Steam is bad for some of us PC gamers because we like to have OPTIONS where we purchase the PC versions of video games. This is why some of us PC gamers love gog.com very much because all of the PC versions of video games that gog.com sells are 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free and GoG Galaxy is also OPTIONAL to use.

GoG Galaxy is a Steam competitor while gog.com also keeps it optional. PC versions of video games sold on Steam that use Steamworks you cannot get rid of Steam. With GoG Galaxy you can just get rid of the GoG Galaxy client if you don't want to use GoG Galaxy and still continue to play the video game you purchased.

Also gog.com has a lot of sales for video games as well, maybe not as many as Steam or daily flash deals like Steam does, but gog.com is coming up with sales. They even made their own weird sales like the Fall Insomnia sales, etc.

Monopoly
- Complete control of the entire supply of goods or of a service in a specific area

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly

Steam is just one of the big distributors, it has competition, it's not the only place to find games online in digital format, it doesn't have a monopoly. If it was a monopoly it wouldn't exist as it is illegal in the United States (Valve's headquarters is in Bellevue, Washington) for a company to have a monopoly on anything.

A monopoly is illegal in the EU too. Steam may have a high market share, but they are not the only ones.

Yet the Internet Service Providers (ISP's) companies in the US have monopolies and they are not fined at all. Comcast actually has a monopoly in my area. I'm pretty sure a lot of people who live in the US can tell you how much of a monopoly AT&T and Comcast are in some areas.

Anyways a lot of AAA PC versions of video games are sold on Steam exclusively or require a Steam key from some of the digital distribution retailer website stores you purchase them from. Steam is a pseudo monopoly as I said, not a full monopoly.

AT&T and COMCAST may be the biggest ISPs in the US ( idk, i麓m not living there ), but they are competing against each other, thus neither one of them has a monopoly. And just because an ISP is exclusively used in your area, doesn麓t mean it麓s the same everywhere else.

Except AT&T and Comcast are not allowing other Internet Service Providers (ISP's) in my area. Those are the only 2 I have. Net Zero used to exist over 10 years ago in my area, but they are long gone now due to AT&T and Comcast. Maybe Google Fiber will come I don't know. But not even Time Warner exists in my area.

And your proof for that is?

Did...did you not read my post? There are numerous ISPs in the US. Comcast, At&T, Verizon, Google Fibers, numerous more. There is no monopoly as one company doesn't control the entire market. I literally posted the definition of Monopoly. Again, it's illegal for any company in the United States to have a monopoly on any type of goods or services. You literally just said you could get AT&T in your area, did you not?


This is your post, you literally disproved your own point by saying there are two ISPs in your area. Comcast and AT&T are two entirely separate companies, they are not a monopoly.

I looked for Internet Service Providers (ISP's) to switch to many times over the last 13 years I have had Comcast for. I had DSL back in the 1990's though.

Comcast used to be a part of AT&T, It got turned into it's own separate Internet Service Provider (ISP) company, due to AT&T being to big.

Verizon does not exist in my area at all. Only for mobile phones that's it. Not for internet. Like I also said over 10 years ago Net Zero existed Net Zero has not existed for a long time now. Not in my area at least.

Sure 2 Internet Service Provider (ISP's) existing is good I guess, but they are the 2 biggest ones that exist where I live. A monopoly in a way because I have no other options.

Aha. Have you considered the fact that no other ISP bothers to set up shop in your area, because it isn麓t economically feasible, instead of them being driven encouraged to look for customers elsewhere? Your post did imply shady business routines by AT&T and Comcast. Which btw, are illegal.

I recently tried Steam for the first time when I bought Skyrim. I found it attrocious.. A horriblly intrusive thing to have to bloat ones PC with. Then there's the constant pop ups when I actually played the game. 24 days later I'd uninstalled both Skyrim and steam. I will never go back to either. I tossed Skyrim in the bin.

What kind of popups? Achievements? And intrusive? In what way?

There are not constant pop-ups. Even with tons of people added as friends on Steam, the "X is now playing this"(which is the most common pop-up) are rare to see. Mind not lying? There was no way you'd have been getting constant pop-ups. Only other pop-ups I can think of that you'd see while playing are achievements(which are uncommon and unintrusive). And both can be turned off.

