Their DRM is indeed just fine, its much more secure then cd keys. Next I’m going to hear “well they crack it anyways!” Tell me one game’s drm that hasn’t? Steam takes longer to crack if you haven’t noticed, instead of next day theres a crack it usually takes a few weeks or months on rare occasions. Also, its not intrusive, get the hell over yourselves. Compared to some of these DRMs this.. is nothing.. (Also if the guy that was ranting that he couldn’t validate his orange box happens to come back, next time instead of being a idiot, post on their forums or call them for support, I mean really, is it really going to fix your problem if you rant on random sites Honestly…. Kk thx.)

Also, I never notice steam running, it takes up as much resources as AIM, theres nothing to complain about there, its doing aims job and then some. So if someone so much as says something retarded like “I run tf2 on high all the time but steam still wastes resources!” I will boot you in the balls.

Another thing, to the people who complain its not dial up friendly, Dial-up is no longer the majority mr. 1999 or I’m ballsy ill live in the middle of a frucking desert.
(also rofls @ the guy complaining about the 4 – 6 hour download of total war on a 2 Mbit connection… 250 KB/s to download 15 GB, hrmm.. kk thx. youre an idiot)

I do prefer this over most other clients I have seen.. I have no need for x-fire anymore unless i wanna track my gamestats or talk to friends on there. Windows Live… yuck. I haven’t tried Direct2Drive yet but why would I :X

Also the friends (now that its finally working took them awhile!) is pretty awesome now, cept a few minor upgrades but hey. At least it has friends and its integrated and it works!

Hey hey, can’t forget games are always up to date. It’s not a bad thing at all, anyone who complains about their rights to upgrade a game or not, get over yourself.

The streaming issue he was talking about, go take a shower and clean your stinky ass, while it d/ls instead of being the impatient moron who clicks install on a 10 gb game then right after goes and opens the .exe and complains that it doesnt work. Most games are just too damn big to expect to stream, wow is the exception but also, is an mmorpg. You really cant expect to stream counter strike.. You need 90% of the files before you can even start it which is the base engine and skins for the game. Maps i could see streaming them but wth.. it’s just 2 – 20 MB then. (per map of course)

To the guy who had issues with using his credit card because he’s from another country, I’ve had issues as well and god damn it, I’m not pissed at all about it, I’m more pissed that you are crying over them verifying it was you, I hope the next time that card gets used, it isn’t you using it.

So in all I’d say Steam is right on track, theyre keeping up with technology I’d say. It’s quite common sense how to operate it, sure it takes getting used to, but what the hell it’s basically AIM, MSN, and Yahoo, but prettier and for GAMING with no webcam and file transfer (security reasons, im betting for the transfers at least) The net is much much faster nowadays, sorry for the people who can’t get a better connection, This is a Download Distribution Platform after all, and it does it great. The fault lies in ISP’s not steam itself. Overall its a great tool, and I believe its doing a good job at heading in the right direction. If not, it always has half life to fall back onto anyway

I had some previous experience of Steam when I bought one of the FPS games from Valve a couple of years ago, I was surprised at how intrusive it was, but accepted that there was a price to pay for a popular game. The balance came down (just) in favour of the game.

This Christmas, I have been shocked by the dreadful consumer experience that ETW/steam now imposes for us poor punters trying to play PC games.

Time to play – from decision point/unwrapping to first play is a real shock. Most consumer propositions for movie downloads place this as a critical factor in the quality of consumer experience, and it is a key metric in preventing the desire to pirate content. I would put this metric at between 4 and 6 hours, with far too much low quality interaction in the meantime. This is over a 2Mbps network link.

To have to install steam, followed by a poorly designed user installation journey for the game itself is bad enough. It is then an awful additional surprise to be faced with a mandatory steam application saying that there is a further 2 hrs and 50 minute wait before the game can be played.

I had a better user experience installing Vista (which was the next worst installation UX I have had). I had to wait an interminable time for something that has been placed outside my control by a product team clearly far too interested in their own platform management than by the user experience.

I shall not be buying any games which involve Steam in future. If am given one as a present, I shall bin it on the basis that however good the game might eventually be, it is not worth the unpleasant half day to nanny the game through its pre-playing activities.

I understand that piracy is a problem, but when searching for comments about this game I found references to the fact that others are getting around the DRM. Clearly, the user experience for “legit” activities has taken such a hit from awful DRM and product update tools that is places PC gaming a long way behind any other platform, and on a par with a visit to the dentist. Go figure.