| darconi said: I'm not that big on computing FPS so not that familiar with Steam. Whats the benefit of being on steam vs general retail? Is it just piracy or are there other benefits? |
It is a lot of things really:
- Instant access to buy and play new games.
- Community features allow you to find out what your friends or "groups" are doing and chat/voice chat in and out of games with ease
- Demos, News, Trailers, etc...made readily available
- If you re-install or get a new computer you simply re-download the steam client and tell it which games to install from your list. Then you can walk off and when you come back all your games are ready to go without you having to watch over them.
- Some great deals, for instance if a sequel to a game comes out they will often offer a package deal where you can get all of the games in the series etc...and they occasionally do pre-order discounts of 10% on games.
-When you pre-order a game they usually let you download the encrypted version of the files and then when its officially released you can quickly unlock the files rather than having to start downloading them along with thousands of other people at the same time.
- Automatically checks for and updates your games so you're using the latest version, it will usually show you patch info when it does this.
- Stat and Achievement tracking similar to the Xbox Live service.
There is probably more but that is off the top of my head....
edit: bah, Naz beat me to it
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
