Yeah. Steam tends to presume that the user has a fast, reliable internet connection - I just had to redownload what seems like the whole of FNV just to fix a few corrupt files. You can imagine how slow it was on a third-world Internet connection.

There's kind of a disconnect between your premise and conclusion here. It's not like you have a choice, if you want to play FNV, or Portal, or Just Cause 2. And I'm frequently irritated by Steam, but I have other things going on in my life (well... non-Steam games ) so I'm not among the vocal minority (and you're right that complaining about it is a wasted effort anyway). My point is that it's not one of those cases where everyone but a vocal minority thinks it's great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam - It's water but in the form of a gas, this happens when it is boiled.

You missed out on a great deal Monkeydad. FNV + all it's DLCs (= Ultimate Edition) was available for only 17$ a week ago during the Steam holiday sale.

But that's just one reason to get it for PC. You can still play it with your controller and you can mod it. Next to actually playing the game modding it is the most fun thing it has to offer

You're not in a minority, by any means. The anti-steamers are the minority, and frequently vocal about it- but that's the nature of things. You don't usually hear from all the happy, satisfied Steam users (like us), but the disgruntled sorts are always quick to announce their displeasure. : :

I can feel for the people who have troubles with its sometimes clunky offline mode, and it would be nice if Valve could improve that, I'll agree. But as an overall service, and as a much superior DRM option than the crappy and invasive haxxor stuff publishers were putting on physical game DVD's, I quite like it myself. As someone with a good steady internet connection and no need or desire to play Steam games anywhere but on my always-connected home computer, it has been a most excellent way of buying and managing my games.

That's why I love steam. The little frustration it gives me is easily overlooked by the fact of their great deals. Hell, just last week I bought Skyrim for 40.19 instead of 59.99

steam is the work of the devil... plain and simple... it stops you selling your games that you bought with your hard earned cash.

Well, there are no discs. Honestly, I prefer digital distribution. If you sell a game on Steam, sure you can't sell it back, but Valve sells it to you directly. No need for mortar and brick stores, which means less money spent on transport, boxes,discs etc. Usually this is passed on to you, by form of either lower prices or the legendary Steam sales.

im not moaning about "digital distribution" even though i'd never trust steam with my c/c details after it got hacked..

im refering to physical copies... to play skyrim,fallout NV i MUST have steam installed and have an active internet connection to play/install them which is a crock.

i cant sell my games IF i choose to because they're bound to me till the end of time or steam which ever comes first.

if they did this with the console im sure there'd be an uproar.. needless to say others may like/love steam i dont..

i have as much loathing for it as i do windows live, but to play skyrim etc... i have to live that unfortunatly...

I agree, having to have an online connection to verify the game blows, but hey, if you do it once you are set for life. The only thing I don't like is when games have Steam by default. If I just want to put it on my computer, I should be able to.

It's the same thing as everyone complaining about PS3 version of skyrim is god awful yet I've had barely any problems with it. People experience it different.

If you're adamant about not playing on PC that's fine, but if you have a computer that can run these kinds of games on par with consoles at the least you should. I managed to get NV + all dlc for no more than $15 from the steam holiday sales.

I have an iMac. It's a nice computer but not very good for games. I use it for surfing the internet and doing work and that's about it.

You are lucky if you had no problems with it.

I had to delete a bunch of games I used to play all of the time and now play every so often and I cannot let the game autosave at all if I want my PS3 to run.

I can't wait to beat everything in the game so I can delete the file and actually have space again.

You do realize nearly every dev and publisher is against used games.

I mean who do they think they are, wanting to make money, how dare they.

They're not Gamestop, they can't make money for you turning in old games because you downloaded them.

Your fault for buying them.

Bah. Then make the games more replayable, have solid multiplayer or add a buttload of cool achievements. When I buy a book it's generally understood that it's mine to give to whoever I want, whenever I want. Not sure why game devs and publishers now suddenly feel entitled to deny me this - right or privilege or whatever you want to call it.

But, I don't want to seem too down on Steam. Sometimes it makes me want to pull my hair out, but I play a lot of games I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford because of Steam (or Gamersgate).

Well, to be fair, a book costs usually 20 dollars whereas a game is 60 dollars. Plus there is usually high development costs. It only costs a writer his time and some of the profits to get published by a publisher/

The cost and development costs are weak arguments; those are part and parcel to every business model. Where things differ is a book degrades over time, while software does not. A used book is inherently inferior to a new book. Used software is as 100% pristine when ''used'' as it is new, unless mechanisms are put in place to counteract this. For consoles, this has wound up as a multiplayer key that can only be used once, so you have to buy access to the servers if you buy the game used. Alternative models in the software world are giving the software away cheap (or free) and charging for support, or some form of subscription so that the software you've bought won't stay functional forever.

Queue

Steam is like XBL, or PSN, but for the PC, kinda. It's pretty good, and it's free.

That and the amount of money you save is insane, how anyone in their right mind can hate steam is beyond me.

go back to spending full price on a boxed copy of a game, we don't miss you.

Well, you technically don't own the intellectual property (that's why copyrights and trademark symbols exist), but are merely loaned it by the producer. You own the physical manifestation of the property (the disc), but selling the disc is technically intellectual theft, because you're giving away something you never really owned in the first place.

Regardless, if you hate Steam so much, then I'm sorry for you. Digital releases seems to be the way things are going. Third-party developers and indie developers find it more appealing due to lower production costs and the ability to get the game out to more people, and in-store sales/physical sales seem to be waning for PC games. Consoles, I'm sure, will continue using discs as a way to prevent sharing abuse, but PC CD/DVD-based gaming is dying.

When did Steam start pinging Achievements in Offline Mode? Was there an update at some point? I've had FONV since launch, played 300+ hours across four characters, but in Offline Mode the achievements didn't ping and I didn't much care for them anyway. I reinstalled it about a week ago, went into Offline Mode, loaded up an old character (turns out all my saves which I'd transferred from an external hard drive had become corrupted [I cried for a bit], but it managed to load up one save for one character, but had also reset every quest and all the stats on the save. So the character was level 27 or something, but the stats were blank and the quest log was empty and the game was pretty much unplayable.) and it instantly pinged two achievements for the character level. Reach level 10, reach level 20 etc.

Been playing it for the past couple of days and now its pinging every achievement in Offline Mode. So yeah, when the hell did this happen?

You can turn that crap off, make it so it doesn't even pop up in game.

dont be sorry for me lol its my view steam to me is like the third reich ie they want to control you and your game.