1-Lack of need to MANUALLY patch my games to latest version (installed game (almost) Always comes with the latest version preinstalled)
2-(Almost) All my games in one library (or whatcha wanna call it)
3-I have speedy internet connection: Can quickly browse, choose and download/install among my couple'o hundreds of games without having to find the actual disks themselves. (+no risk of ''loosing'' my game discs)
4-A decent amount of information about the game is quickly available via the games store page and forums, to which I can access using my very same steam account: A.K.A dont need to create a new account for every new game forum (not unless I want to do that, too)
5-Internet Connection: EVEN IF my internet Connection is down, I can STILL activate my steam client in ''offline mode'' and play my (ALREADY) installed games.
5-Crazy Sales
WHAT I DON'T LIKE about Steam:
1-What if the service shuts down: Ok, they will prolly warn us Before they shut-down, so we can all download our games to our harddrives Before it happens......... but imo its risky business. Coz, what if the hard drive (on which I have installed all my games) gets damaged?.............Ok, thats why I should ALSO copy all my downloaded games (installers) to a back-up drive. Ok... Now how the heck am I gonna find such a couple' of drives to install about 300 games x 2 and who's gonna pay for it ?
2-I open the steam store page;
Oh, here migh be an interesting game........ooooops! Its still in early access.
But here is Another one; ooooops, its shovelwere.
Yeah! Finally found an interesting game... dangit, early access again
And, this one.. it ain't ''greenlighted'' yet.
This one's shovelwere again.
And this ones practically an Alpha...... Kickstarter, perhaps?
Love Steam otherwise, though
BUT YEAH, I kinda tend to agree with OP, I guess.
I mean, Ubisoft installer, Origin, Steam, Blizzard/battlenet installer thingy, Perfect World installer etc etc etc... Feels a Little like soon every dang game (or at least Company) will have its installer/client running as a background application on your computer, eating Resources.
Suuuure, u can try manually disabling/enabling every time u need / don't need em,, (or change it from the options for each one)but meh,,, feels like a Little too much trouble.
And I recon some clients dont run on your computer all the time, they only activate when u wish to run a game that they are related to. But still,
IMHO, a few such clients (about 2-4ish) dont bother me much at all, but too many of em, and (again, IMO) it kinda gets a Little frustrating.
I don't miss Not being able to play a game because the disc is scratched or I lost the stupid key code the game needs to run or I lost the disc itself. Not to mention that discs and boxes waste room. Even with audio CDs despite the fact that I have many I have ripped most of them long ago and just listen on the computer. It's just way easier to have everything available to use without rummaging around.
I do get what you're saying about not owning the games but hey if they ever take my games away that is one time I'll feel 100% legitimate using a torrent site to get them back.:)
Originally posted by Edli People still buy discs apparently
you have no idea. You know buying digitally is actually renting for as long as the service is up, right? I personally rather have my disc that i will play regardless of situation.
Of course that doesnt include mmos since those are online only so a disc means nothing
Seems you have no idea either. But I do agree with you about physical copies.
Almost 90 % of the games I buy digitally I download the installers, dlc, etc.... to external hard drives or burn to disc in case I ever want to reinstall them later without a internet connection or new rig so I don't have to re-download. You can do this with almost all digital downloads.
The only time this is an issue is one of the crap games that requires you be online to play it or start it up. Other than MMO's I will usually get a crack that let's me play it without the stupid online requirement.
Originally posted by Edli People still buy discs apparently
you have no idea. You know buying digitally is actually renting for as long as the service is up, right? I personally rather have my disc that i will play regardless of situation.
Of course that doesnt include mmos since those are online only so a disc means nothing
Because there's no offline mode for steam, right? Right? Moreover if a service decided to close its doors they would likely create a way for players to access their games without the service. Moreover...stop buying discs. Unless it's a console game you have no reason to go buy the game disc from a store. Unless you just enjoy having the game case sitting on your shelf. Downloading through steam is actually faster these days. I downloaded Final Fantasy A Realm Reborn in about 20 minutes, fully updated and ready for me to play. Use a game disc and you will spend about 15-20 minutes installing and swapping discs. Then you will spend another 20-30 minutes updating because you know MMO's love to update.
