By Alec Meer on February 7th, 2008 at 5:16 pm.
News has just reached us via electro-pigeon that Steam, Valve Software’s increasingly STRONG LIKE OX online game distribution system, now has 15 million users. 15 million. Where are you now, World of Warcraft and your puny 10 million subscribers? Details and all-official-like Gabe Newell statement after the jump.
Of course, it’s worth bearing in mind that many of those accounts are simply for Counter-Strike (in both classic and Source flavours) and/or Half-Life 2 and/or Team Fortress 2, so it’s surely not earning anywhere near as much as 10 million monthly WoW subs do.
Also, a Steam account is free, even if the games themselves are not. Notably, anyone who’s installed a new driver for their ATI graphics card lately will have discovered that Steam wants to sneak onto their hard drives too. And bam, there’s one more user – and one more person presented with adverts for newly-released games available from the Steam store on a regular basis. More happily, with that installation comes free HL2 Deathmatch and Lost Coast, whilst NVIDIA users get an exclusive Portal demo and, bestest of all, Peggle Extreme (though GeForce drivers don’t include Steam – yet).
We don’t know how much money Steam is actually generating – Valve confirm simply “year-over-year sales growth of 158% through the holiday season.” At a guess, I’d say that means a hundred million squillion ultra-dollars.
Generally, I’m all for it, too – after a rocky first couple of years, Steam’s turned into a pretty awesome asset. I’m vaguely troubled by one firm having such a monopoly on online game distribution (though you Yanquis do also benefit from Gametap, which is a bit rubbish and understocked over here in pale Britain). Still, like Google, so far this chokehold has only been good for us. When the time eventually comes for Valve to harvest our very souls, at least we’ll have had a few years of fun and convenience out of it first.
Here’s pertinent quotes from Valve’s statement:
“Throughout 2008 more Community features will be introduced to support existing games as well as new titles such as Valve’s Left 4 Dead. Also new for Steam in 2008 is Steamworks, giving game developers access to game features and services available on Steam ranging from product key authentication and copy protection to auto-updating, social networking and matchmaking. Most importantly, the game features and services available in Steamworks are free of charge and can be used for both electronic and tangible versions of games.
“PC gaming is thriving, and has evolved into an era of constant connectivity,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “That connectivity gives us the ability to have a much better relationship with customers, not just for delivering our games, but across all aspects of our business – including the design, development, and support of our games. Features like Guest Passes, Free Weekends, Gifting, and the Steam Community have been very well received both by customers and the developers who are using Steam. We are accelerating our release of new functionality in the next year as well as finding new ways to work with our partners such as the release of Steamworks, which allows them to bring the many benefits of Steam to their packaged products.”
How many folks reading this have indeed bought something off Steam, out of interest (Half-Life 2/The Orange Box aside)?
07/02/2008 at 17:27 BaconIsGood4You says:
I’ve bought Bioshock, Tomb Raider: Legend, Darwinia, Defcon, Geometry Wars, and Call of Duty 2 along with all recent Valve work on Steam.
I would never have bought Darwinian, Defcon, Geometry Wars, or Tomb Raider if they hadn’t been on Steam.
I love Steam.
07/02/2008 at 17:33 Sub-Kamikaze says:
Steam loves you too *pats head*
I bought HL 2, The Orange Box, Darwinia, Peggle, and Psychonauts (for the second time) off of Steam. In fact, BaconIsGood4You, I might have to challenge you to a duel to prove my love…
07/02/2008 at 17:37 cliffski says:
only bought HL2. for some reason the games they have on there don’t tend to appeal to me. I have spent a lot at stardock though :D
07/02/2008 at 17:39 David says:
Pretty incredible numbers. I wonder what this means for Valve game sales which presumably are still the primary impetus to get steam on your system. Apart from Valve games I’ve only bought Peggle Deluxe (after the Peggle Extreme thing with the Orange Box preorder) because of the prices mainly but I’m certainly looking to buy more of my games digitally just for convenience sake.
