purchasing through Steam

[frymaster]

actually if you run out of activations, you have to contact the distributor (steam). I can't see them refusing since they presumably trust the steam platform

[drakend]

actually if you run out of activations, you have to contact the distributor (steam). I can't see them refusing since they presumably trust the steam platform

No the distributor for Steam is Egosoft.

[paul1290]

Honestly, I have a hard time saying much bad about Steam simply because of the amount of good it has done for the PC games industry as a whole.

There are a number of independant game developers who would be bankrupt right now and a lot of wonderful ideas that would have been thrown away if it wasn't for Steam. For independant game developers, Steam provides a welcome alternative to the often creativity-suppressing publisher and developer method of distributing games.

Steam also picks up publishing games that other publishers refuse to touch. If it wasn't for Steam we probably wouldn't even have a US Terran Conflict release since there are hardly any US publisher would be willing to even pick up such a niche market game anymore. The same case has been for quite a few other games on Steam as well, Steam has made the distribution of a lot of non-mainstream games possible.

Also lets face it, the current systems for counting PC game sales have been horrendously unreliable and Steam done gone quite a bit towards fixing that. Because of Steam some publishers are actually starting to realize how much profit there is to be made in the PC gaming market.

Also, I can't even count the number of PC game and modding communities that have been made possible because of Steam and not just through the communication features included through Steam.

Steam is probably one of the more customer friendly forms of DRM currently available. With the exception of games where third party developers or publishers force the inclusion of an alternative DRM (which unfortunately is the case with Terran Conflict), most Steam games can be downloaded as many times as you want on as many computers as you want and it allows for physical backups of games. Not to mention it offers services like game cache defragmentation and replacement of corrupt game files without the need of a complete re-install.



I know it's not cool to like Steam, but frankly I don't care because with all the crap PC gaming has had to go through, I think Steam is one of the few good things to happen to PC gaming in a long while.

[bassism]

My question to those complaining about Steam's delay in pushing out the patch is whether they would prefer Steam push the patch out early and bork everybody's install, corrupting their savegames in the process.
As much as I'd love to be playing 1.3 right now, I can deal with waiting another week.

In general, I'm rather loving Steam as a service, for all the reasons listed above. They're doing everything right as far as I can see.

[H.F._Mudd]

Umm... so, what you guys are saying is that we should be mad at Egosoft for letting the DVD guys get the patch early, right?

I think the DVD owners should promise not to play until we all have the patch.


PS

Stop PMing me and saying you wish my mother had been patched.

[Duncans_pumpkin]

As with all titles bought through Steam, TC will require Steam to run.

Excpet your wrong.
X2 can run without steam.
All the dosbox games can run without steam.
Quite a few older games can run without steam.
Okay TC and X3 cant play without steam but they run fine in offline mode.
And if you say steam is a resource hog then you dont have a good enough computer to play X3 anyway.

[Malkuth74]

Im mad about steam myself... But even I know that they can't get the game up on the same day.... But it should be available the next day at the latest.... They get paid to get these games up and running, and they should be good about it.

On the other hand yes, having your game available at all times from steam is good..... And the fact that its available for pretty much ever makes it one of the better online download centers... The only better one is Stardock which is well beyond Steam in service and patch releases.

Some download companies well most only keep your games for 1 year then they are gone..... Steam does not do this. I can still download Halflife 2 and its addons. Kane and Lynch if I wanted.

The problem with X3TC is that the patches are pretty important and we want them faster then say A Kane and lynch patch that might not effect me in anyway. So with X3TC I want NOW.

[palm911]

My question to those complaining about Steam's delay in pushing out the patch is whether they would prefer Steam push the patch out early and bork everybody's install, corrupting their savegames in the process.
As much as I'd love to be playing 1.3 right now, I can deal with waiting another week.

In general, I'm rather loving Steam as a service, for all the reasons listed above. They're doing everything right as far as I can see.

Wait, WHAAAAAT?????????

Spoiler

Show

They're doing everything right as far as I can see

i tihnk you are blind. or you are being sarcastic/

Btw do you work for steam?

thanks.

we steam users are pretty much f...ed,

sarcasm on
thanks ego for letting then handle this game, and grab part of my money
sarcasm off

[palm911]

vassman now you call me baby?

its not about momemts. if i had to wait 1 day FINE. but waiting a week (and i think that is what is going to happen if not more) is not acceptable in my books.

as far as steam users you can find a lot of people pissed at then.

i just cant believe that you tihnk its acceptable or ok to have to wait for something that should be released the same day that goes official.

i will not reply to your personal attacks because:
1. i dont think you are worth the time for that.
2. its against the rules,

my comments are more aimed as a question rather to attacks. cause i cant believe that in your books its ok what steam is doing,

any mods around?

thanks!

[Nanook]

palm911, calm down. No one called you anything, or even attacked you as far as I can see. Just because they dispute what you say doesn't make it a personal attack. From what I can see, it's you who seems to be making this whole thing personal. Anyway, I think this discussion has run its course, so down it goes.