game!

I'm not sure if you are saying that Steam is a good thing or a bad thing here, it's letting you leagally purchase a game that you couldn't buy any other way, if this was a reason for you to NOT like Steam then I would say having it installed was a small price to pay.

The other thing is say i didn't pay my cable internet for the month and get disc, i can't just go download the normal patch for the game on a different computer and apply it to the game, since its steam-tied.

If you lose your internet connection for whatever reason you wouldn't need a patch that bad anyway, you'd be playing in Single Player mode till you get it back. Lets assume you were planning on countering my point with the fact a friend might come over for a LAN whilst your net is down buy they already have the new patch so your games are not compatable. There is even an option in Steam to backup any and all your Steam games into a one click installer. All you would have to do is backup your friends copy and install it yourself, this process takes approx 1 minute to install.

And steam as I said previously does not have online functionality.
You can't build a game without online feature and go license steam technology and have the online functionality, it has to be build within the game specifically.

I believe your exact quote was "And last but not least is that steam by itself does not have any functionality." which I disagree with. You can start Steam and without playing a game, heck without even INSTALLING a game you can use the instant messaging, voice chat, online games store, community pages, etc. You can even mention the indirect online functionality like storing a permenant copy of all your games you own so you can download and install them on any PC in the world.

For the rest of the comment I already agreed with that, if the developers want to take advantage of the Steam online features they need to code around it. Again, I don't see how the option for extra online features available for developers would be a bad thing.

As far for the info gathering where do you think steam gets all that hardware info from?

Err, from it's users, which is exactly what I said. I also gave reasons why any gamer would want to participate in this information gathering.

The other issue that was brought up, the LAN party where everyone was getting slow speeds and the CS players were blamed. If it were my LAN I would also assume it was the CS players, but the only time Steam would be using data was as I said, downloading/updating/playing games. All the hosts needed to do is block ports that CS/Steam use and the problem is gone.

[Phranx]

They have a slow connection, like Dial-up or have for some reason exceeded the terms of their broadband's F.A.P. and they are forced to download an enormous patch full of Multi-player fixes for their game before they're permitted to play the Single-Player version

Not like I'm bitter or anything, I'm hoping that Cable or DSL moves into my area soon. :D

I feel for you man :(

With that point though, if you didn't own the game on Steam and you wanted the patch for single player you would still be downloading it but this time you would be downloading the exe from the developer's website. If the patch was enormous you would want to use a Download Manager so if your dialup drops or your connection times out you don't have to start again. Where as if you were using Steam then the download manager is part of the package, if something goes wrong Steam picks up the download where it left off.

Good luck with getting broadband in the near future!

[Srikandi]

I like the feature in Steam that lets you redownload any games you've bought that connect to Steam, whether you bought them online or on disk. I've re-bought games before because of a disk being lost or damaged, or because I had to reinstall and couldn't find the serial number. No more of that, thank heavens :) I'm glad the new Battle.net has this feature too. IMO that's a big plus for players. When I changed computers, getting my electronic-only copy of Peggle installed on the new one was no problem.

I also appreciate the fact that Steam stores certain game info online. I recently had to reinstall Empire: Total War (great game but very buggy and crashy unfortunately), and found that even though I'd scrubbed my save games, Steam knew what I'd unlocked so my progress was preserved.

That game also has a nice achievement system on Steam, and my friends and I who are all playing the same game in single player mode enjoy checking up on each other's achievements :)

Here's another plus to Steam. Whatever you think about its invasive qualities, it is a heck of a lot better than SecuROM and similar other DRM programs. SecuROM in particular can actually physically trash your optical drives. EA used to use SecuROM but they've recently started putting SecuROM-free versions of their games (Spore etc) on Steam. You might not like having DRM at all attached to your games, but so long as publishers keep using it, Steam is a lot less of a menace than most of the alternatives.

Looks like Battle.net 2.0 is gonna be Blizzard's Steam clone, with a lot of the same features, and IMO they could do a lot worse.

[Raging_Zealot]

i'm talking about say using steam to download the game, say the game is not available in my country from shops and i choose to download it from steam, if i uninstall steam I would not be able to play the game!

Thats why I don't like Windows. Say I install a Windows game on Windows, but then uninstall windows, I would then not be able to play the game!

Sorry, couldn't help being facetious. :)

[Zarniwoop]

There is zero chance they will make use of steam.

[blankblank]

I doubt it. Blizzard does not need STEAM. They already have Battle.Net

[[cK]Extreme]

Steam is used to buy/download games, good for that, I agree but there are a few things I don't get.
1) why does it boot with your pc by default?
2) why does it connect by default?
Can't think of anything else now, guess my mind blocked it out of my memory cause it pissed me off too much.

Never liked it and never will, it's almost as annoying as the piece of **** rockstar games thing that installed with GTA4.

Most every application known to man has an option to "start on boot". You have to turn it off if you don't want it.

Of all the stupid arbitrary reasons to hate something... lol

[Akse]

steam sucks.

blizz are not in team with valve so no steam for diablo3 obviously, they will have the whole big battle.net account system. 1 account for all blizzard games.

[Phranx]

steam sucks.

I totally agree with your logic and you make some strong points.

blizz are not in team with valve so no steam for diablo3 obviously, they will have the whole big battle.net account system. 1 account for all blizzard games.

Agreed, it's very obvious that Blizzard will not use Steam when they have their own version called Battle.Net. I guess this is terrible news for people like yourself who have strong feelings of hatred towards Steam.

[Kiroptus]

Steam is great and digital distribution is the future, deal with it. It makes more money going straight to the developers instead of having to be filtered by the publisher and also allows more indie games to hit the market and hit a bigger audience, which is a great thing.

Bnet 2.0 sounds a lot like steam, having digital distribution for all their games is great, hopefully D3 will be avaliable right away after a cd-key is bought (or after some days, like WoTLK, which took some extra days to go on digital distribution).

[Krugar]

Steam is great and digital distribution is the future, deal with it.

Here I request an audience, dear sir.

Digital distribution is one way. Unless you can guarantee in the future everyone will have internet in their homes and will have it at enough speeds to make real use of an ever increasing gigabyte count on game content. Until then, unless a company doesn't give a rat's arse to the important percentage of its player base who can't enjoy the benefits of a >=2Mps connection, I'm afraid digital distribution is just one way (a rather recent one) of doing it.

And Steam is only great for those of who do not fall prey to its limitations and awkward rules. On this account, I name my own experience and dislike (not hatred) for Steam. Sometime last year I bought Valve's Orange Box of a retail store. Only to find that I needed an internet connection to activate and start playing the game. Now, if I buy offline, I do not want Steam pushing me its online DRM nonsense. Particularly when I cannot get any more than 400Kbps on my internet connection, and especially when I didn't have an internet connection at the time, and definitely when the lettering reffering the need for an internet connection to activate the game isn't specific to its true purpose and goes on the back of the box in small type.

It makes more money going straight to the developers instead of having to be filtered by the publisher

Publishers do a lot more than order boxes, manuals, CD burning and printing.

and also allows more indie games to hit the market and hit a bigger audience, which is a great thing.

As a indie developer myself I prefer to publish my own games. Your concern with publishers is my concern with 3rd party digital distribution mechanisms. They ask too much for the very little benefit they deliver.

...

On a final note, I also like my printed manuals, cool-looking CD, game boxes and other content, besides playing just the game. I'd fear a Digital Distribution-only world.