Steam..the death of the PC as a games platform.

[captgolightly]

Steam is a NIGHTMARE ...if you want to spend weeks trying to play a game you've bought then make it a STEAM controlled game!!!...I remember the old days when I actually OWNED the games I BOUGHT and could play them when I chose to. How did these people manage to muscle into so many games and take control of them?..they are so paranoid about people pirating games which are mostly just a couple of bucks anyway they make it virtually impossible for the purchasers to play them too...RIDICULOUS! They insist on you spending hours installing Steam this, that, and the other, which you want absolutley nothing to do with before you can play your own game and then because of them it mostly doesn't work anyway..I have spent HOURS messing around trying to get stuff to work simply because of Steam..I shall avoid any game bearing the Steam logo in the future.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Publicado originalmente por Mudskipper:

Concurrent Steam Users
Current: 4,260,440
Peak: 6,309,117

Just sayin'.

This.

Steam has over an estimated 100 million users. It has helped the PC gaming industry thrive and be more competitive, not killed it or slowed it down.

You can't judge the PC gaming industry on just your experience, especially when far more have has great success with Steam.

[VisciousFishes]

@ o/p - a case in point in Steams favour - A friend of mine recently bought the Elder Scrolls Anthology for his new gaming p.c. and Morrowind had problems from disk but about an hour later after waiting on a slow line, the Steam install worked first time of trying. This says it all. The disc is no longer king.

I do prefer to have a physical disk version myself, having owned a few playstation 2's in the past I miss my shelf of games. The online DRM system is here to stay unfortunately but, the reason that more games appear on Steam than any of the other services is because of the success of it. You can't fault the game devs for opting for something that maximises their profits and choosing a popular system. At first I hated Steam when I started to use it two years ago and then I embraced it. Now, I take advantage of the sales and still find the physical disk something I want. I don't believe that Steam should be more expensive than a shop but then, none of the other services are as competatively priced as steam - case in point - digital deluxe versoins costing £60 stating they have "extras" that are nothing more than pdf versions of physical format books/comics.

Also, O/P - I take it you don't actually read the EULA that comes with any of the games you've "bought" because you'd soon realise (which is something console owners don't) that you don't actually own any piece of software that you use. You have a licence to be a user of the software product but at no point in the transaction are actually becoming a legitimate "owner". May I wish you luck in buying games without the Steam logo or any other form of DRM. Perhaps you could try buying games exclusively from pre-2006?

[Smilodon]

Publicado originalmente por captgolightly:

I remember the old days when I actually OWNED the games I BOUGHT

It hasn't worked like that with any game for a long time. It doesn't have anything to do with Steam. Even in games where you buy the disk, if you read the disclaimers, they're just licensing the software to you, while they maintain ownership of it. Hooray for a capitalist economy's legal BS.

[Panique]

Buying the disk still means you own a physical copy of it, rather then a digital copy. Thats the point he was making.

[TastyToast]

most games you can just goto a store and buy a disc if you want to.

[Panique]

Yes but its dwindling, I remember going to GAME, before that Electronic Boutique and it was packed to the rafters with PC games, look in most shops and its a very small ammount, you can still get them on Amazon, but its all going digital.And pc games are becoming overshadowed by Consoles, Maybe the next generation of consoles will be download only. They are hinting at it.

[TastyToast]

Publicado originalmente por Cheza:

Yes but its dwindling, I remember going to GAME, before that Electronic Boutique and it was packed to the rafters with PC games, look in most shops and its a very small ammount, you can still get them on Amazon, but its all going digital.And pc games are becoming overshadowed by Consoles, Maybe the next generation of consoles will be download only. They are hinting at it.

i dont remember that the same way. PC has always had a small section in the back of stores. game stores have always been wall to wall console games.

[Panique]

NO, im talking early 90s, even before playstation came out, look at shows like Cybernet, 90% of the games reviewed where PC-CD rom. Console games grew as more and more consoles came out and the PC section shrank.

[ReBoot]

It's not like Steam prevents you from going to retail stores.

[Panique]

ReBoot I think part of his point was when you now buy a pyshical copy of a game you have to sign up to steam, even if you dont want to use any of the online features of the game. I can understand frustration at this, but as I said before its the way its gone.

[TastyToast]

early 90s i remember having to special order PC games because no one stocked them.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

The good old days of PC gaming was fantastic, I just loved going to the store where there is only a tiny shelf of PC games.

[Panique]

Maybe you did, even then they stocked mainstream games, anything out the ordinary was probably not stocked.

[TastyToast]

maybe it was different in large cities but where i lived there was an EB games and a walmart. lol

[Panique]

not really I live in the UK and the local games shop early 90s was stocked up 90% with PC games. Then it was after the release of the PS2 and Xbox that the selection was visibly dwindling. About 2007 there was 1 shelf left for PC games, now a very small selection of mainstream titles.