07/02/2008 at 17:44 Gulag says:
All the HL and HL2 stuff, TF2, Darwinia, Upload. Just bought Puzzle Quest, which is eating an embarrassing amount of time. This year I’m planning to buy Stalker 2 (Insert your own punctuation.) and Left 4 Dead, at the very least.
07/02/2008 at 17:47 Kast says:
I once splurged on Thief: Deadly Shadows, Company of Heroes and Psychonauts all at once over Steam. Three top-notch games I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise – without Steam, my life would have been poorer.
Other notable indulgances: Hitman: Blood Money, SiN, SiN Episodes and Ghost Master (by personal favourite ;) )
So… thanks to Valve. Even ignoring all their own games, they’ve made a huge impact on the industry.
07/02/2008 at 17:54 Watcher95 says:
I love steam; but my Goodness, 70 USD for COD4?
07/02/2008 at 17:54 Iain says:
When I first heard about Steam, I wasn’t a fan of the concept. But post-Half Life 2, when I signed up for my account, I have to say my opinion has gone a whole 180 degrees.
Steam means that I don’t need to have my CDs around to play the games, I can patch them easily, not worry about digging out disks to reinstall stuff when I reformat the hard drive or buy a new computer, because everything’s tied to my Steam ID. I just turn on the broadband and let the games sort themselves out without any need to get involved other than telling Steam which ones to download… Simply, I think it’s TEH FUTURE. I’ve even been able to register my old copies of Half-Life and its expansions on Steam, so now I don’t have to fiddle about with the CDs for them either. Which is aces beyond measure.
Beyond The Orange Box, things I’ve bought via Steam are: Half-Life: Source, Half-Life 2: Episode One (I bought this prior to Orange Box coming out), Deus Ex, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War Platinum Pack, DEFCON, Peggle Deluxe, RACE, RACE: Caterham Expansion and X-Com: Terror From The Deep. In the very near future, I can see myself picking up Dawn of War: Soulstorm and Uplink from there, too (and maybe COD4 when the price comes down a bit – it’s down to $50 now, but I’m a cheapskate Scot – I’ll buy it when it comes down to $30).
07/02/2008 at 17:57 Will Tomas says:
Am I the only one who’s never bought anything from steam? I got my HL2/Orange Box from retail because I like having the physical boxes. And because I didn’t have a permanent internet connection until after the Orange Box had come out in retail, but still. Lack of time more than anything else means I don’t get to play that many games so I cherry pick the ones I do, and that hasn’t included any exclusively available over Steam.
07/02/2008 at 18:03 Nallen says:
I love it, Microsoft and EA try and take over the world and most of us would rather punch out our own eyeballs. Google and Valve do the same and we’re all “here’s the house keys and my newborn child!” confident they’ll come back both smarter and more secure.
07/02/2008 at 18:05 dartt says:
DEFCON, Garry’s Mod, Red Orchestra, The Longest Journey, Rag Doll Kung Fu.
A suprisingly short list!
07/02/2008 at 18:06 dhex says:
i picked up bloodlines off of steam on a whim. t’was very enjoyable.
and good product is good product. valve’s got good product.
07/02/2008 at 18:08 Matt says:
I haven’t done much purchasing through Steam unfortunately, only Half Life: Source, the Episodes and Sin Episode
s. Oh, and Garry’s Mod of course, gotta support the local Brummy game developers!I, for some reason, much prefer to have a box I can stick on my shelf. I also wish that the huge PC game boxes of 10 years ago were still in production, I chuffin’ loved buying those big buggers. I still have my AvP2 box somewhere which is in that style, though I lost the cd case that came inside it, and also therefore the cd :(
07/02/2008 at 18:17 Nimic says:
When Steam first came, it ruffled some feathers in the old CS 1.5 community. We were perfectly happy using WON. Now, though, I love it. It works well, and it’s the perfect place to get games that you might not be able to find in the local store (that is, I check Steam before I check the local store, not the other way around ;)).
07/02/2008 at 18:17 sh33333p says:
Source premier pack (pre-orange box), Orange Box, Painkiller, Psychonauts, Bioshock, Gun(When it was $10- still a rip-off).