I'm just sayin' discs are kinda last century. Just download your games and keep up. Eventually disc drives will go away entirely. What will you do then?
I do use Steam in offline mode But... it is still RUNNING as I play my Steam games, taking up system memory.
How would feel about "downloading games" if you were charged by usage instead of a flat fee? It could happen.
You have a very high "hope" for Steam (or any service) doing the right thing. There is nothing in Steam's agreement with their customers that indicates this action. Nothing. You pay Steam to rent the software they did not even create.
Discs may be "last century", but at least *I* can play my 20 year old games whenever I feel like playing them. How will your Steam games do in 20 years? 50? Maybe you do not care? Steam takes the control of your library out of your hands and "allows" you to play what you paid for at their whim. If that's the "new thing", count me out.
I guess if "swapping discs" is so disgustingly hard for you, Steam is right up your alley. For me, "ease of use" is not my top priority.
You're basically spending all your time arguing about a hypothetical future scenario that has no basis in actual reality. Anything could happen. Aliens could be monitoring your gaming patterns and could one day decide to internally detonate your gaming consoles. Should we worry about that absurd scenario too?
The future of gaming is content delivery and what better way to deliver it than a dedicated app web/app, I don't see this changing just growing. Steam is the closet thing you have to a unified game management platform but other publishes look at it and go, I want to be like Steam I don't want to just be on Steam. And there you have it.
You're basically spending all your time arguing about a hypothetical future scenario that has no basis in actual reality. Anything could happen. Aliens could be monitoring your gaming patterns and could one day decide to internally detonate your gaming consoles. Should we worry about that absurd scenario too?
That's basically the reasoning behind 99.9% of the threads started on this site. The rest are "news" related.
Skyrim, a game I bought and received the physical discs for, MADE me install Steam in order to play.
Kingdom of Amular, another game I bought and received the physical discs, MADE me install Origins in order to simply play the game.
Earlier this week, I got a hankerin' to try ArcheAge and to revisit some old MMOs I played about in.
Well, Trion now wants to make me install "Glyph" in order to play. No thanks. That means a look at RIFT is also out of the question for me.
Went to install Neverwinter and guess what? Perfect World wants me to install Arc. No way in hell.
So we have (that I know of): Steam (GENERAL) Origins (EA) Glyph (Trion) Arc (Perfect World)
I am sure that almost every single major company is looking to create some form of this for their own games.
All these "extra" software installations are ludicrous, in my opinion. They are used for one reason only: Marketing. They are not needed for DRM.
I refuse to log into Steam as "Online" anymore. The last 2 times I did, I had 3-5 pages of "PLEASE! BUY OUR GAMES!" ads. I refuse to hook up my X-Box 360 to the net for this very reason. I certainly do not wish to support Microsoft with their ad space selling.
Will I miss all these "great gaming deals?" Yuppers. And I won't miss them one little bit, since most new games I have tried pale in comparison to the old games I still have on disc and can play whenever I desire to. No big loss to me.
If this is the future of gaming, count me out.
Welcome to the age of the cloud. Everything is going to be stored in it, whether you want it to or not. It's the direction they are going. Physical media is going away, many new computers don't even come with a disc drive... and why should they, everything is either streamed or downloaded or stored in the cloud.
Sure you could stick your head under a rock and ignore what is happening, but in the end, you will realize that if you want to move forward, you will have to adjust.
Sure they all want their piece of the pie... it's just like the fight over media with Amazon, Apple, Roku, Sony, et al.. they all want you to use their little hub to buy things from and access things from. It's all part of the land grab in cyberspace... they need to get entrenched in the market now while there is still land to get. Games will eventually be swallowed up by the same media moguls that dominate videos and music. It's coming... and a lot sooner than you think.
I refuse to log into Steam as "Online" anymore. The last 2 times I did, I had 3-5 pages of "PLEASE! BUY OUR GAMES!" ads. I refuse to hook up my X-Box 360 to the net for this very reason. I certainly do not wish to support Microsoft with their ad space selling.
On this point you brought up, you can disable those adds. After starting steam go to Steam>Settings>Interface>Uncheck "Notify me about additions ..."
