You buy them and install them from a disc, oldskool. I can't seem to play steam games offline on my laptop.

Then you just wouldn't get Steam. No problems.

I'm not gonna convert all my friends over to xfire, that would just be a hassle. And all xfire seems me is that it is a simple chat program with some extra features, which I don't need.

I don't know what you guys are complaining about, Steam is absolutely fantastic. Not to mention Steamworks comes with tons of benefits, like a great friend system, VAC, and Steam Cloud. Games For Windows Live, however, is a huge inconvenient, poorly coded hassle. Plus Microsoft usually restricts games it supports, by making them hard to modify, and usually being against a developer having free downloadable content.

Also, Steam DOES NOT require you to be online to launch/play a game in any shape or form.



Your argument is invalid, the publisher chooses what they want to price their game on Steam.

Exactly! And if you look out for the steamsales (like those dayly deals right now) you can get some games realy cheap.

Personally I love Steam, great friendlist, I don't need space my shelves for crappy DVD boxes and I never have to bother putting in the game DVD. Also you can backup your games and store them whatever way you want, so you don't need to redownload them later.
Oh, and Steam might be a monopoly, but only because the competitors lack any kind of customer benefits.

Your argument is invalid, I can still get the game for less in stores, so it's not only the Publisher's fault. The Steam-Platform is the cause for the pricing.

You cant really blame the store for prices set by the supplier. Do you blame the pharmacy when certain name brand medicines cost hundreds of dollars, even when an off-brand might be half the price or less?

I do. They could always take a hit on profits and release it at a cost, just for the benefit of their customers. Wouldn't that be the day?

It wouldn't be unheard of, I'm sure that sometimes a store will do it to attract customers, but the majority of games stores are in a situation where they are paid for allowing companies to sell their games there. They only get a small percent of every game sold, and have little say on price. That's why most of them push pre-owned games so much, there's a much larger profit margin for them.

By the way, have you heard that the used game sales is going to the Supreme Court? Something about the whole "not eligible for resale" disclaimer on every copy of a game.