Poll on Steam service, and your thoughts!

Steam has made a name for itself for the past few years but I wanna know what you guys think about it.

To be honest I personally dont like a lot of parts that come with it. They seem to be really poor when a person has a problem, I sent them an E Mail days ago and havent heard anything from them since......And thats after spending almost £200 on games, and the customer service is pretty damn poor along with the forums, you have to make an account for your games, support and forums, wtf is the point? Why not one account to rule them all! (Lord of The Rings yes I know)

Also really hate how they seem to lock you down with games despite being overpriced for the most part, I can get most of the games from Steam for 1/3 of the price off play.com, and I dont have to deal with the huge download, poor tech support and no box to go with it. I just think its far to overpriced for little benifit.

Not to say all is bad though, the games 'seem' to patch themselves although to be honest some of the games I have ran look like old unpatched builds, guess its cool to download, and the community is pretty good for getting into matches and making buddys. Plus you can get some great deals at times.

So whats your opinion on Steam? Do you like the service as a whole or think that they need to sharpen it up?

No, I don't like it very much. I prefer to have enough independence to go out in the store and buy a game if I have to.

I wouldn't like to see one single company controlling all game sales.

Oh, and about the service, it's good, but needs to be sharpened up.

Steam is great. I like how you can get deals at times like 50% off and stuff like that. Though, I don't like the idea of one controlling the sales of games and I don't like to buy software without getting a box and CD or DVD. I like to have stuff.

I like it but the help service is poor.

Its good, but it still has a lot to fix.

I like Steam and use it frequently, but it still has some issues. First off, the servers can't seem to handle the load of 20 million+ users. There are often problems with downloading games or patches, with occasional stalls. Secondly, the currency conversion makes Steam games really expensive to foreigners. Thirdly, as others have mentioned, Steam prices always seem a little bit high, which is why I'm so happy to finally see some competition from other servicies. For instance, there are a number of things which I prefer from Impulse, an alternative digital distribution service which is quickly growing, such as their GOO-DRM and consistently fast downloads. That having been said, as a whole I would say Steam is currently the best digital distribution platform, offering the greatest selection of games with a slick user interface and some really nice community features. I wish more people would give other platforms such as Impulse and GOG a try though, they have gotten much better in the last few months!

i love it. i've been using it from the day of Half-Life 2's release, and I've never had any problems with it at all. top notch.

I like it. I don't mind not having a physical copy when I can re-download anytime I want. Plus no more lost CD keys or long install times. One thing that would be nice is if you could activate more retail games that you bought in the past before they appared on Steam. They allowed it with UT3, I wish they would with more games.

Steam is awesome. Ive used it for about 3 years with no problems at all (other then COD:WAW getting updates a few days later on the steam version).

Steam is friggin awesome and i dont see why people hate it so much, its never once caused any problems for me or my mates.

I use steam to buy games probably about half the time, while the other half are store bought versions. Never had a problem backing up or playign steam games.

The only gripe I have with steam is it's handling of 3rd party games and patches. Not all have issues, but some you have to wait days(even weeks) for patches to hit. I am not sure if it's always steam's fault, but either way the end result is retail people get patches right away and steam users sometimes have to wait. I voted "good" anyways, because overall I am pleased.dnuggs40

Its more the company who made the game then it is steam from what ive heard. I know for COD:WAW, Tryarch/activision has to send the patch to steam, so steam cant post it until they get it from the company. But i do agree with ya, waiting for a patch for some 3rd party games is annoying.

steam has worked very well for me since I had it for about 3 months now. It was down once for about 10 minutes. Other than this its been flawless. I just wish they had more sports games. I like the fact you don't have to put in a disc.

[QUOTE="dnuggs40"]The only gripe I have with steam is it's handling of 3rd party games and patches. Not all have issues, but some you have to wait days(even weeks) for patches to hit. I am not sure if it's always steam's fault, but either way the end result is retail people get patches right away and steam users sometimes have to wait. I voted "good" anyways, because overall I am pleased.kozzy1234

Its more the company who made the game then it is steam from what ive heard. I know for COD:WAW, Tryarch/activision has to send the patch to steam, so steam cant post it until they get it from the company. But i do agree with ya, waiting for a patch for some 3rd party games is annoying.

I've only had the late patch issue once, and I can't remember what game it was for. The Steam app itself is really nice, and their recent decisions when it comes to putting games on sale has been superb. Best part about Steam is the games no limit to how many times you can re-download them.

I would love to see a list of "known issues" on the game page.

Its decent. But the prices are many times here, much higher then if you go out and buy a game, or order it from a store on the net.

Not to mention, the download speeds on steam arent very consistent. Sometimes its very fast, but many times its extremely slow.

Then there is all the bugger updating. Steam updating all the time, and then a message, steam is updated, need to restart steam! Or it suddenly updating games you arent playing at the moment.

I like it mostly for their weekend deals. I like buying great games that might not even really be in stores anymore for $5 or $10 and having the convenience of not having more discs cluttering up the place. If I buy something full price I tend to buy it from an actual store. One of the reasons for that is that I feel like it's b.s. to pay the same exact price (or in some cases actually more) and not get the manual and whatever else comes with the game. Like I said, the only games I've actually purchased through Steam have been ones that were at a great discount. Tomb Raider: Anniversary is the most recent example. It was $5 last weekend so I snatched it up. I haven't even touched it yet, but I really loved the original Tomb Raider and for $5 with a limited time frame it was like how could I NOT buy it? :P

Secondarily...this isn't really a reason I use Steam per se, but I also like that I can often buy games for what is effectively the price of a "used" game and still have the developers actually get paid for it rather than Gamestop or whatever.