I’ll probably pick up Max Payne 2 sometime real soon.
07/02/2008 at 18:20 Shawny D says:
I love STEAM, buy most of my games on there, with a few exceptions like COD4 which I bought at one the big box stores.
To be honest though, in the beginning I didn’t like at all, but over time, they’ve really built an excellent service with great community features that put MS’s GFW Live to absolute shame.
07/02/2008 at 18:21 Scott says:
I have to say, I’ve spent a lot more time and money on pc games through Steam than I would have if I had to buy them in a store. I’ve bought Orange Box, Bioshock, Psychonauts, Stalker, GTA San Andreas, Thief: Deadly Shadows (which I know has a lot of fans, but has NOT aged well. I played it for ten minutes and then uninstalled it.) If I had to make my way to a store, I probably would have only got Orange Box and Bioshock.
The grooviness of steam was driven home to me this week when I upgraded to a new hard drive and there were all my games ready to download and play without any jerking around with disks and license keys.
I also like that Steam keeps track of how much time I spend playing games, so I know when to feel guilty about wasting my life.
07/02/2008 at 18:23 Shawny D says:
hey RPS, just curious, any chance of a Podcast for the site?
07/02/2008 at 18:25 Iain says:
@Matt: I don’t get the whole PC box fetishism thing. I hated them: big huge box, tiny CD. Total waste of precious storage space…
The one thing I enjoy the most about Steam is the lack of boxes. When you horde games like I do (over 200 games accumulated over the course of about 12 years) the more boxes and physical media I can get rid of, the better… and if the disk gets scratched (or lost) you’d have to re-buy the damn game anyway. Better to re-buy a game on Steam and not have to worry about the disks at all. I’d really love to see Steam host more retro games from the X-Com era onwards, because it wouldn’t be much of an overhead for them (not with installs around the range of a few dozen to a couple of hundred MB, compared to a modern game which is more like 6GB on average), and it would beat the hell out of having to trawl Abandonware sites for something that’s cracked, legally ambiguous and which you have to run under DOSBox or a Virtual Machine. But I don’t reckon it will happen, unfortunately…
07/02/2008 at 18:26 Tom says:
Steam’s awesome, and points to the future. That’s about it really.
07/02/2008 at 18:26 The_B says:
Stuff that I have bought over Steam:
Half Life 2 Episode 1
Day of Deafeat Source
Orange Box
Just Cause
Peggle Deluxe
Top Spin 2
The Ship
Sin Episodes: Emergence
Although usually I buy over Steam out of convience (I am a fairly lazy fellow) but only when the price is reasonable – or in the case of the OB, Ep1 and DoD:S a factor was they would let me play stuff early.
07/02/2008 at 18:28 tacticus says:
@Watcher95 It’s worse in .au Activision set the steam price 88.50 USD for cod4
Myself i have bought so far on steam a fairly decent collection the big ones being
Bioshock, Defcon, Geometry Wars, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Blood Money, Hitman: Codename 47, Peggle Deluxe, Peggle Extreme, Psychonauts, Red Orchestra, The Ship, X2: The Threat(rebought), X3: Reunion(rebought)
07/02/2008 at 18:33 Steve says:
I love steam. But, I hate that it won’t let me buy games while I live in Germany (which is going to be until July) with my English VISA card. And since German bank cards are retarded and cannot be used (in most cases) on the internet I have to wait until I visit home, which is not that often.
07/02/2008 at 18:51 Zuffox says:
I generally shun extra (background) programs, so I’ve stayed as must clear of Steam as possible. Last time I had it installed was when verifying my Half-Life 2, and it had a couple of annoying quirks back then – which also garnered some public attention as it prevented some from playing the particular game.
I’d have no problem with buying a game from Steam (actually I’ve just found out that Puzzle Quest can be bought there; there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to do it), so I may give it a go. I’ll be getting Orange Box sometime soon, too, and I guess playing Team Fortress 2 requires the thing.