Originally posted by AlBQuirky I refuse to log into Steam as "Online" anymore. The last 2 times I did, I had 3-5 pages of "PLEASE! BUY OUR GAMES!" ads. I refuse to hook up my X-Box 360 to the net for this very reason. I certainly do not wish to support Microsoft with their ad space selling.
On this point you brought up, you can disable those adds. After starting steam go to Steam>Settings>Interface>Uncheck "Notify me about additions ..."
Thanks for that! I knew there was a setting somewhere as I had it turned off before I re-installed Windows 7 last month and subsequently Steam and all my games.
This brought up 2 more nit-picky things. 1) Steam will not remember my password, so if I DO want to log in "online", I have to get my password from my list every time I switch modes. Why have a "remember password" checkbox if you do not do so? 2) Internet access for Steam store links. I have to verify my computer EVERY time.
I realize that security is a big thing these days, but for one who lives alone and does not store financial info online, this gets really annoying, fast.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by Homitu You're basically spending all your time arguing about a hypothetical future scenario that has no basis in actual reality. Anything could happen. Aliens could be monitoring your gaming patterns and could one day decide to internally detonate your gaming consoles. Should we worry about that absurd scenario too?
That's basically the reasoning behind 99.9% of the threads started on this site. The rest are "news" related.
Yea, because an Internet company going out of business is so unheard of these days. Almost as rare as the terribly hyperbolic Aliens landing. Notice Homitu did not answer the question, but rather attempted to deflect it with hyperbole. And you ate it up
Then again, maybe Homitu does not play ANY games that they consider "old", whatever length of time they decide fits. Maybe in 20 years all the games they have now will never be looked at again, so they do not care one whit if Steam shuts down and they lose all their games they bought access to through Steam. Not everyone holds onto their old games. Who knows. They instead brought in talk of Aliens instead answering the very possible hypothetical situation presented.
There. I gave them an out
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
hmm ubisoft with their uplay were missing in the list no? ; )
anyway by now my net connection is too slow already - if it wasnt because you almost always have to download major parts of games after installation Id buy disc´s again honestly.
Originally posted by Hedeon hmm ubisoft with their uplay were missing in the list no? ; )anyway by now my net connection is too slow already - if it wasnt because you almost always have to download major parts of games after installation Id buy disc´s again honestly.
I don't have any Ubisoft games. I am sure there are others I did not list, too
All of my old games, I have the last patches saved on my PCs. Many games stop support after awhile. Bethesda has stopped supporting Skyrim, so I do not need Steam to "update" it anymore. I have reloaded Skyrim about 5 times already. If I could have loaded it from my discs, I would not have to wait the 1+ hours (for about 11GB) it takes to download it all from Steam with each new install. I could install it 3 or 4 times in 1+ hours. The DLCs, however, is another matter as I can not seem to get those on my PC as an installable package
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Agreed, it's an obnoxious trend that just makes me wonna crack games I own just to be rid of the idiotic platform requirements.
Every single big company wants to have their own sales platform nowadays, so you're stuck installing like 6 of them. Then they start to require you to sync to cloud etc. Or their service gets bugged and doesn't want to load, or they start enforcing region locks,...
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Thanks for that! I knew there was a setting somewhere as I had it turned off before I re-installed Windows 7 last month and subsequently Steam and all my games.
This brought up 2 more nit-picky things. 1) Steam will not remember my password, so if I DO want to log in "online", I have to get my password from my list every time I switch modes. Why have a "remember password" checkbox if you do not do so? 2) Internet access for Steam store links. I have to verify my computer EVERY time.
I realize that security is a big thing these days, but for one who lives alone and does not store financial info online, this gets really annoying, fast.
Man oh man, both of your nit picks have solutions, maybe you should check out the settings in steam and fix then before complaining about something that is easily changed.
Originally posted by Quizzical. But there is still a need for anti-piracy measures, and you can't really do that very well without some sort of online component.
If the game has offline/single player mode (which majority of games do) than it can be pirated regardless of steam, Uplay and origin. Even if a game is always online like Diablo 3 and WoW, it can be pirated if you can connect it to a private server.
Originally posted by Homitu You're basically spending all your time arguing about a hypothetical future scenario that has no basis in actual reality. Anything could happen. Aliens could be monitoring your gaming patterns and could one day decide to internally detonate your gaming consoles. Should we worry about that absurd scenario too?
