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.