Re: Thank you for making LoG2 DRM-free and not requiring Ste
Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 11:40 pm
This thread certainly took an interesting turn.
Steam has some convenience features, but I will purchase games from almost any other source before I purchase from Steam. And some games, if they only available on Steam, I just don't buy them. GOG.com really is one of the better things to happen for gaming (though this GOG Galaxy stuff has me worried - we'll see how they handle it!).
Steam is a very intrusive program and you must have faith in Valve to use their distribution method. It has it's advantages, including it's convenience factors, but that comes at a price. I can understand people who have decided that the tradeoffs are worth it, but it seems a bit silly to argue that they don't exist.
I'm one of those people who likes to play games on their laptop while traveling or visiting relatives, but many times have been stuck because I forgot to enable offline mode before leaving for the trip. Good luck getting a secure internet connection on a train going through central California. I've also been unable to play a copy of a game because it was "disabled" when I clicked on it. As well I had several cases just in the past year where I would launch a game and Steam would tell me that it must be updated before launching (You can click disable updates, but some games Steam will not let you launch without updating), then for some reason the update would never download. Never got an answer from Steam as to what was wrong, but either my connection to their server was getting dropped somewhere along the route, or they were running maintenance, who knows. The point is that my ability to use product that I paid for is not up to me - it's up to Valve. With games on GOG, or like 90% of games during the 90's and early 2000's, I keep a digital copy of the install file on my RAID, including any patches, and if I want to play it, I just fire it up and play it. Visiting my folks for a week and have access to their PC? Just take whatever games I want on a flash drive and install them. With Steam, you have to first install an intrusive program on their computer that uses up system resources, then you have to download possibly 6gb+ of install files over the internet. That can take quite a while. The idea of "all your games in one place, whenever you want them" only really holds up if you're always using the same computer.
I won't lambast anyone for using Steam, but I do think that Steam is taking the gaming industry in the wrong direction - that is, removing power from the end user.
Steam has some convenience features, but I will purchase games from almost any other source before I purchase from Steam. And some games, if they only available on Steam, I just don't buy them. GOG.com really is one of the better things to happen for gaming (though this GOG Galaxy stuff has me worried - we'll see how they handle it!).
Steam is a very intrusive program and you must have faith in Valve to use their distribution method. It has it's advantages, including it's convenience factors, but that comes at a price. I can understand people who have decided that the tradeoffs are worth it, but it seems a bit silly to argue that they don't exist.
I'm one of those people who likes to play games on their laptop while traveling or visiting relatives, but many times have been stuck because I forgot to enable offline mode before leaving for the trip. Good luck getting a secure internet connection on a train going through central California. I've also been unable to play a copy of a game because it was "disabled" when I clicked on it. As well I had several cases just in the past year where I would launch a game and Steam would tell me that it must be updated before launching (You can click disable updates, but some games Steam will not let you launch without updating), then for some reason the update would never download. Never got an answer from Steam as to what was wrong, but either my connection to their server was getting dropped somewhere along the route, or they were running maintenance, who knows. The point is that my ability to use product that I paid for is not up to me - it's up to Valve. With games on GOG, or like 90% of games during the 90's and early 2000's, I keep a digital copy of the install file on my RAID, including any patches, and if I want to play it, I just fire it up and play it. Visiting my folks for a week and have access to their PC? Just take whatever games I want on a flash drive and install them. With Steam, you have to first install an intrusive program on their computer that uses up system resources, then you have to download possibly 6gb+ of install files over the internet. That can take quite a while. The idea of "all your games in one place, whenever you want them" only really holds up if you're always using the same computer.
I won't lambast anyone for using Steam, but I do think that Steam is taking the gaming industry in the wrong direction - that is, removing power from the end user.