That's basically the reasoning behind 99.9% of the threads started on this site. The rest are "news" related.
Yea, because an Internet company going out of business is so unheard of these days. Almost as rare as the terribly hyperbolic Aliens landing. Notice Homitu did not answer the question, but rather attempted to deflect it with hyperbole. And you ate it up
Then again, maybe Homitu does not play ANY games that they consider "old", whatever length of time they decide fits. Maybe in 20 years all the games they have now will never be looked at again, so they do not care one whit if Steam shuts down and they lose all their games they bought access to through Steam. Not everyone holds onto their old games. Who knows. They instead brought in talk of Aliens instead answering the very possible hypothetical situation presented.
There. I gave them an out
It's 4 pages of the same answer. I don't think you can claim your question hasn't been answered. As to your next what if...
20 year old games you can find free all over the place, if they were worth playing in the first place. Just last week I re-downloaded panzer general and fantasy general. Both free. Last year I found steel panthers. I'm not all that worried that a company will shut down and I'll lose my old games. Like most things, if I want it again it wont be that hard to find....way easier than finding a disc that's been sitting around in my house for 2 decades.
Originally posted by Homitu You're basically spending all your time arguing about a hypothetical future scenario that has no basis in actual reality. Anything could happen. Aliens could be monitoring your gaming patterns and could one day decide to internally detonate your gaming consoles. Should we worry about that absurd scenario too?
That's basically the reasoning behind 99.9% of the threads started on this site. The rest are "news" related.
Yea, because an Internet company going out of business is so unheard of these days. Almost as rare as the terribly hyperbolic Aliens landing. Notice Homitu did not answer the question, but rather attempted to deflect it with hyperbole. And you ate it up :)Then again, maybe Homitu does not play ANY games that they consider "old", whatever length of time they decide fits. Maybe in 20 years all the games they have now will never be looked at again, so they do not care one whit if Steam shuts down and they lose all their games they bought access to through Steam. Not everyone holds onto their old games. Who knows. They instead brought in talk of Aliens instead answering the very possible hypothetical situation presented.There. I gave them an out
You mentioned 20 years ago in a couple posts. I play some really old games as well and most, if not all of them, now require an emulator to run on. So you still have third party software requirements.If you're really fussy about online access and third party software you can buy games from Good Old Games. They have a downloader you can turn on and run only when you want to actually download games. They are all DRM free and other than many having to run on DOSBox, there is very rarely any other account management with the exception of online play. For example, if you want to play Neverwinter Nights in online mode you have to jump through a few hoops to activate that. You don't however need to keep a launcher platform running in the background.So you do have an option that is DRM and online free. They have classic games, new games (Witcher 3 and Wasteland 2), and a lot of Indies. You can even get old games on there that are hard to find anywhere else. Glyph is also a DRM free platform, just not a very robust one at this point. That is you don't need to have it running while you play, or have it authenticate for single player games.With that said your Steam, Arc, and Glyph complaints sort of fall on deaf ears to me. Companies want to evolve and streamline management of digital assets. It's easier to maintain a single launcher, point of sale, and patcher platform than it is to do so for every game. It makes it easier for them to market. If you don't want to adapt then play the older stuff, but your complaint is really a non-issue.
You do have a point, somewhat. DOSBox I do not a problem with. I think that may be because I accept that Windows 7 is not compatible. However, the old games I get from GOG.com are a one-click launch (using DOSBox, yes). If these companies gave me a one-click launch, I would not mind half as much.
When I played SW:KotOR (1 & 2) or Neverwinter Nights (1 & 2), and they were still supported, my games automatically patched. Older games, like Master of Magic or HexenHeretic, I would have to keep an eye on for any updates, and manually update them, true. There are better ways to "manage digital assets" that are not nearly as intrusive as they are doing now.
What gets me is this: Choices. You (and many other players) enjoy being cloud-bound. Great for you. What about us consumers that do not WANT this? Too bad. So sad. Suck it up. Adapt. Change with the times. This is NOT how businesses keep customers, "My way or the highway!" They are losing my business, albeit not even a tiny drop in the biggest ocean, and maybe some other players, too.
