is it just me, or does steam sound terrible?
actually i'm a lazy person and have not checked up what it actually is, but what i got out of your last posting (@ilsyde), i would never use a service like steam (my humble own opinion).
STEAM is basically an Online vendor. You can easily purchase games through this service, those are then tied to your account. It's more than that though, it can also be used for Instant Messaging, managing friends (
) joining multiplayer matches, joining a Community...
It's by far the leading industry online retailer, it has its supporters and haters. I'm in between
.
I couldn't get around using STEAM, Valve's games (starting with Half-Life 2) are all deeply embeded in it. I'm a Half-Life fan since the first hour, but looking at it in this context it could be more accurately described as powerful tool. What I mean by that is it actually makes sense in concordance with the Source Engine (it powers all of Valve's games), it was meant for modding and to manage game content but that's another story.
is it true that you can play it only when you are logged into your online account? why actually anyone would want to do that? just wondering.
You can use the client in Offline mode but you will not be having some of the proposed services that are available when Online. An advantage this system has is you can basically access all your games (purchased through it) from anywhere in the world if an internet connection is present. This represents a big reason for some person to get their gaming needs through it. STEAM is by far the biggest fish in the Online Retailer Industry and is the DRM scheme per se. However DRM has become a very trendy topic nowadays and Companies are willing to spend money on Protecting their Intellectual Properties with complex DRM schemes (like SECUROM's Online Authentification). Retail games come packaged with all sort of mess therefore purchasing through an Online vendor looks more and more like the logical next step. Today it's all about which version has the "milder" copy protection scheme, DRM free titles are few and very exotic.
They may be few but they're coming back from the deads! :
http://www.gog.com/I love this service you get the feeling like you actually own the games instead of "renting" them (STEAM alikes)
A growing opposer to STEAM is
Impulse, it's still a DRM scheme but you actually don't need the client to play your games. (each one is tied to your E-Mail account)
I hope the industry is moving towards adopting the DRM free philosophy, some stand out as being exemplary in this context: Stardock (responsible for the Impulse service) have released their games DRM free in stores. CDProject (Polish game developer, responsible for GOG.com) has patched out any DRM out of their game "The Witcher". They're few but services like GOG.com or Direct2Drive proposing some of their games DRM free and of course most notoriously Indie Developers (I look at you!) clearly hint at a turning point. It's a step in the right direction in my opinion
What I want to tell is that you have to be more vigilante when it comes to purchasing a game. There's no way around really you have to inform yourself about what protection this or that game is using or you may get some really bad surprises after purchasing your boxed copy!
Apologises for getting a bit Offtopic here (just a bit...)
