DosFreak wrote:

My solution: […]
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My solution:

1. Buy Steam game.
2. Crack Steam game.
3. Play standalone game. Done.

😁

Yep, this is what I do. Steamworks must be easy to crack because they come out pretty quickly after a game's release. 😈

Oh, for Steam, you really need four accounts. The extra account is the account you buy your games with. You then gift those games to the account you play on. Because if you ever have a problem with a payment, your account gets suspended until it's cleared up. And you can't access (play) any games tied to that account during the suspension. If the account buying the game doesn't have any games tied to it, then you won't have a problem playing. 😉

MaxWar wrote:

The short:
-Ugly bloated, useless programm.
-I hate useless TSR

It's ugly and bloated, but it does serve a purpose -- it manages your licenses to games. I'm not sure you can call it a TSR; it only has to be run when you want to play a game. It doesn't have to be run automatically at startup, and can be shut down when you're done.

MaxWar wrote:

-Forces you to put all the games together at the same friggin place.

Location doesn't matter because you use the built-in Steam Library to manage your games. And on the plus side, if you ever have to format/reinstall, backing up your games is as easy as copying your steamapps folder somewhere else, then popping it back into place. No reinstalling and no registry trickery required.

MaxWar wrote:

-Forces you to start Steam to play your Damn Game.
-You basically need the net all the time to play your games, Ohh but theres offline mode apparently! Oh yes? then why cant i simply but steam in Offline mode and be done with it?

Steam doesn't sell you games, it sells you LICENSES to games. So of course you have to run their client first, to validate your licenses. The Offline mode works, but you have to check in every once in a while to refresh.

Do you use Netflix? Do you ever complain that you have to log into Netflix to watch a movie or TV show? Do you expect to be able to watch Netflix shows in offline mode? Both Steam and Netflix are services that give you access to content, but you don't own the content.

MaxWar wrote:

-How you like automatic forced updates up your throat?

The Steam client updates aren't forced; you can choose to delay them as long as you want. Automatic game updates can be disabled as well, but they're one of the best things about Steam -- you don't have to screw around with patches. If you let it, it will keep everything up to date for you.

MaxWar wrote:

-Steam support team are a bunch of dicks.

I can't argue with this one. 😁

MaxWar wrote:

-Steam is basically Totally usesless : Its only good for achievement craving kiddies.

I already mentioned that it keeps games up to date. That seems pretty useful to me.

MaxWar wrote:

-DRM copy protection? My Arse, the games get hacked all the same as before. Its just more fun for the hackers, they like it even more when its harder.

Copy protection and DRM will always get hacked, but Steam's DRM is less invasive than StarForce, SecuROM, Tages, or whatever. It's arguably the "least bad."

Anyway, I'm not a Steam fanboy, I just wanted to play devil's advocate for some of these arguments.

Stull wrote:

And on the plus side, if you ever have to format/reinstall, backing up your games is as easy as copying your steamapps folder somewhere else, then popping it back into place. No reinstalling and no registry trickery required.

Unfortunately, there's no standard when it comes to storing saved games, so you'd better be darn careful what you back up when you have to format/reinstall.

It'd be nice if everything used the Steam Cloud for storage, I guess – except that the Steam Cloud has a nasty habit of crapping out in certain cases. (The Plants vs Zombies GOTY update comes to mind.)

MaxWar wrote:

The long ...
Well, It all began when i bought HL2 . Was never a big fan of HL so i bought it pretty late....

You might as well complain about Windows 7 after having a bad experience with Windows 95. 😜

Unfortunately, there's no standard when it comes to storing saved games, so you'd better be darn careful what you back up when you have to format/reinstall.

Yeah this is REALLY annoying. I'd much prefer that games just kept their save files in the game's own directory rather than under My Documents somewhere.

There is SO MUCH stupid shit dumped in 'documents and settings' these days. I don't even use it; I have a seperate drive for my OS and data and I save everything in a seperate folder and back it up on a flash drive.
I've been caught out more than once when I forgot to go through the 'C:\documents and settings' folder and copy any save games across to my other drive before reinstalling windows.

Thats about the ONLY thing I care about under that folder and its easy to forget.
Yes you can change the location of the my documents folder but it seems many games don't care and will still save stuff to the original folder.

For me Impulse had the best formula. You buy your game, you select where its installed then its standalone. End of the story. No need to load Impulse to play and you can move it around if you like. If you want to copy on another computer, you just reactivate it with your key. I have Oblivion Game of the year in such a package, along with almost 30 other games i bought off Impulse. Only One impulse account for Games, forum, support... It really had all the advantages of steam, minus all the inconvenient. Ok, i gotta admit however they did not have as much bandwidth as Steam and... No Atchievmentzzz!! But hell is not that a small price to pay to keep you soul pure? They were working on a special add on for achievements, voice chat etc... but it went down the drain at some point shortly before impulse was sold to Gamestop. I really loved Stardock, bought all their games and was really happy to support them. Too bad the impulse model and the ideals that were behind it did not work in the long run. It was too good to be true and they got SteamRolled ... However i am free of remorse because i gave them all the support i could.

I do love to buy my game direct download. Its steam i cannot stand.