Your preferred way is offered. You're happy. Mine is not. What happens when they ask you to do something *you* are not happy with? Where is *your* breaking point?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I agree with the OP. I hate the ads and launchers. And I like to have a hard copy around of all my games "just cuz". I still have a Super Nintendo and about twenty cartridges. Only advantage to having a hard copy is you do not need to download anything (like an emulator in this case). Plus I think in order to play Star Wars Galaxies you need to have an original disc....could be wrong. Not all old games can be played without a hard copy.
The code of the pessimistic loner: "We unpopular loners are realists, who follow the three non- popular principles: Not having any (Hope), Not making any (Gaps in your heart); And not giving into (Sweet talk)".
What gets me is this: Choices. You (and many other players) enjoy being cloud-bound. Great for you. What about us consumers that do not WANT this? Too bad. So sad. Suck it up. Adapt. Change with the times. This is NOT how businesses keep customers, "My way or the highway!" They are losing my business, albeit not even a tiny drop in the biggest ocean, and maybe some other players, too.
Steam is just a less intrusive form of DRM but make no mistake DRM is the reason publishers want services like this. What sucks is The Witcher 2 was sold without DRM and on GOG and was still hugely pirated so I can understand publishers and devs wanting to fight this in some way. Better something like Steam than always on crap or big publishers just abandoning the PC platform altogether.
Of course that doesn't explain why MMO companies like Trion and Blizzard need their own launcher apps. Pretty sure that's just mainly about advertising. "Hey! wanna buy our other game while this one is loading?" It is kind of annoying but since Steam has lowered people's resistance to this kind of thing it probably is here to stay.
While it doesn't bother me as much, I tend to agree. I bought Bioshock Infinite's big, expensive collector's edition, which came with the discs. Lo and behold, not only did I have to run the key through Steam, but the discs themselves had to be installed through Steam as well... and turned out to be useless, since they didn't work anyway and I had to download everything anyway.
I completely understand where you're coming from. It's bloody irritating.
I agree with you and the OP. It's getting ridiculous. There are few more launchers I can name the OP is right.
And then big companies wonder why there is piracy...given most of the cracks remove the need of Steam/Origin/Whatever I honestly can't think why there is piracy.... lol joke
In many games its more convenient to be a pirate than being bashed by whatever DRM the corporation behind it came up with.
It takes too damn long to launch a game nowadays I click on Fifa ... i have to wait until Origin initializes and god forbid if i don't have internet connection.
Oh you haven't logged in steam the past few days? Yeah ... take this 60mb update before you can play your game for a good measure....
Best thing about steam and similar applications is that they keep all of my games under that particular umbrella patched and up-to-date. Nothing worse than remembering that game you loved a year ago and booting it up to install 12 months worth of content and bug fixes.
I am the Arch-fiend, the Despoiler of Worlds, and by my hands shall the false Emperor fall.
with only reading the first post I can say you need to do some research as to why companies do things like this (publish their own games develop their own game engines and so on and so fourth) to even have a remote understanding for it. Flat out its about money period the company makes more without using a third party to develope (through software such as game engines) or pay publishing fees and so on. Steam the best of what you mention with a decent reputation (for an example) takes 30% of all sales (yea they help indy companies get off the ground but think about that anything that you put on their site and sell they get 1/3 of) then consider the risk/startup development fees and overhead of the buisness itself.
This is millions upon millions of dollars were talking about if it was no big deal and some drm shit there wouldn't be any third party installers and so on like origin/steam/arc. I play games from all three of them and I don't even get emails in my spam folder from the publisher sites. Go back to your console and quit ruining gaming for pc's xP
What gets me is this: Choices. You (and many other players) enjoy being cloud-bound. Great for you. What about us consumers that do not WANT this? Too bad. So sad. Suck it up. Adapt. Change with the times. This is NOT how businesses keep customers, "My way or the highway!" They are losing my business, albeit not even a tiny drop in the biggest ocean, and maybe some other players, too.
Steam is just a less intrusive form of DRM but make no mistake DRM is the reason publishers want services like this. What sucks is The Witcher 2 was sold without DRM and on GOG and was still hugely pirated so I can understand publishers and devs wanting to fight this in some way. Better something like Steam than always on crap or big publishers just abandoning the PC platform altogether.
