4 ms·
Valve does a lot of things that gamers love. They make universally acclaimed games, and they often offer them for absurdly good prices. They also managed to d
by pawn 15y ago
Valve does a lot of things that gamers love. They make universally acclaimed games, and they often offer them for absurdly good prices. They also managed to defeat piracy of their games with a platform that has proven surprisingly tough to crack. I remember when Steam used to garner almost as much hate as others' DRM, but its been several years. My friends used to be very vocal about hating how much memory it used and that you couldn't move it from one harddrive to another or back it up. Those things were eventually solved though. I wonder if popular opinion favoring valve is more due to these being solved, the fact that steam has been around so long and we got used to it, or the goodwill garnered from good games and/or good offers on games.
- pkamb 15y agoSteam used to be an additional thing you had to install/run in order to play the game you already bought on DVD from the local game store. Now it's a service you use to buy games (often at ridiculously low prices) and automatically download them. That's what changed popular opinion of Steam.
- J_Darnley 15y agoSorry, but it still is an additional thing you have to use/run/install when you buy a boxed game from a B&M store. I found this out only after buying one such game. This is the reason I cracked it and then vowed to never buy another one that does.
- JamesBlair 15y agoI haven't tried to crack Steam games, but I don't have any difficulty pirating Steam exclusive releases. Admittedly the few times I did pirate Steam games it was about price (as in I didn't want to commit the money while not knowing anything about the game, some really great titles like Super Meat Boy are a bit more expensive than you'd expect, but are absolutely worth it if you happen to like the genre). Steam is almost infinitely preferable to a pirate torrent, lacking only a sane download manager. But otherwise I consistently get faster downloads with less annoyance and I get nice integration with multiplayer and my friends' gaming.
- freedompeace 15y agoYes, but it's much easier for me to click the buy button than to go to the store to get it or to torrent it, so I just click it.