As I recall, The Witcher 2 released with DRM on some platforms, but they found that it was the DRM that was ruining their framerate, so they removed it from all platforms.

Rogue, as it standing apart from the herd; and offering what few of the others have the guts to do... One can't really claim it's the money ~I'd think, as the Witcher games are par for anything out their hiding behind DRM.

What proof is needed? I find that all too easy to believe.

Has anyone not seen this yet? http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/09/att-cities-shouldnt-offer-broadband-where-private-isps-already-do-or-might-later/

Or this? http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/04/1349188/-Small-Kansas-Town-Takes-on-AT-T-Offers-1Gbps-Internet-to-Residents

well, your kind of comparing apples and oranges there. that's like saying your local power company has a monopoly in your area too. in most cases cable providers are chosen by the local governments. they're given the rights for a certain area. they gain those rights based on the offers they make. not necessarily pricing, but things like upgrading lines and stuff like that. but even now a lot of that is changing as telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T get into the market. but like with Verizon's FiOs, it's going to take them time to fully develop the infrastructure.

Steam isn't DRM. If you buy the game from them, they know you own it. If you buy a physical disk, you have to enter the code, just like any standalone installer. Steam does not cut piracy at all. It is so easy to bypass it's pathetic.

Don't know much about PC but whenever I talk to a PC gamer they praise Steam like it's the coming of Christ. So why would you not want it on there?

I'm a PC gamer and trust me, Steam has gone from convenience to albatross around our necks, entirely due to Valve's corruption and seedy business practices.

Those who don't see it this way are simply in denial and play a game of "If only the Dear Leader knew!" with Gaben.

Actually if you read the Steam EULA, you do not own any game bought through Steam, or any game verified through it even if you have a physical copy, like Skyrim.

You hold a license to play them. A license they have the right to revoke at any time.

Again, just play in offline mode and you will never get any sort of notifications from Steam. It really boggles my mind how people can complain so bitterly without even knowing how the system actually works.

What albatross? I start the app and play the games, without any sort of intrusions at all. I don't even know that the client is running. And if I have a few extra dollars in my PayPal account and a sale comes up, I can get a new game for next to nothing without leaving the comfort of my home. Granted I may have to wait awhile for it to download, but that has more to do with my ISP than Steam. So please explain to me why Steam is no longer convenient.

Doesn't make any difference to me, to be honest. If it's on Steam and I get a PC that can handle it, I'll use Steam. If FO4 doesn't use Steam I'll just buy the the Dvd. Either way I'm happy.

But they know that you ~don't own it, and that they can take it away from you at any time... access to it is a digital right ~given by the onerous agreement with them. Is it not?
If they tell you 'no' for any reason (including server error), is that not withholding your purchased access, until they can validate you as a customer?

*That said, as I understand it... Executables don't strictly have to be wrapped in the Steam DRM ~or Steamworks... But is that common enough to even be considered?

**BTW: Do the Steam versions of Fallout 1 & 2, run with Steam deactivated? Did they before the re-release?

That's not enough for people that want it gone from their system, and not ideal for people that have a Steam game, but haven't got high speed Internet ~at home.

I cannot imagine them selling it on destktops ~without Steam; probably because no one without it matters to any major publisher, and even the DVD is non-functional without installing Steam, first to report you, and next to decrypt the installer ~which it won't do offline, even though you have the legitimate disc. The developers themselves joked that it was a coaster after first use; throw it away.

Merged with the above post; please delete this one, thanks.

And why is that? I played New Vegas for at least a couple of years with no internet connection at all. All you need to do is to connect long enough to activate the game, if you're installing from a disc, and you can completely forget about any sort of internet connection after that. The argument that you need to have a high speed connection in order to play Steam games is a very poor one, and not true at all. It's nothing but misinformation.

What are you talking about? Bloat your PC? Steam is small. Horribly intrusive? You can set it to not run at startup and manually launch when you want to run it. And what pop ups are you talking about? Only thing I ever see is a small window about accessing the steam community that goes away after a few seconds, and a small window advertising some game when I exit the game I'm playing. Takes a second to close