Of course that doesn't explain why MMO companies like Trion and Blizzard need their own launcher apps. Pretty sure that's just mainly about advertising. "Hey! wanna buy our other game while this one is loading?" It is kind of annoying but since Steam has lowered people's resistance to this kind of thing it probably is here to stay.
Must admit, when Blizzard created their own 'launcher' i was dubious, but at least with the Blizzard one, once the game is launched the 'launcher' actually shuts down, and does not run in the background (you have to select that option though).
On the other hand, Glyph and Arc are probably the reason why i will never touch any games that use those 'launchers' although with Arc my prejudice against that one was that when i tried out STO it actually logged me into someone elses Arc account, i could even see their PWI characters, which was kind of disturbing, though whether this was because i was playing STO through Steam and it somehow mixed things up with Arc, i have no idea, but i got rid of Arc pretty quick when i realised what was happening, and changed my steam password just to be on the safe side - i prefer the paranoia level of online protection
Basically if someone wants me to use their launcher now, they need to make it so that once the game is running the launcher is totally gone and not lurking in the background, and not only that, they need to make sure that its totally secure and not liable to 'glitch' in some way that opens your account, or someone elses for that matter, to unintended access.
Comments
My love of steam:
1-Lack of need to MANUALLY patch my games to latest version (installed game (almost) Always comes with the latest version preinstalled)
2-(Almost) All my games in one library (or whatcha wanna call it)
3-I have speedy internet connection: Can quickly browse, choose and download/install among my couple'o hundreds of games without having to find the actual disks themselves. (+no risk of ''loosing'' my game discs)
4-A decent amount of information about the game is quickly available via the games store page and forums, to which I can access using my very same steam account: A.K.A dont need to create a new account for every new game forum (not unless I want to do that, too)
5-Internet Connection: EVEN IF my internet Connection is down, I can STILL activate my steam client in ''offline mode'' and play my (ALREADY) installed games.
5-Crazy Sales
WHAT I DON'T LIKE about Steam:
1-What if the service shuts down: Ok, they will prolly warn us Before they shut-down, so we can all download our games to our harddrives Before it happens......... but imo its risky business. Coz, what if the hard drive (on which I have installed all my games) gets damaged?.............Ok, thats why I should ALSO copy all my downloaded games (installers) to a back-up drive. Ok... Now how the heck am I gonna find such a couple' of drives to install about 300 games x 2 and who's gonna pay for it ?
2-I open the steam store page;
Oh, here migh be an interesting game........ooooops! Its still in early access.
But here is Another one; ooooops, its shovelwere.
Yeah! Finally found an interesting game... dangit, early access again
And, this one.. it ain't ''greenlighted'' yet.
This one's shovelwere again.
And this ones practically an Alpha...... Kickstarter, perhaps?
Love Steam otherwise, though
BUT YEAH, I kinda tend to agree with OP, I guess.
I mean, Ubisoft installer, Origin, Steam, Blizzard/battlenet installer thingy, Perfect World installer etc etc etc... Feels a Little like soon every dang game (or at least Company) will have its installer/client running as a background application on your computer, eating Resources.
Suuuure, u can try manually disabling/enabling every time u need / don't need em,, (or change it from the options for each one)but meh,,, feels like a Little too much trouble.
And I recon some clients dont run on your computer all the time, they only activate when u wish to run a game that they are related to. But still,
IMHO, a few such clients (about 2-4ish) dont bother me much at all, but too many of em, and (again, IMO) it kinda gets a Little frustrating.
Just my two cents about the subject.
I don't miss Not being able to play a game because the disc is scratched or I lost the stupid key code the game needs to run or I lost the disc itself. Not to mention that discs and boxes waste room. Even with audio CDs despite the fact that I have many I have ripped most of them long ago and just listen on the computer. It's just way easier to have everything available to use without rummaging around.
I do get what you're saying about not owning the games but hey if they ever take my games away that is one time I'll feel 100% legitimate using a torrent site to get them back.:)
Seems you have no idea either. But I do agree with you about physical copies.
