Venting Steam
Submitted by Trigear on Thu, 02/15/2007 - 8:28pm.
Shamus over at Twenty Sided has made it pretty clear that he doesn't like the Steam gaming service.
Now I respect Shamus' opinion on a lot of things, but here I tend to disagree. I haven’t had a problem with it yet, and I’ve even considered rebuying some games that I already own, when they come out on Steam, so that I can have them available on Steam and throw out the game CDs.
It has its flaws, certainly, but I prefer the Steam distribution model to the CD (with 300-digit authentication key) model. All signs point to digital distribution being the method of the future. Bill Gates has gone on record to state his belief that HD-DVD and BluRay will be the last generation of wide-scale physical media, and that the future will be digital downloads. Granted, Bill Gates and Microsoft don't have the greatest track-record when it comes to future trends (”Internet Explorer? We don’t need no stinkin’ upgrades to Internet Explorer!”), but I happen to agree with Mr. Gates in this case. I think the future is going to move away from CDs, DVDs, HD-DVDs, and so on, and focus more on digital distribution.
And if that’s the case, let’s face it: we're going to be dealing with a whole lot of DRM. I hate DRM as much as the next tech nerd who follows the news, and I’d love to see a world that’s DRM-free, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. In the meantime, if I have to live with DRM, I'm going to support the products that provide the best compromise of IP-protection and freedom for the user? In that respect, I'm behind Steam.
I haven’t had a single show-stopping problem with Steam yet. Yes, it’s big, clunky, and slow to load. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass having to download your game every time you want to reinstall. And the constant updates can be a headache, too. But here’s what counts for me: when I want to play, it doesn't give me a problem. The Steam application improves with every update, and I've noticed the newest major revision is much quicker and less prone to crashing than its predecessors.
I have 6 full retail games or expansions on Steam, and I’d willingly buy more. That’s 6 gajillion-digit CD keys I don’t have to keep track off in case I want to reinstall. That’s about 36 CDs I don’t have to swap out of my CD-drive when I’m installing. That’s 6 games I don’t have to worry about having compatibility issues with in ten years, assuming Steam is still around then. And if it isn’t? Well, I’m not a whole lot worse off than I would be otherwise; I’ve thrown out dozens of my favorite game CDs, some that were less than 10 years old, because support for those games was no longer available and I couldn’t get them to work properly with the latest version of Windows. Bye bye Warcraft I and II, Space Quest, Quake, Dune 2000, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, and countless others.
And let me share with you a horror story about the more common method of game distribution: I own two copies of Diablo 2, one copy of its expansion, and one copy of Warcraft 3, all from Blizzard. All of those games use CD keys in their installation. Due to storage and moving issues, I’ve lost the CD keys to all of those games, and I can no longer play them without searching out some hacked CD key, and feeling bad in the process. The same would have happened with Neverwinter Nights and its myriad expansions, too, if I hadn’t stored those CD keys online at Bioware.com. I’d rather have a username and password, linked to a small amount of personally identifiable info (that could be used to authenticate me in case I lose my username or password over the years), and have access to all of my games that way, than to have to keep track of all the physical crap that comes along with gaming.
Sorry about the rant. I just wanted to point out that not everyone hates Steam. Some people prefer it. What do you guys think?
Re: Venting Steam
I've heard so many people complain about Steam and all of its issues. The only problem I've ever had with it is the "offline" mode; it's never worked. My internet connection is always active anyway, so it's never been a concern, just an annoyance (and a minor one at that).
Even the downloading isn't that big of an issue for me. Download software once and after that you can back up your stuff to CDs.
Re: Venting Steam
I think a lot of the complaints center around the potential that some day in the future they might decide to shut down the whole shebang and cut you off from your games. Honestly, I just don't see that as much of a concern. I doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon, and if it does, so what? There are other (maybe-not-so-legal) ways of getting access to the games I paid for, and if I got bilked by Valve, I'd have no problem exploring some of those other options. In the meantime, it gives me exactly what I want, when I want it, and more or less the way I want it. With one or two games, it's not so much of a problem carrying around the CDs, but when you get to the point that you've purchased half a dozen games (or more) on Steam, you're saving yourself a whole lot of hassle, what with the CDs you don't need, the CD keys you don't have to hang on to, and the reinstalling you don't have to do.
Remember when the best games used to come on one CD? Now it's more like 6 or 7. Steam is a better idea.
Re: Venting Steam
I'm certainly not in an uproar over Steam. Yeah, it does have its issues, but it's a great tools when I installed Half-Life 2 on the new system. You see, I've misplaced those disks and the 20(0?)-key myself, but thanks to Steam, I'm able to install if from the Steam window. A real convenience if you're scatterbrained like I am...
Re: Venting Steam
...and like I am too.