If I buy the disc version of Crimes and punishment,the forum say's I need steam.I don't know what steam is.What would I have to do to play this game.Aahh,bring back the old days where you just insert the disc and play.

Everything you need to know and more is located on the steam website.

Ana

Thank you,think I'll wait a while before I buy it.

Believe this is normal now. Although I bought Sherlock from Amazon I can't install from the disc until I have registered the game with Steam. I am quite happy to do this and understand that I have paid NOT for the data on the disc but permission to play the game. I cannot sell the game disc or even give it away for free-if everyone who bought the game did this, the developers and publishers wouldn't be able to make enough money to invest in more games.
I certainly would recommend Steam, I can download games (I have 19 with them at present)uninstall, reinstall and play as many times as I want, and don't have a pristine, hard copy taking up room on the shelf.
Incidently, the game is awesome!!

I recommend Steam as well. I have no problems with it all. The ones who speak poorly of it aren't users, they just don't want any activations.

Strange.
I was under the impression that you "got permission" to play the game by forking over money for it.
I wonder you even bother with the disk copy from Amazon and don't go directly to Steam for the game.



Wait...the developers/publishers have done alright selling games on disk up until now.
Do you really believe being FORCED to go through Steam to play a game you bought, innocently believing it should and would work right out of the box, is okay?

People have bought and traded used games for years, just as they've bought or traded used books and I haven't seen any publisher going out of business because of the 'used' trade.

Gil.

I think that everyone that reads the posts on this site are familiar with Traveler's opinion of Steam and I, for one, understand what it is that you are protesting against.

I'm just wondering are you equally opposed to Origin, Zodiac, and other like sites as well as the sites that make you go online and register before you can play the game? Or is it just Steam that you don't like?

I went kicking and screaming into the digital download era and have finally come to accept it as inevitable. My main reason though was the game trading and because of the popularity of digital downloads the game trading is pretty much dead. I belong to GTZ and haven't made a trade in over a year.

I DO use Steam but I'm NOT a Steam lover. And it's solely a matter of personal preference.

I just don't like the rigmarole I have to go through in order to play a game.
[And in my opinion the claim that Steam is DRM free is not a true one.]

However, I can't play the new Sherlock game without using Steam - and I dearly want to play it - so it's Hobson's Choice !!

Got it in one, oldman.
I won't buy from any game portal that requires me to activate online, use a third party client or stand on my head and whistle Dixie before I can play a game.

These days, I buy only from GOG or directly from a developer who offers his game DRM-free.
If it means I miss out on some games from developers who don't care about those of us who feel this way, so be it.

Gil.

Well Gil I applaud you for your stance. At least you are consistent and stick to your guns.

How is peoples opposition to Steam different to other peoples opposition to upgrading their PC with a CD drive back in the day... you couldn't play certain games unless you had a CD drive, now you can't play certain games without using Steam.

The big advantages of Steam (for me) are that:
a) I pay for the game, then download it, and can play within a few hours without travelling to a physical store, or having to wait for a disk to arrive in the mail. (and living on an island as I do, that usually takes at least 24 hours longer than someone in the UK or US)
b) the vendor tells ME when they have a sale on, and I can buy good games at low prices (all 10 Tomb Raider games for £10 (approx $15) last Christmas anyone?)

The one thing I think Steam misses is a really decent recommendation engine (like Amazon's), after all they know exactly which games I play the most!

Have you been on Steam lately gremlin? They have all kinds of recommendations now. I don't like their new "look".

I enjoy the odd adventure game but I simply don’t have the time to play them as much as other members do so Steam isn’t an issue with me as the ordinary old disc versions will keep me going for yonks.

But out of interest I browsed around and found opinions varied from those who had no problem with steam to those who did, pretty much love it or hate it

As I have said I don’t have a particular axe to grind either way but one worrying aspect seems to be that the freedom of choice is being limited especially when purchasing new games.
This must affect the developers marketing their games and the buyers who buy them. I shop around before I buy as I am sure many of us do but if that choice is eroded to no choice at all then that friends is a monopoly i.e. pay the price or go without.
Lack of competition certainly does not favour the customers.

I think one of the problems has been reputable distributors of games. Far too many game developers ended up with nothing for their hard work. I'm sure STEAM gets their pound of flesh, but the buzz I hear from the developers is that at least STEAM can be counted on to honor their commitments to the developers. The developers are also looking at the approximately 20 million people with Steam (that have at least one game), and over 2.5 million active users. That's a lot of audience to potentially reach with your game.

