Game Stores View Valve's Steam as the Devil

nah steam is the best. I mean that and blizzard.

Steam Rocks. It is the model other businesses should look up to.

The reason I first used Steam was the retail stores didn't carry the games I wanted to buy. If they stop carrying games with any Steam integration, other people like myself will be forced to go to Steam. Making their problems bigger.

Well, I think Steam is great, its instant gratification. However, saying that I prefer to have the game with box. I have all my PC games lined up and its nice to see what I have and what I want to play. Also kinda cool to have your friends see what games you have.

There will always be those I believe that actually like going into the store like myself and having the box art, game, and hopefully some other goodies as well.

Steam is great, but not everyone wants their games on the hard drive only.

I never really been a fan of steam. I only have it cause a free game came with my gpu and i had to get steam to play it. I prefer just buying from GS (yes I like GS even though its popular not to).

If steam is down you can't log in which means you can't play. I they ban you for some reason then you can lo longer play the game you paid for. While steam has alot of games for sale, there are still alot you can't get there.

For my money i'll always go to a store to get my games.

It's either use Steam or deal with botched pre-orders, missing stock, no stock, rude staff, bratty kids, or bargain bin ferals fighting over the last pre-owned and heavily soiled copy of some long forgotten relic of poorly spent youth. Tough choice...

If game stores stopped selling steam games in store, i'd just buy them from the steam store.

I mean sure it's convenient having the game in a shop that you can buy and go install, but my internet's not the fastest when it comes to downloading my own purchases.

(Although i just upgraded my internet to Unlimited 24/7 adsl2+, so we'll see what's better.. when my service is activated)

its called supply and demand not to mention the future. Digital distribution is the future and it massively boosts the availability for smaller developers to reach a large audience and gain more sales via steam specials. Steam also has one of the best protections out there and eliminates all that extra copy protection crap like assassins creed 2 having to be online all the time. Personally i think steam should look into movie and software distribution as well and really kick it. It would be amazing if you could play a game while downloading a movie to watch after.

So retailers don't like Steam? Stiff S**t.

@_Cubase_

What stores are YOU going to? I've been buying games at GS/EB for years and before that toy-r-us back in the day and I never seen any of what you talkin about even during holiday shopping.

And even if that was the case (which its not) i'd rather deal with all that than to have a game that I can't play cause the server is undergoing maintenance.

Many people do not like to punch in their credit cards into the Internet, which is usually why they buy at retails. What's there to fear?

Some people will use steam and some wont. It isnt hard to see that. I personally dislike some steam things, particually when I bought Empire total war and at that point in time had no internet. I had to lug my computer all the way to my dad's house so i could plug it up so Steam could verify my game.......

Other than that Steam is the way to go IMO. I also like things like Good Old Games, love that site to death.

Too bad ain't it. Steam is here to stay. So you don't carry games with steam integration. I guess I will shop elsewhere(I buy many games at retail that I can install and use in steam.) or just buy it on steam.

Of course they don't like it. It takes business away from them. However the fact remains that large portion of their sales are from console games not PC. IMO they can't get angry all they want because, if I want to buy a PC game i'll do it online and if I want to buy a console i'll do it through them.

When I walk into a Walmart or Gamestop here is honestly seems like they've stopped trying to be a competitive vendor for PC games. My local Gamestop PC game shelf is only about 4 boxes wide. They simply do not allow for the delivery of a game in a timely manner the way Steam, Direct2Drive or Good Old Games does.

I must be a satanist then...

Sounds like someone is afraid of thier competition, aint that a beach.

The only reason Steam is doing so well and is as popular as they are is because they are doing almost every little thing right, tons of features, good interface, software just works, unbeatable deals.

If the have a "frighteningly strong grip on the PC games market", its because they worked hard to do so and deserve it 100%.

Long Live Steam.

I love steam!

All of my games in one place, *on any computer* and with all the sales they have it's much cheaper than retail stores!

plus games get automatically updated. Ive always hated having to manually install patches and shit for slightly older games that don't have auto-updaters.

Steam has basically dropped the number of games I download illegally via bittorrent by about 75% since I started using it regularly a few years ago.

Also I love toms hardware! I mean i get almost all my tech news from tom's!
however, pc gamer reported this story like 4 days ago!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/11/11/ [...] steam-ban/

Steam is great.
I think that if game stores can't adapt, in a few years once you can get everything off of steam/other online stores then they will be headed the way of Hollywood video.

Steam is a mixed blessing. The convenience and prices are great. However if their servers ever go down then all of the customers are screwed. I mean that both in a temporary sense and in a indefinite sense. People might think Steam will last forever, but I'm sure people buying music from Walmart, Yahoo, and MSN thought the same.

I feel for the retailers, however even when there wasn't digital distribution, I was too lazy to use retailers and just bought games online and had them shipped to me.

If anything, retailers should look into giving out free stuff with games bought from them. Try to partner up with Steam to see if they can do something about it, because digital is here to stay.

Steam saved PC gaming; Gamestop's offering of PC games is a small shelf in the back.

Thank you, Valve and Steam.

Retailers carry PC games these days? Has anyone gone into a gamestop lately. Its like a few things from Blizzard and the usual FPS games. They do not stock half of what they did just 5 years ago. They already gave up on the PC, and Steam has filled that slot so well the Developers have gotten on board.

I didn't even know GS still had a PC section. I've been in there twice in the past month and it's not exactly a big store area.

Steam is a great company, especially since when they make or cause problems they live up to making them up. Like that VAC ban on MW2 gamers, they gave them LFD2

i love steam in concept, but i HATE it in practice.
in concept it makes games cheaper and gives more money to publishers.

i go to a store, i get box art, i get a physical disc, instructions and anything else that comes with the game, for 40-60$ (cod is the only 60 pc game i can think of) but if i go to steam, im paying the same damn price as retail, when there is nothing making that price higher.

i NEVER buy a game on steam unless its on sale. if i really want it i will pirate it until i find it on sale, buy it than, and transfer my saves if possible. dont get me wrong im all for giveing the devs their fair share of what they make, but it seams like they took out all the crap that realy drove game prices up and got rid of it, only to charge the same damn price.

i get that part of that is to appease the walmarts of the world, but F them, seriously, never do things half way.

I'm the type of person who would rather have a physical copy of the game on a disk, but I moved to Steam way back in 2004 BECAUSE the local retailers stop selling PC games. In fact, the only halfway decent PC game that the retailers have carried in my town in the past 5 years is Starcraft 2 (and WoW + WoW expansions, if you consider that a decent game).

Stopped by last week and saw about 10 boxes filled with 350 copies of Black Ops for XBox and PS3, but was there a single copy for PC? No. I asked the employee where I could get the PC version, and he said download it from Steam, so I did.

Does Steam have a frighteningly tight grip on the PC game market? Not really. I would say iTunes' grip on the music market is more frightening than Steam's grip on the PC game market.

I have no interest in box art or disks. The sooner steam kills off all the stores the better. They price gouge like crazy in Australia and the distributors even force Steam to price gouge in Australia on some games.

bye bye retailers, Its only a matter of time before your obsolete; well to the pc world in the long run i guess

I like steam because it's got the friends thingo and you can tell your whole friends list when you open Firefox.