Almost 90 % of the games I buy digitally I download the installers, dlc, etc.... to external hard drives or burn to disc in case I ever want to reinstall them later without a internet connection or new rig so I don't have to re-download. You can do this with almost all digital downloads.
The only time this is an issue is one of the crap games that requires you be online to play it or start it up. Other than MMO's I will usually get a crack that let's me play it without the stupid online requirement.
You're basically spending all your time arguing about a hypothetical future scenario that has no basis in actual reality. Anything could happen. Aliens could be monitoring your gaming patterns and could one day decide to internally detonate your gaming consoles. Should we worry about that absurd scenario too?
The future of gaming is content delivery and what better way to deliver it than a dedicated app web/app, I don't see this changing just growing. Steam is the closet thing you have to a unified game management platform but other publishes look at it and go, I want to be like Steam I don't want to just be on Steam. And there you have it.
That's basically the reasoning behind 99.9% of the threads started on this site. The rest are "news" related.
Welcome to the age of the cloud. Everything is going to be stored in it, whether you want it to or not. It's the direction they are going. Physical media is going away, many new computers don't even come with a disc drive... and why should they, everything is either streamed or downloaded or stored in the cloud.
Sure you could stick your head under a rock and ignore what is happening, but in the end, you will realize that if you want to move forward, you will have to adjust.
Sure they all want their piece of the pie... it's just like the fight over media with Amazon, Apple, Roku, Sony, et al.. they all want you to use their little hub to buy things from and access things from. It's all part of the land grab in cyberspace... they need to get entrenched in the market now while there is still land to get. Games will eventually be swallowed up by the same media moguls that dominate videos and music. It's coming... and a lot sooner than you think.
On this point you brought up, you can disable those adds. After starting steam go to Steam>Settings>Interface>Uncheck "Notify me about additions ..."
This brought up 2 more nit-picky things.
1) Steam will not remember my password, so if I DO want to log in "online", I have to get my password from my list every time I switch modes. Why have a "remember password" checkbox if you do not do so?
2) Internet access for Steam store links. I have to verify my computer EVERY time.
I realize that security is a big thing these days, but for one who lives alone and does not store financial info online, this gets really annoying, fast.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Then again, maybe Homitu does not play ANY games that they consider "old", whatever length of time they decide fits. Maybe in 20 years all the games they have now will never be looked at again, so they do not care one whit if Steam shuts down and they lose all their games they bought access to through Steam. Not everyone holds onto their old games. Who knows. They instead brought in talk of Aliens instead answering the very possible hypothetical situation presented.
There. I gave them an out
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
hmm ubisoft with their uplay were missing in the list no? ; )
anyway by now my net connection is too slow already - if it wasnt because you almost always have to download major parts of games after installation Id buy disc´s again honestly.
All of my old games, I have the last patches saved on my PCs. Many games stop support after awhile. Bethesda has stopped supporting Skyrim, so I do not need Steam to "update" it anymore. I have reloaded Skyrim about 5 times already. If I could have loaded it from my discs, I would not have to wait the 1+ hours (for about 11GB) it takes to download it all from Steam with each new install. I could install it 3 or 4 times in 1+ hours. The DLCs, however, is another matter as I can not seem to get those on my PC as an installable package
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Agreed, it's an obnoxious trend that just makes me wonna crack games I own just to be rid of the idiotic platform requirements.
Every single big company wants to have their own sales platform nowadays, so you're stuck installing like 6 of them. Then they start to require you to sync to cloud etc. Or their service gets bugged and doesn't want to load, or they start enforcing region locks,...
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Man oh man, both of your nit picks have solutions, maybe you should check out the settings in steam and fix then before complaining about something that is easily changed.
If the game has offline/single player mode (which majority of games do) than it can be pirated regardless of steam, Uplay and origin. Even if a game is always online like Diablo 3 and WoW, it can be pirated if you can connect it to a private server.
It's 4 pages of the same answer. I don't think you can claim your question hasn't been answered. As to your next what if...
20 year old games you can find free all over the place, if they were worth playing in the first place. Just last week I re-downloaded panzer general and fantasy general. Both free. Last year I found steel panthers. I'm not all that worried that a company will shut down and I'll lose my old games. Like most things, if I want it again it wont be that hard to find....way easier than finding a disc that's been sitting around in my house for 2 decades.
