Grimrock

It would be nice, for once, to have a discussion about why some people don't like Steam without immediately descending into the "If you don't like DRM, you must be a pirate!" trope.

I totaly agree with the OP, no DRM. and no darkside ( steam )

I dislike steam because of their business ethics and non existent customer support, and yes I have dealt with their robot support, totaly and utterly useless.

The benefits and upsides of steam so wildly outweigh the downsides its just.....hell in 5 years ive never run into ANY of the supposed downsides. Sure theyre refund policy is wonky as hell, but ive never wanted to refund any game because i make damn sure i want to buy it before hand...even if i did want to refund 20 games and couldnt the amount of money saved due to steam would STILL outweigh those 20 games....hell i remember buying PHYSICAL COPIES in SHOPS and being told EVERY time "since this is a pc game you wont be able to return it" so this is no different.

Oh no muh freedom, if it was my freedom to keep my house id give a shit but it isnt. This idea that steam could take your all your games away....its just never going to happen, have you ever walked into a shop and had the manager run up to you and go "loloLOLoolOL you cant come in here because i feel like it" no. stopping people using steam is not in steams interest.

Karinas23 wrote:hell i remember buying PHYSICAL COPIES in SHOPS and being told EVERY time "since this is a pc game you wont be able to return it" so this is no different.

This is STILL true today, and digital is no different since most games require an account. Even GoG.com requires you have an account to buy games, if I remember right. It's the same with every digital place you buy games. It's like that, so you can redownload the game later and keep track that you own it. All that Steam does differently, is use it's own program to do everything easily without having to open up the browser and going to the store site.

Karinas23 wrote:Oh no muh freedom, if it was my freedom to keep my house id give a shit but it isnt. This idea that steam could take your all your games away....its just never going to happen, have you ever walked into a shop and had the manager run up to you and go "loloLOLoolOL you cant come in here because i feel like it" no. stopping people using steam is not in steams interest.

This is true too. Most don't allow refunds for 3 reasons.

1, any DLC, bonus content, preorder bonuses, and/or CD-Key and other 1 time use items would be locked to your account, non-transferable.
2, You could still have the game installed on your computer and play it in offline mode, and made copies of it onto a different harddrive or CD. This is how games get Pirated easily, especially on Consoles. Buy the game, copy it, then give the game back for a refund or less money but still enough to buy more games to copy and repeat.
3, The companies and Devs of the games lose money. When you buy a 'copy', they get the money from that 1 copy. But when you get refunded, trade it in, or give it to someone else; The Devs and Company don't make any extra money of that 'copy'. This is the big reason Console Devs hate stores like Gamestop that focus more on Used sales insted of selling new games. Because Gamestop gets little money from New Copies, Devs getting the money insted. But with Used games, Gamestop get 100% of the money off that 1 copy, multiple times if people keep buying and trading it back in.

Those 3 are the biggest main reasons PC games aren't refundable. Especially back 10+ years ago where the only 'defence' games had were a single CD-Key that once used couldn't be used again.

Jirodyne wrote:

Karinas23 wrote:hell i remember buying PHYSICAL COPIES in SHOPS and being told EVERY time "since this is a pc game you wont be able to return it" so this is no different.

This is STILL true today, and digital is no different since most games require an account. Even GoG.com requires you have an account to buy games, if I remember right. It's the same with every digital place you buy games. It's like that, so you can redownload the game later and keep track that you own it. All that Steam does differently, is use it's own program to do everything easily without having to open up the browser and going to the store site.

No, with gog you download it and do whatever you want with it afterward. You can throw your account away, you will never need it. If you keep it, it is just the convenience of a cloud backup. Steam on the other hands suspects you all the time of being an pirate and likes therefore to monitor the usage of the bought software everytime... or when you want to use your rightfully bought product without being under the eyes of big brother (or big mama), you have to ask before kindly (offline mode activation) ... if you don't ask for permission and gets out of the sight of steam, you will be rightfully punished ... by a non-working product! "Bad Boy/girl.... I told you don't run away without allowance!"

Jirodyne wrote:

Karinas23 wrote:Oh no muh freedom, if it was my freedom to keep my house id give a shit but it isnt. This idea that steam could take your all your games away....its just never going to happen, have you ever walked into a shop and had the manager run up to you and go "loloLOLoolOL you cant come in here because i feel like it" no. stopping people using steam is not in steams interest.

