I agree that giving solitary control to any single company or entity is a bad idea. However, there are always costs involved with distributing a game. Maybe they look at the prices Sony and Microsoft charge for their XBox Live and Playstation Home services, and just think Steam should lower their prices? If the developers think Steam is too expensive, they can try the old fashioned way of cardboard boxes and brick-and-mortar stores. Or maybe they should band together and create their own game download service?

No one is forcing game producers to use Steam, and as John Gibson explained in his comments, not everyone thinks Steam is bad for producers. I know I've bought plenty of games on Steam's weekend deals that I had never even heard of before. Any sale has to be better than no sale, right?

Steam has caused me to legitimately purchase many games I would have otherwised... you know... not.

Steam is a distribution channel... EVERY distribution channel has costs associated with it. If a small producer wants to publish a game, they can go to folks like EA... who will plaster their own name all over it probably take a HUGE chunk of the profits. They can try to sell it themselves... which will likely result in low sales. OR... they could go with an online method like Steam... which certainly will make money on your title but perhaps less than other options while still insuring that your game gets out there in front of millions of gamers.

If Steam provides small houses with a decent return... while making some money for Valve... well that's capitalism in action and CAN be a win-win for both parties (and consumers).

As near as I can tell Steam charges the same or less than the same game bought from local vendors in a box. You can play your games from any computer but only one computer at a time. They do take a little time to download but so what. What's not to like?

Since I have had a Steam account I have had noting from them in the way of service or the ability to use their service. In over a year I have had only one instance of being able to connect and that was thru another connection not my home ...their only customer service is to tell you to disable and remove all antivirus /anti spam applications and run naked ...they have SORRY service and don't care to fix problems with their software!

Steam prevents me from easily giving my game away to someone else after I'm through playing it. This is a significant feature loss and, as so, they should either be charging significantly less for the games or offer to buy back my game after I'm finished with it.

The fact that I can play the game on any piece of hardware, anywhere, is kind of a joke considering how large they are and the time it takes to download them. And, since the size of games are only going to get increasingly larger as content balloons with larger cut scenes and higher resolution maps, soon this won't even be a viable option at all.

Sony doesn't charge.

And I agree. This is why everyone thinks PC gaming is dying. It seems that the reason they keep doing this is to make up for lost revenue caused by piracy... but really, if you want to sell games lower your prices further. For most people, pirating is just a last resort... it's not fun. $40-60 for 2 or 3 days of fun is way to expensive, and taxing the devs isn't helping either.

Compared Ign's Direct2drive and Steam, prices, deals, distribution. I myself use Steam but I do hate the client my only problem it can be a resource hog. Steam isn't the only company that offers online purchasable games but maybe they are the most popular.

Yeah, defiantly a problem on your end fuzmorten.

I have been using Steam since 2004 and have never had any major issues besides a few minor ones with CoD4.

The line "In over a year I have had only one instance of being able to connect and that was thru another connection not my home" goes to show it is probably a problem on your end. Make sure all the correct ports are open on your router and make sure your software firewall, if any, is not blocking the Steam connection.

its hard for my to find PC games at store i buy most of my games on steam because i dont have to worry about losing my CD i can just Redownload the game if my house burns down or theres a flood also they have awesome prices!

Even though I own a copy of the Orange Box and think HL2 is probably the best straight shooter game, ever, I don't approve of requiring me to activate a game online to play it off-line, DRM. I also will not download other games through their service.
I like to have my boxed product and a disk on my shelf.
Steam is not a bad experience though and is the best of it's kind. I did experience MS and their copycat of Steam called Games for Windows Live (GFWL), talk about a piece of shit. Never again will I use that service and I uninstalled GFWL off my machine as soon as I used up my points on Fallout 3 expansions.

L

I've been using steam for years now. It's a great service and well worth the cost. Most of the games I buy are actually on sale at the time I buy them so I get them cheaper then in the stores. And I haven't had any problems with steam so far. I love it, cuz I restore my computer a lot, and I don't have to sit there and grab all my discs to install it or play it. Just tried windows 7, and It worked great on there, installed windows, then installed like 10 games I got on steam, just clicked for the ones I wanted to install, went to bed, the next morning I was playing. EASY, and it works. Like the other guy said, I actually buy the games on steam. I probably wouldn't have bought them if they weren't on steam. Even some old school one's I buy, cuz it's just so easy, and they always got deals. I think i'm gonna buy the new bf2 pack for 30 bucks on there. I always had trouble installing bf2 and all the patch's. What a pain in the ass. It'll be nice just to click on it and wait for all the work to be done.

I love steam....STEAM RULES!!

Steams largest problem has been its incompatability with standard distribution versions (retail) and patches creating a backlog and delay in the release of content and patches on Steam while the retail copies are functioning and patched.

Additionally Steam's often slow response to changing prices and the market leave games people would otherwise purchase at uncompetitive prices which is sad. It does take some system resources but on a multicore machine that is likely not a real issue today.

I don't like DRM, I don't like online activation and I don't like propreitary software that is often little more then bloatware. But if I have to suffer those evils, Steam makes it as easy of process as possible, plus it doesn't impose ridiculous download expirations of software I paid for like EA Link and others.

