Yes, advertisement service. You do notice that every single time you start steam, there will be a lot of ads on your screen. If you like those ads, that is fine. I just don't like when a paying customer is forced to install adware on their computers.

But since you seem to know that those installs aren't forced, you might be able to tell me this:

If I buy a game from retal which has some sort of steam crap on it, do I have to install and register the steam ad service? If I don't want to install it, can I play the game? Can I sell the game or is it locked to steam account?

Whoa there, tiger. I think you know the answer full well yourself. Don't like the T&Cs, don't buy it.

Me, I'm perfectly fine with having some 'adware' on my system because it gives me plenty of other benefits- from sales through to friends lists, but most of all because it's already there as I already have a Steam account.

Hang on a sec- in another thread, you mention that you have over a hundred games bought through Steam, so obviously you already have the client, 'adware' and all. So what exactly is the problem?

The problem is still there, it is irrelevant if I do have the program installed on one of my computers. People should not be forced to install adware on their computers, just to play a game.

I know you are going to argue so I'll make an example.

I have steam installed on my desktop computer. Do I want to install it on my laptop? No. If I buy a game from retail, I should be able to play the game without adware on my laptop.

Your 'arguement' is bizarre. If you're calling for the client to be decoupled from the storefront, then there's maybe a case to be made for that, although I really don't understand what the problem is in seeing a list of games available for sale within a discrete application. In fact, I like seeing what games are available and browsing the store. If it installed some crap that randomly flashed up ads during games, then I can't imagine anybody being happy with that. But it doesn't, and offers a shitload of other features that I like. Put it this way- I actively avoid buying games encumbered with GfWL whereas I'm likely to buy a game using Steamworks.

In any case, don't the XBox Live and PSN dashboards do stuff like this- have store features and ads?

1. What ads? When Steam loads up it goes to the Steam store page. I don't think that counts as ads otherwise every home page would be counted as adware. Before that it may load some update news. Again, not ads. Otherwise, all digital download platforms would be counted as adware. And doesn't X-box Live have ads? Yet people also pay extra (on top of the game price) for that. You can even change what shows up on the taskbar in the settings so the store doesn't even show up. You calling Steam an ad service doesn't make it true.

2. That's the one disadvantage of Steam as a platform. Essentially, when you register your game, you're signing up and purchasing a subscription service for that game. You can't sell on your game as you've essentially registered for the service. For many however, the benefits of Steam as a service greatly outweigh the disadvantage of not selling the game on.

It's also worth remembering that when you purchase and register a game with Steam, your purchase ceases to be purely physical. You can't sell on something that's digital as their is no degradation in the product.

If you feel so strongly about it, don't buy the Steamworks game and email and tell the publisher why. If enough people do it, then publishers will move away from Steamworks. Frankly though, it offers so much to both the publisher and, most importantly, the customer, that a minor, practically irrelevant complaint like yours is just going to be ignored.

1. If those update news are the ones which tell you that there is a 10% discount on game X, they are ads. So is the store frontpage. XBL does have ads and I don't like them either.

But I did not know about that you can disable store (and propably those ads if they are "steam instant messages"). It was not possible the last time I tried to block those. You made me take another look so thank you. :)

2.

Yeah. Steam is DRM and a bad one. I don't want to support DRM. Why do you want to support DRM? Is there some reason for that? Why you should not be able to sell a digital download?

Do you really have over 100 games on Steam? Why, when you clearly have huge issues with it?

Just counted them, 108 games. That includes a lot of HL/HL2 mods and stuff. I buy some of the actually good deals and get a lot of gifts.