1. Well, my PS1 games still work perfectly. So do my PC games, though they're not as old as my PS1 games. I know discs don't last forever even if they don't get physically damaged but it clearly takes a long time. And by the time that happens, the games will be available via digital distribution and they will be very affordable. Most PS1 classics are 5€ which is fine with me. 10€ for some higher-profile titles is getting pretty steep for me but it's still not that bad. As for PC games, it's pretty easy to make backups.

2. I've heard of most of them. In fact, I believe I previously stated preferring Impulse over Steam because it doesn't force me to run a program in the background - a thing I was surprised at when I found out. Anyway, games I've bought on Impulse include Titan Quest expansion, Supreme Commander expansion, Trine, Sins of a Solar Empire. All except for Titan Quest were bought during a good sale. A decade is a bit much for smaller services, I wouldn't be so sure about it. But the bigger ones could easily go on for a rather long time.

We get it.  You hate GFWL.  It's pretty generally accepted as a second rate service on PC and no where near it's XBL counterpart.

That doesn't mean you have to sound like such a preachy fanboy every damn post you make, Shio.

It's no wonder no one ever takes you seriously.

The thing is, more and more competition is growing in the PC DD services. Battle.Net will never leave, Onlive, Gaikai, Impulse, and now Paradox just announced a huge step up in their game.

PC is an open platform, so there will always be competition. PC isn't closed like consoles, so 1 Digital Distribution service will never rule the entire PC market. Your criticism is misguided, since the main perpetrators of what you say are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Your fear will probably never happen on PC, and even if it does, I couldn't think of a better ruler than Valve. Valve has always been close to the gaming community, and most of the talent hired by Valve were simple PC modders in the community.

Jacking up the price? You mean like the Console publishers did this generation? As I said, Valve doesn't have much control over the price of games. The only time I remember Valve asking to change the price of a game was to DECREASE the price of "Plants vs Zombies" in half!! Plants vs Zombies was $20 outside of Steam, and Valve only allowed Plants vs Zombies on Steam for $10. And guess what? It was Popcap's best sold game at launch ever, with half of the sales coming from hardcore gamers, in large part thanks to Steam.

I'm not even clear what was being discussed anymore. I wasn't aiming any criticism. Just promoting competition.

People keep bringing up the old saying "competition is good"

Yes, competition is good, especially for OPERATING SYSTEMS.  Steam is available for Windows and Mac, and probably in the future Linux.  GFWL will only be available for Windows.  

Thanks to steam on Mac they're already predicting something of a flourishing of Mac gaming in 2011. 

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/08/mac-gaming-renaissance-coming-in-2011-powered-by-steam.ars

That's the competition I want -- the ability to choose my operating system. 

Besides, if PC gamers didn't notice, MS isn't very friendly to PC gaming.

PC gamers should be HAPPY that MS is losing their stranglehold on PC gaming. With a little luck Linux will get some steam love and then choice of OS will boil down to security and stability and price. OH SHI

Edit: 

Oh  yeah, I guess I should add: steam is about to get some competition.  Difference? This competition doesn't think they can gouge PC gamers like console gamers:

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/google-shows-off-chrome-app-store-for-web-games-20100819/ 

There's a lot more to that upcoming app store than just simple little farmville style games, by the way. This is the WebGL and HTML5 Trojan horse and since Google is only charging 5% (as opposed to console fees, or other app store's 30%) fees and a $5 publishing price it's going to attract a ton of developers.  No porting needed, no thoughts to OS, just make it in a browser.  I imagine the next 3-4 years will see a lot of massive, revolutionary jumps in web gaming tech.

^ Now if we could only legally install a working copy of OSX on our non-mac machines.

The Chrome App store is not going to be anything big. I doubt we will see more than downgraded ports and farmville like games. Maybe some games like the Tycoon games. And web game tech is still very limited. HTML6 might give a better footing, but I dont see past Doom 2 in terms of games.

I agree in that I don't think it'll be impressive immediately, but it will definitely push the technology faster than it would have otherwise. That's the point--it's the tip of a major push.  I imagine we'll get downgraded ports and simple games, but at a 95% take for developers there's going to be a ton of people working on it and pushing it.

So competition is good, as long as it is competing against microsoft?

Why on earth would someone choose a crappy linux OS or OSX instead of the superb windows 7 just because of "some steam love"? Windows is clearly superior product for all gamers and maybe some day GFWL will be bigger than steam too. That would be sweet!

Why, exactly, would it be sweet?