I will say that IGN direct2drive gets more of my money via direct downloads however, better deals...

OH! I get it now. This is about paying for and downloading games. That doesn't sound like anything new to me. Is there some sort of major evolutionary improvement with Steam?

Damn you Steam and your weekend sales!! How can I pass up 50% off...?

This well worded statement is so true for myself and many others, that I thought it should appear on here again!

I agree with a lot of people on here...There were game that if they were not on steam I would not have purchased at all...A lot of times when your forced to pirate a game because they dont sell it at any retail store's..steam carry's some of those games.I like steam a lot.

I love the communication on Steam between friends. Sure, there is Xfire, but Steam has it built in already. Automatic software updates are also great. I hate patching games.

The only problem I have with Steam is the fact that it needs to be running in the background when I'm playing a game. Not a big deal but compared to D2D it could be a fault. But the fact that Steam is free and offers great deals on all game at any time (not just the bottom tier ones), has a great community, and automatic updates to all your games means it's doing a great job.

Love me some Steam! Even with my cruddy 1.5 mb/s DSL connection. $2.50 for Audiosurf? $7.50 for Plants vs. Zombies? $25 for Left for Dead? Yes please! If you're patient everything you want eventually is put on sale.

In order from most evil to least evil... Satan, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, Mother Teresa. Are we REALLY that worried about Valve?

I do love the steam. Makes buying games so easy for me. Has lead me to be less of a pirate if you know what i'm saying.

Steam is a great service that takes little indie games to the spotlight, helping the genre a great deal. I have only one complain and it is that the games should be cheaper than their physical counterparts.

Whats the point of the article?

I don't like Steam and I avoid using it whenever I can. I'd take a physical copy over a digital copy any day. Plus, I don't like how Steam manages the games and the method that it installs them on my computer. And it's consistently laggy and a pain. The idea that it puts indie developers in the spotlight is bull. I'd rather download directly from a developer than mess with the Steam service. Steam isn't the beginning and end of the internet.

I've had numerous games that weren't fully quality tested before putting on-line. Far Cry 2, RFGW, Stalker, etc, and a few that didn't release in a timely fashon, but otherwise I love the service.

I've bought a bunch of games for $5-10 that I would normally have not even bothered looking for in stores (physical or virtual) and would have simply downloaded as I figured (most times correctly) that you couldn't buy them anywhere else.

Wow that was the worst sentence I've ever posted.

Wow... I became a member of steam after I went to three area brick and mortar shops to get left 4 dead, and NO ONE HAD IT... 3 MONTHS LATER! Actually, one store did have it. It was an opened display copy, being sold for brand new price. "Um, that was opened, don't I get a discount for it being an opened display copy?" *Chuckle* - "No, it's brand new" Ugh... gets me fired up just thinking about it.
Point is, it's been almost 10 months, and I have about 20 pc games now through steam. The only games I ever bought before then were BIG titles. I didn't play any other games (didn't pirate, didn't buy, too much of an investment on something I wasn't sure of).
Best Example: World of Goo. Steam had a sale, the game was $5, normally $20. I thought why not? Best decision ever. Opened me up to Indie games. More recently: Sword of the Stars. I had a copy of it on my computer, never bought it though, I couldn't get it anywhere. I was ecstatic when it showed up on steam, and dropped the cash for the master collection. I know the developer was excited, their sales skyrocketed because of Steam.

P.S. EA Download manager SUCKS! I HATE messing with it, and would ditch it if not for BF2142 and Spore

Egh, Steam is annoying, especially lately. There's the, can't give games away after playing. There's the fact that you get no physical copy and it costs the same damn price as in the stores.

And also, why does my game take 5 minutes of pulling a constant ~30kb/s just to start? It doesn't happen all the time, but that it EVER happens is stupid and irritating. And lastly, it's REALLY FREAKING IRRITATING when I can't play MY LEGITIMATE games because THEIR server is out.

And yet, Impulse gets away without all that crap. I'm definitely going Impulse from now on.

The big difference here is that no one is FORCING people to distribute on steam. Apple's app store is much worse because it's THE ONLY way. they have blatantly said before that you are NOT ALLOWED to make apps that compete with the phone's inbuilt functionality (apple's 'apps'), hell, you can't even release apps that are the same as apps apple is thinking it might add to the phone in the future!!

and yet the app store is considered God's latest gift to man!

so yeah, there are bigger things to worry about than steam.

Never heard of Impulse before so I just check them out. I search for a few of the most popular games of the last few years: Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, Orange Box, and Crysis. They have none of those. Then I looked through their action games list and the pickins' were slim. I'm sure Impulse has its virtues, and my intention is not to bash them, but c'mon - Steam has almost all of the best titles!

My only issue with Steam is not really an issue with Steam but the publishers who use it. I've seen price differences of up to 30 USD between the Steam US and Steam AU stores for the same game. this is obviously to prevent publishers cannabilising their massively overpriced retail sales here, but it's still stupid from the consumer's perspective because there are no shipping or inventory costs, no import taxes, no GST, no store profits on top, no exchange rates etc and yet it's still far more expensive.

Only some publishers do this though, not all.