This is true too. Most don't allow refunds for 3 reasons.
[...]Those 3 are the biggest main reasons PC games aren't refundable. Especially back 10+ years ago where the only 'defence' games had were a single CD-Key that once used couldn't be used again.

Why paying customers accepting treated as pirate? We should not accept that... as also the "Gamers' bill of right" discourage this!

badhabit wrote:Why paying customers accepting treated as pirate?

Because not everybody who pays does it the legal way.

badhabit wrote:or when you want to use your rightfully bought product without being under the eyes of big brother (or big mama), you have to ask before kindly (offline mode activation) ... if you don't ask for permission and gets out of the sight of steam, you will be rightfully punished ... by a non-working product! "Bad Boy/girl.... I told you don't run away without allowance!"

Why paying customers accepting treated as pirate? We should not accept that... as also the "Gamers' bill of right" discourage this!

Childishness aside, I'm not sure what you're babbling about here. You don't have to put Steam in offline mode *before* you go offline. Every time my internet connection goes down (which, lately, is a lot as my ISP upgrades its infrastructure) I have no problem playing my Steam games without an internet connection. I don't have to do anything ahead of time. I have played many hours of LoG1 on flights (no WiFi). So FUD elsewhere, please.

I think GOG is great, but it is undeniable that GOG would not exist as it does today without Steam first having revitalized the PC gaming platform at a pivotal time that publishers were cancelling PC versions left and right and focusing on consoles exclusively.

I bought the TES Anthology from Target lol.

I still prefer physical game boxes/cd's over digital when possible. I do have a Steam account but it's only good for games that are small in their overall scope. Like Gauntetl 2014. That was cute, perfectly suitable for Steam.

mvdeckard wrote:So, enjoy your borked, virus-infested, outdated games, pirates.

My problem with steam games is that steam is borked and outdated. As a platform, it really needs an update to be comparable to other 2010 platforms (such as all mobile stores)

As for virus-infested, the grimrock version I downloaded was virus free because it was the legit GOG version, two days after release mind you, not really out-dated either.

My problem with steam games is that pirated games are invariably better, simply because I don't have to hassle with software I don't use (namely steam).
Rarely do I play more than 3 games at a time so steam is simply not necessary. It's a pointless system to me, personally. I'm glad you like it, but I'm equally glad I don't have to use it, even if it means "pirating" games which I bought to make them functional without steam.

I'm amazed the mods even allow some people in this thread to openly discuss how they pirate games - not exactly the brightest bulbs.

I bought LoG2 within 2 hours of downloading it. I don't think this is a bad thing to say.

Jirodyne wrote:

Karinas23 wrote:hell i remember buying PHYSICAL COPIES in SHOPS and being told EVERY time "since this is a pc game you wont be able to return it" so this is no different.

This is STILL true today, and digital is no different since most games require an account. Even GoG.com requires you have an account to buy games, if I remember right. It's the same with every digital place you buy games. It's like that, so you can redownload the game later and keep track that you own it. All that Steam does differently, is use it's own program to do everything easily without having to open up the browser and going to the store site.

Indeed and that's where my beef with Steam lies. I have a perfectly functioning web browser which I can use to download Grimrock from the HumbleBundle website. There is absolutely no reason to install additional software, just to play a particular game.
It's personal of course, steam seems to give great benefits to many gamers but I don't see the added value anymore. I mostly play single player games and MMORPGs, neither of those benefit in any way from steam. On the other hand, when playing DOTA-likes or online FPS games, steam is very useful.

To Steam's credit, as far as DRM goes, it's the least intrusive and most functional system. I'd take Steam over any other form of DRM. I'd take no DRM over Steam though.

any6 wrote:My problem with steam games is that steam is borked and outdated. As a platform, it really needs an update to be comparable to other 2010 platforms (such as all mobile stores)

Outdated how? And do NOT Compare PC gaming to Mobile gaming, or anything to do with Mobile gaming. They are not the same, do not follow the same rules, and Mobile Gaming is all about stealing your money without you noticing and has a completly different market. It's like comparing Youtube videos to Movies. They are close, but not the same. How one behaves is different than how another behaves. So far, I haven't seen anything wrong, for consumers, in Steam's store system except the very very VERY rare time where a game will have Description and Screenshots that are fake, and those games are usually taken down within a few days of that. One of the reasons why some games change their names, to trick people to looking at it again. But again, that is the fault of the Game Devs, not Steam, and they try to catch that stuff quickly.

So again, how is Steam Outdated? I mean, if you really absolutely hated it, you could just... you know.. Do research into games? What does Steam do wrong?