I agree with Cari -- there should be alternatives.
Monopolies are never good.

And considering that some people buy disc versions of games because their ISP limits their downloads, breaks off their downloads, throttles their download speed to kbps speed, etc., publishing a disc version that supplies incomplete versions of the game that require downloading hundreds of MB's of additional files to make the game playable is a bait-and-switch.

Oh, definitely give me a non-DRM disk any day. It took me 2 days to download The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. I'd kill for the good old days of disks because living out in the country, my broadband is not going to get any better.

My broadband speed isn't great either, and I live in a large town. Downloading humongous game files can be a headache that takes many, many hours, and so I agree with what's being said here. Not all of us have super-whizzy connections capable of downloading full adventure games in minutes. Some of us even have limitations with how many Gb we can download over a month without incurring additional charges.

Having said that, I remember what it was like being on dial-up. Even slow broadband when compared to THAT slow-step of molasses is something close to heaven.

It took me over a week to download Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect.
Then I noticed they'd come up with a patch at some time during that past week.
At that point I gave up, and decided never again to purchase a game that large -- or even half that large -- unless it came on disc.
The patch alone wouldn't have been that bad, but after everything else it was just too much.

And no I don't live out in the country. I wish I did. I could use the fresh air.
But unless Google fiber decides to expand into my town, home users in my area will continue to have garbage connectivity far into the next millennium.

Poor download speeds aren't a problem unique to Steam or any other website for downloading games. They are a deficiency of the infrastructure, and point out why disc versions are still needed to reach the entire customer base.

Exactly.. And it's not that it CAN'T be done. People in many parts of Europe laugh at us

... regularly, Draclvr, regularly

I've never had any trouble downloading big file games. The most any game ever took is a hour. Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect,took about 1/2 hr. I have RR as my internet. Any BF games never took more than 10 minutes. I must have a really fast connection. Any steam game I really don't know but the time it takes for me to get a cup of coffee the download is done. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter took me about 15 minutes. I can remember using dial-up. That was quite a few years ago. What a difference now.
Richard

I have downloaded only one game and that was some years ago from Big Fish and had no problems at all. But I am really careful of what I now download as so many I find carry Malware in all its shapes and forms. Mostly they hijack your browsers but also there’s some really nasty stuff as well.
It’s a real pain because my computers (A Desk and a Laptop) both carry confidential info used for my job and though my anti virus is good and up to date some of the nasty beggars still got through.

I recently got a tip from a work colleague and bought a second-hand PC from eBay which I now use for downloads and if they are clean I use a gizmo to copy them to the main computers.

I haven’t heard of any such problem with Steam and I am sure they take adequate measures to prevent their downloads from being infected but l remain very cautious of downloads; I can’t afford to be otherwise.

Well lucky you to live in a part of the US where they actually have decent service. But you should be aware that there is a gross disparity in bandwidth speeds in different parts of the United States.

We tried to get a 24 Gbps speed when AT&T U-Verse offered it. But the router kept losing connection every second or two. Since telephone service was part of the package, we had no phone to call up to complain. We were over a week without any phone service. We had to use the neighbor's phone (luckily they hadn't "upgraded") to call AT&T, and I'm sure our neighbor got tired of seeing us. AT&T replaced the router, replaced the cable to the router, all for nothing. We had to keep reducing bandwidth until we got a reasonably stable connection -- which ended up being only a fraction of the bandwidth they advertised. It is not completely stable -- I can see from the router stats that it has disconnected and reconnected 4 times already today. The cables in our part of the country simply can't sustain faster connections.

Your ISP makes no difference. If you live in a part of the country with old or poor quality cables, you will get a garbage connection and low bandwidth. Your ISP can't give you better bandwidth than what the cables in your neighborhood can sustain. And if you happen to live in the vicinity of a radio station or wireless tower, that's additional interference that will break off your connections. The only thing that will give a good connection in areas like that is to replace all copper cabling in your neighborhood with fiber, which does not pick up the radio/wireless signals. Of course replacing all the cables in your neighborhood is not something that the average homeowner can do themselves.

Just by way of contrast, and to further illustrate Jenny's point, it took me 7-1/2 hours to download Tesla Effect.