I've become convinced that Steam actually keeps some games higher priced than their "actual" value (what most people would be willing to pay for it at that point in time) just so that people do exactly that: impulsively buy something that they might have otherwise waited on if it was always that price. I mean, if it was always $5 then I'd just buy it when I got around to it, but the fact that I knew it would go back up compelled me to buy the game then. Obviously it works. :P

I utterly love the convenience of having games in a neat little list where they can all be downloaded on a whim without searching for discs or anything. I actually wish that I could register all of my games on Steam so that I could just download them whenever...but that wouldn't really be in Valve's interest I suppose. (What I don't mean by that is having a MANDATORY Steam registration to play them, just to be clear on that.)

Steam has given me some great deals over the years and it's a reliable and non-intrusive form of DRM (every game has some form of it these days). The buddy system and server browsing system is quite useful, although I really don't like Left 4 Dead's consolized approach to matchmaking. I would have to say 3rd party games have their problems, especially with patching. And sometimes, you really do need a physical manual, when .pdf won't do.

The Weekend Deals are really cool for Steam, but, as someone said before, prices in stores drop faster than they do with Steam. It's a great service, but I just don't like downloading my games and waiting about 1 hour to play it whe I can spend about 10-25 minutes installing and adding the patches (If avalible). I usually use Steam to get games that are old, but really fun to play.

Your question doesn't reflect the answers. I love the steam service, I like the community part of it, friends, and the games that require it. But I still get my games retail because having a real thing is the best protection. I have gotten games off steam, but they were like halflife, old games, ridiculously cheap price $.99.

Steam can either be great or terrible. If a company decides to integrate all of it's features into Steam, such as the community features, multi-player, the whole shebang, then Steam is a good addition to already awesome titles. However, for games that just use Steam as a method of DRM, I think it adds an unneeded, but still perfectly doable step to the equation. As for the program itself, it's always been fine for me. I always download from Steam faster than pretty much anywhere else and I've never really had any technical issues with Steam either.

I really like Steam and use it for practically all my games when I can, but I still prefer to have a hard copy of my games. (I just like owning the box/manual and disk)

Thankfully I haven't had any trouble with it personally, and haven't had to contact customer support. (yet)

steam is a godsend an I use it every week. NOt only can I DD games (if I choose) but it also lets me chat to friends.

Things I like about steam:

1. No need to have CD to play.

2. Automatic updates

3. Download games you own w/out the CD.

4. able to install/play a game on multiple computers (ie I can play TF2 at work, or at home, or on my laptop while traveling).

Things I don't like:

1. Can't ever transfer liscenses.

2. crappy box/manual art.

3. need to plan to play offline.

4. crappy support.

It seems like impulse may be giving steam a run for its money though. Stardock is really starting to understand pc gamers, and seem to know where pc gaming is going.

I have had no trouble with it whatsoever (except with the occasional third party demo that i can't seem to get working) but it also doesn't really add any value for me as I only really use it because I have to (to access my valve games). It's nice to not have to find the disc to play but I can never be bothered longer than 3 seconds about having to change discs whenever I want to play a different game anyway and it's convenient that you can download your games at any time but that generally takes me a lot longer as installing them from disc. Other than that I have never bought a game through steam (I avoid paying on-line when possible, often find games cheaper elsewhere and prefer owning the physical copy of a game) and I don't really use the community part either.

Like it, but not sure about the help services.

Lol another day passes and I still havent recieved an E Mail asking a simple question about a patch.....God help anyone who has a real bad problem with this horrid service, definatly a last purchase for me with Steam, no more games from these guys ever. Worst online support I have seen in a long while, signing up a new account to ask a question that doesnt even get answered, are they for real with this being called "support"?V4LENT1NE

[QUOTE="V4LENT1NE"]Lol another day passes and I still havent recieved an E Mail asking a simple question about a patch.....God help anyone who has a real bad problem with this horrid service, definatly a last purchase for me with Steam, no more games from these guys ever. Worst online support I have seen in a long while, signing up a new account to ask a question that doesnt even get answered, are they for real with this being called "support"?SpaceMoose

i like the concept that you can buy games from store and can tie it to your steam account so later you can just download the steam version of the game if you lost the cd and plan on reinstalling the game. I also don't like the concept where you pay like 60 dollars (canadian) for something in which you don't have a hard copy of. (i'm a materialistic person)AzNs3nSaT1On

I like the idea of it but I dont trust the people at steam with it. If theres gonna be a game lobby I want Windows LIVE to be it, not some steaming pile of steam and its crappy games and software. If I see a game with steam on it then I know already its not gonna be good theres never a good steam game and any good game doesnt need steam. Thanks for the info on which games suck though.

Wish 1mb/sec downloads were there , but no complaints.

Here's an opinion on Steam you wouldn't want to miss. :)

I like the idea of it but I dont trust the people at steam with it. If theres gonna be a game lobby I want Windows LIVE to be it, not some steaming pile of steam and its crappy games and software. If I see a game with steam on it then I know already its not gonna be good theres never a good steam game and any good game doesnt need steam. Thanks for the info on which games suck though.

BigTime102

Sig of the day so far.