Yearning for the good old days in PC gaming. Before Steam and DRM took over.

[QUOTE="GummiRaccoon"]

[QUOTE="dsgsdfgf"]

Guess why The Witcher 2 is the only game I've bought for quite some time despite not really being interested in it?

It's drm free. It doesn't matter what game you make, if it has drm I don't care about it. I'd happily use a disc to play though.

dsgsdfgf

That's DRMs earliest version and it was a huge pain. Optical drives are the devil.

I disagree. It has a huge advantage over the drm we have nowadays: It's all in your hands. All you need to play is the disc. I don't know about others but I have the ability to know where my games are and have the discs in top condition which means that I can always play my game.

Nowadays you can't do anything. You can't fix it if the activation server is down or if your account is banned for whatever reason. Getting told that my game is unavailable because the servers are under stress is not acceptable at all imo.

This is the main reason why I'm buying multiplatform games for my Xbox 360 instead of for my PC from now on. Some games I bought thatrequired always-on internet connection I sometimes couldn't play at the time I wanted because theonline servers were down.

You have to remember Steam is the only digital retailer that forces youto install all games to the partition with the Steam foldr on it. If peoplebuy more and more games it will be impossible to keep them all on the one partition, even if they have 10 other partitioons it won't help them, this wioll mean more and more games sitting on Steams Servers hoping they don't have powr cuts or flooding or whatever.

I am sure in the small text it says Steam does not guarantee your games held on its servers, and probably have all sorts of caveats.

If Steam just let me install to any partition, like Impulse and GOG and D2D do, that would make a huge change, but the fact they still have this customer unfriendly system says a lot about them! They are too big for their own boots I feel.

Humorguy_basic

You can backup your steam games to physical media if you so desire. Also how many games can you possibly play at the same time that your 1 partitition won't be able to hold your games.

Anyway, in my opinion Steam is awesome. I never liked plastic boxes cluttering my room. I just want to enjoy my games not collect plastic boxes. Also my cds have a habit of getting scratched and lost so using Steam helped me a lot. For example I bought orange box retail yet my laptop won't read the discs anymore for whatever reason. Same with Bad Company 2 (too bad I can't activate it on steam).

Not to mention steam is very convenient if you value finding a game as soon as possible and finding it cheap. Steam in game layer is also very usefull especially if the game you are playing is not alt-tab friendly.

So no, I haven't particularly missed the "good old days".

I'm kind of over the whole DRM thing. Yeah, it sucks, but it has very rarely impeded my ability to play the game. Only GFWL does that. Get over it. Steam is an awesome platform.

saruman354

Just because it has worked for you in the past doesn't make that experience the same for everyone. I've personally been locked out of my games while on downtime at the college with no internet. I had to crack the stupid games to play what was sitting on my hard drive... The service has its uses no doubt but awesome isn't the word I would use.

The difference is that Valve has a track record of mostly supporting consumers as opposed to screwing them over. I just don't like Origin at all. Its clunky and convoluted. I agree that its basically the same concept, but Steams execution is a zillion times better and also I actually get GOOD prices on games from steam. Doubt thats gonna happen much on origin.

[QUOTE="Am_Confucius"]

Let's not forget that Valve constantly helps indie-developers with Steam.

anolecrabcf

I love Steam. I really do. But, at the same time, I want to actually own my games (i.e., sell my copy to someone else, install it without validating the install with Valve, etc.). Steam took that away and placated me with unlimited redownloads and installs. I grew weak, and took their offer. Fine, I'll sign my soul away, as long as it makes my gaming life easier.

It's funny that people complain about Origin and how anti-consumer it is, but Valve has been doing the same thing for seven years. Of course, Valve did add many value-added services (achievements, Steam Community, mod tools, free dedicated servers) that took away some of the pain of not being able to own your game like you used to.

Do some of you guys yearn for the old days of PC gaming? When you bought everything in a box and it was your's to keep, so long as the disk was good? When you didn't need a third party to phone home to make sure that your game was legit? When you could let a friend borrow your game for a week? When you could resell your game in its functional state at any time?

Sure, we didn't have automatic patching, achievements, or the cloud, but I sure do miss the old days. I really do.

The_Capitalist

Kinda reminds me of a lyric, "the good old days weren't all that good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." I hated having to wait for a patch because even back then they released broken games. I never resold my games BUT I would like to hand my old steam games down to my son without him having to play them offmy account. There was DRM but it was easy to circumvent with a copier for the book or a little cutting for a wheel. I agree with you for the most part but there's no going back now. Might as well enjoy what ya got...

[QUOTE="saruman354"]

I'm kind of over the whole DRM thing. Yeah, it sucks, but it has very rarely impeded my ability to play the game. Only GFWL does that. Get over it. Steam is an awesome platform.

Whiteblade999

Just because it has worked for you in the past doesn't make that experience the same for everyone. I've personally been locked out of my games while on downtime at the college with no internet. I had to crack the stupid games to play what was sitting on my hard drive... The service has its uses no doubt but awesome isn't the word I would use.

I remember these dark days that you had to use the CD/DVD in order to play the game, now you just click on the game icon and you are in the game!!!

I remember these dark days that you had to use the CD/DVD in order to play the game, now you just click on the game icon and you are in the game!!!

MK-Professor

Yeah, but nowadays you might see a message come up after clicking that icon that says something like, "There was an error contacting the server. Please try again later." Pick your poison.

I love Steam. I really do. But, at the same time, I want to actually own my games (i.e., sell my copy to someone else, install it without validating the install with Valve, etc.). Steam took that away and placated me with unlimited redownloads and installs. I grew weak, and took their offer. Fine, I'll sign my soul away, as long as it makes my gaming life easier.

It's funny that people complain about Origin and how anti-consumer it is, but Valve has been doing the same thing for seven years. Of course, Valve did add many value-added services (achievements, Steam Community, mod tools, free dedicated servers) that took away some of the pain of not being able to own your game like you used to.

Do some of you guys yearn for the old days of PC gaming? When you bought everything in a box and it was your's to keep, so long as the disk was good? When you didn't need a third party to phone home to make sure that your game was legit? When you could let a friend borrow your game for a week? When you could resell your game in its functional state at any time?

Sure, we didn't have automatic patching, achievements, or the cloud, but I sure do miss the old days. I really do.

The_Capitalist

...See the problem with your argument is that in this day and age games have gone a lot of digital downloads, hence Steam. So yay for Steam.

[QUOTE="MK-Professor"]

I remember these dark days that you had to use the CD/DVD in order to play the game, now you just click on the game icon and you are in the game!!!

Falconoffury

Yeah, but nowadays you might see a message come up after clicking that icon that says something like, "There was an error contacting the server. Please try again later." Pick your poison.

never happened to me. On the other hand I had to insert the CD/DVD every single time in order to play the game.