When I played SW:KotOR (1 & 2) or Neverwinter Nights (1 & 2), and they were still supported, my games automatically patched. Older games, like Master of Magic or HexenHeretic, I would have to keep an eye on for any updates, and manually update them, true. There are better ways to "manage digital assets" that are not nearly as intrusive as they are doing now.
What gets me is this: Choices. You (and many other players) enjoy being cloud-bound. Great for you. What about us consumers that do not WANT this? Too bad. So sad. Suck it up. Adapt. Change with the times. This is NOT how businesses keep customers, "My way or the highway!" They are losing my business, albeit not even a tiny drop in the biggest ocean, and maybe some other players, too.
Your preferred way is offered. You're happy. Mine is not. What happens when they ask you to do something *you* are not happy with? Where is *your* breaking point?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
The code of the pessimistic loner: "We unpopular loners are realists, who follow the three non- popular principles: Not having any (Hope), Not making any (Gaps in your heart); And not giving into (Sweet talk)".
Steam is just a less intrusive form of DRM but make no mistake DRM is the reason publishers want services like this. What sucks is The Witcher 2 was sold without DRM and on GOG and was still hugely pirated so I can understand publishers and devs wanting to fight this in some way. Better something like Steam than always on crap or big publishers just abandoning the PC platform altogether.
Of course that doesn't explain why MMO companies like Trion and Blizzard need their own launcher apps. Pretty sure that's just mainly about advertising. "Hey! wanna buy our other game while this one is loading?" It is kind of annoying but since Steam has lowered people's resistance to this kind of thing it probably is here to stay.
I agree with you and the OP. It's getting ridiculous. There are few more launchers I can name the OP is right.
And then big companies wonder why there is piracy...given most of the cracks remove the need of Steam/Origin/Whatever I honestly can't think why there is piracy.... lol joke
In many games its more convenient to be a pirate than being bashed by whatever DRM the corporation behind it came up with.
It takes too damn long to launch a game nowadays
I click on Fifa ... i have to wait until Origin initializes and god forbid if i don't have internet connection.
Oh you haven't logged in steam the past few days? Yeah ... take this 60mb update before you can play your game for a good measure....
Best thing about steam and similar applications is that they keep all of my games under that particular umbrella patched and up-to-date. Nothing worse than remembering that game you loved a year ago and booting it up to install 12 months worth of content and bug fixes.
I am the Arch-fiend, the Despoiler of Worlds, and by my hands shall the false Emperor fall.
with only reading the first post I can say you need to do some research as to why companies do things like this (publish their own games develop their own game engines and so on and so fourth) to even have a remote understanding for it. Flat out its about money period the company makes more without using a third party to develope (through software such as game engines) or pay publishing fees and so on. Steam the best of what you mention with a decent reputation (for an example) takes 30% of all sales (yea they help indy companies get off the ground but think about that anything that you put on their site and sell they get 1/3 of) then consider the risk/startup development fees and overhead of the buisness itself.
This is millions upon millions of dollars were talking about if it was no big deal and some drm shit there wouldn't be any third party installers and so on like origin/steam/arc. I play games from all three of them and I don't even get emails in my spam folder from the publisher sites. Go back to your console and quit ruining gaming for pc's xP
Must admit, when Blizzard created their own 'launcher' i was dubious, but at least with the Blizzard one, once the game is launched the 'launcher' actually shuts down, and does not run in the background (you have to select that option though).
On the other hand, Glyph and Arc are probably the reason why i will never touch any games that use those 'launchers' although with Arc my prejudice against that one was that when i tried out STO it actually logged me into someone elses Arc account, i could even see their PWI characters, which was kind of disturbing, though whether this was because i was playing STO through Steam and it somehow mixed things up with Arc, i have no idea, but i got rid of Arc pretty quick when i realised what was happening, and changed my steam password just to be on the safe side - i prefer the paranoia level of online protection
Basically if someone wants me to use their launcher now, they need to make it so that once the game is running the launcher is totally gone and not lurking in the background, and not only that, they need to make sure that its totally secure and not liable to 'glitch' in some way that opens your account, or someone elses for that matter, to unintended access.