I only buy games with DRM. If games don't have any DRM I download them instead.

lol

lol

lol

And it's people like you who have bent over and purchased Microsoft's Xbox that have supported the consolification of PC gaming. 

You'd rather kiss up to Microsoft (oh please game companies, dumb my games down to shit!) instead of fighting for quality, and technological advancement.

You have no right to complain.

That.

*I recall all the steam is crap stuff when HL2 released :p... the horse of troy that this was worked quite well indeed*

Ah the earliest days were something. I remember it taking FOREVER just to load up Half-Life 2 for the first time as well as taking forever just to load the next level. 

It's crazy that it's gone from supporting Valve's back catalog and Half-Life 2 to what it is now.

There are very, very few PC game companies that have a DRM-free policy. If you were to simply not buy games without any DRM at all, you wouldn't have a whole lot to choose from (unless you pirate). I have financially supported companies in the past that implement DRM but you do the same and you LIKE IT. You like being violated and taken advantage of by these companies. That's the difference between you and me. You are paying money (and even voice your support for this scheme) to companies that implement a draconian Steam DRM that removes your right to resell a game (taking away any true ownership over the game). That is even worse than the standard disc check DRM you find with most PC games and with console games. And if I do buy a PC game with a standard disc check, I'll crack it and no worries. I still retain true ownership over my copy of the game. The Disc check DRM is probably the least of the DRM evils since usually it can be circumvented easily anyway. Yeah sure it's illegal but you aren't risking anything by downloading a crack from a website (lol @ the praying to god nobody finds out comments). Now downloading ISOs off torrents, that's risky. But not downloading directly via http.

And even when I don't crack or mod to get past the disc check (ie. I don't mod my 360 so I use the legitimate discs for that all the time), it's not a big deal having to put the disc in your drive every time you want to play. I'm not phobic to the concept of physical activity. At least you still own the thing and I have never once damaged a game disc to the point of rendering it unplayable. Not once ever. It's nice having a real collection and knowing that if you ever need money one day for something, you can always sell your old games and come up with the money. And it's nice being able to rent games instead of paying $50+ for games that you might not end up liking anyway (oh what's that? You can't sell your $50 Steam game that ends up dissapointing you? Too bad. First-sale doctrine Nazi Jabba the Hutt says no resale for you!) What if one day you had a car accident, you lost a lot in potential wages and you had to start selling things in order to make ends meet? You know how much all your Steam games would be worth in that kind of scenario? ZILCH. NADA. NOTHING. You don't truly own those games. At least you can sell your retail console games and some of your retail PC games still (I say some because lots of retail PC games unfortunately force you to permanently tie your serial key to your account, making it worthless as a sellable asset).

And boy have I ever heard some really bad horror stories related to Steam. I remember some guy mentioning online in a forum that Valve closed his account after using Steam for FOUR YEARS and lost ALL of his games because they suspected that the account was being hijacked by someone else. Now that guy can't get back his account and his games. He's fucked. That's what happens when you don't truly own your games. If that's what you want the future of gaming to be, then fine. Drink the Valve/Steam koolaid.

And I do vote with my wallet... by not buying any Steam games. I have yet to buy a Steam game. I considered doing so one time (Vampire Bloodlines at $20) because the game was hard to find in physical form and I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to get by the game's DRM after trying to pirate it but decided not to buy it because I wasn't exactly desperate to play the game. So I went without the game. I have only bought a grand total of five digitally distributed games ever (none from Steam, 1 from another PC DD service, 3 from XBL, 1 from XNA). I mainly avoid buying digitally distributed games. The cost-benefit analysis would have to heavily weigh into the pros for me to consider going DD. ie. If it's a digitally distributed-exclusive game that I really want to play (or the digitally-distributed version has a feature that I really wanted. ie. online multiplayer matchmaking) or the game is so stupidly cheap that it doesn't matter.

Ideally, the Steam business model won't be infecting the console game market. But I have a feeling it's only a matter of time. Because gamers are foolish enough to think that you are doing them a favor by taking away their consumer rights provided that you sweeten the pot (No disc checks! Oh look, achievements! Friends lists!) Achievements and community integration are great but it's not necessary to enjoy a quality gaming experience. At the end of the day, achievements are just e-peen and if you want to keep in touch with your gaming friends, exchange IM screenames and use IM for communication. And I've already gone over disc checks. There is a strong used games and rental culture in console gaming so hopefully they won't embrace and accept digital distribution. They have allowed XBLA/PSN/Wiiware and DLC to creep in unfortunately but Xbox 360 On Demand games have largely been rejected thankfully.

At the end of the day, you're not paying to buy. You're paying FULL PRICE to RENT. That's what you get with Steam. God help you if you ever need to come up with money fast. You won't have any games to sell to bail you out. That's the benefit of owning actual physical property. You have assets that you can turn into capital when needed.

Twistedpixel said: Valve ported their games to Mac before the PS3 which makes them incredibly......... wierd. Who does that?

I can't wait for Apple fanboys poshboys to invade VGC.

I just got a thuoght. It excited me sexually more than anything ever should.

What if Blizzard left Activision and merged with Valve? I swear I hear angel's sing out in an immaculate choir just thinking about the name Valve BLizzard or Blizzard Valve. I am willing to bet anything that if those 2 companies merged they'd probably be able to beat out Nintendo in everything except hardware sales, though they'd most probably drive hardware sales to surpass even the Wii.

Anyone else need a box of tissues after the thought, or was it just me?

Yeah... that actually didn't refute anything in my post and was a giant waste of time to read.  Thanks for that.  You ignored the fact that steam is actually a BENEFIT for me.

I don't even have to break any laws to do it either!

The crux of his argument is that buying games through Steam is "renting" games for the price of a purchase.

The other is that one can't sell games from one's Steam account, which is apparently something common for people to do within the PC gaming community that I wasn't aware of.

I did buy a used GoTY copy of Dreamfall once. Only because it pre-dated online registration/DRM.

If you can "gift" a registration code when you have multiple codes through Steam (done to encourage bundle purchases), technically you could sell them as well.

As for the whole renting argument, technically ANY software that requires any sort of online sign in or registration/verification process would be the same thing from the standpoint that the publisher could upload a patch that disables the game or the ability to save.

Permanent rentals I have no problem with.

I get that... but it's not really true anyway.

Your buying a liscenese, just like the CD.  The main difference is... I'm giving up the ability to sell the liscense... which I wouldn't do anyway... and also, is against the terms of most EULAs... so it's probably illegal to do so.  So you know... i'm giving up the ability to do something illegal for benefit.

It's one of the reasons you don't find Used PC games in gamestop anymore.

It'd be like if I got a foodstamp card that gives me more food, but it's DNA protected so I can't sell the card to someone else.

Also in turn I can download the game so long as steam is in buisness instead of the CD wearing down, or one of my jackass friends ruining it on accident.

As for selling gift codes... I bet someone made some serious cash off that when TF2 was like 67 cents.   Buy 10 of them, then sell them for 5-6 dollars a piece after the sale was over... gift to those people... and bam... easy 40 dollars.


CD checks can be cracked, and are.  PC selling is probably mostly already illegal, it's just they don't bother to track down ebay sellers... yet.

The point is, people like him are faciliating such "soft" crackdowns, which could become "hard" at any time.