As far as buying games online, I prefer having the boxed games, lest the price is completely absurd, naturally.
07/02/2008 at 18:54 Brant says:
I’ve purchased Rag Doll Kung Fu, Defcon, Peggle, The Longest Journey, Dreamfall, and Psychonauts, in addition to the standard assortment of Valve stuff. Anything that streamlines the Pay Monies->Play Game process to the point where I don’t even have to separate my ass from my chair is a Good Thing in my book.
07/02/2008 at 18:55 Dracko says:
Can’t wait until we’ve all got Steam on our mobile phones!
07/02/2008 at 18:55 Seniath says:
I’ve bought plenty on Steam, the obvious Valve games, the ID Megapack (just to have them all in one place), Darwinia/Uplink, PEGGLE! and Stalker. Couple of times I’ve been tempted to pick games up off Steam, such as BioShock or ET:QW but end up being won over by the pretty boxes.
I do believe Steam is the future, however. It really does leave GfWL in the shade.
07/02/2008 at 18:56 Pidesco says:
I haven’t bought a single game over Steam. I once almost bought Portal, as all the Half-Life games make the Orange Box kind of a waste for me, but I found it too expensive, for my tastes.
I’ll start buying games online, when downloadable games become cheaper than their physical counterparts. No point in buying a game without all the physical extras, when it costs the same as the boxed game from the shop.
07/02/2008 at 18:59 roBurky says:
I bought Steam-Peggle for my Mum’s Christmas present last year.
I loves Steam.
07/02/2008 at 19:09 Cigol says:
I just hope it doesn’t ever flip and turn evil on our asses.
07/02/2008 at 19:16 Bidermaier says:
I have the Half-Life 2 silver collection, Deus Ex, Call of Duty 1, Rag Doll Kung Fu, Stalker, Gish, Trackmania United, X3: The threat, and a few others.
I hope to get COD4 once the price is not embarrasing, i think it cost us $83 after taxes here in the Europes.
It is a shame that many third party publishers make us pay more for the same here in Europe.
07/02/2008 at 19:24 Rich Powers says:
Meh, I don’t trust buying third-party games from Steam. If your account is banned — for whatever reason, legitimate or not — your game collection is screwed. That’s why I like keeping a physical copy around.
And I’m not one of those “box fetish” people, either. As soon as I open the box, it goes in the recycle bin. If you shop around online, you can buy valid physical copies and have them shipped to your house for less than you can buy them on Steam (which is seriously screwed up). Then you can register the game with Steam and have a hard copy. I got DEFCON, Psychonuts, and Darwinia for $7 each in-store. Most Steam downloads are overpriced…
Don’t get me wrong: Steam has the best server browser around and its auto-patching feature make waiting for huge patches at Fileplanet, etc. feel sooo 2001.
07/02/2008 at 19:29 Nahual says:
I’ve always been supportive to steam, but i was pretty neutral about it before they added the community part. Now love it.
Game’s I’ve bought:
Bioshock
Half-life 2
HL2:Ep1
Orange Box
Psychonauts
Ghost Master
Red Orchestra
Company of Heroes
CoH: Opposing Fronts
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (my 2007 GOTY) i would have bought from steam, but it wasn’t released at the same time as retail, so i got it in a box.
Same for Hitman: Blood Money
07/02/2008 at 19:32 Yhancik says:
Where I live – and it’s not the third world – we’re still stuck with ridiculous “monthly data transfer limits”… of 12Gb (around… 86 peggles ?). With 3 people sharing the connexion, it’s barely enough for using the web in a 2008 fashion.
So, no, nothing, and Steam is not for us now. Booo :(
07/02/2008 at 19:33 poullos says:
Bought:
Bioshock, COD 4, Titan Quest with expansion, gold package for HL2 CSS DOD:S back catalog etc, Garry’s mod, Orange box, Ragdoll Kung Fu, COD 2 and installed DMoM&M to steam from retail(wasn’t available for purchase in my country through steam).
A big thanks to steam and valve folks as well as…the dollar :p
P.S: I have no external drives functionality thanks to vista, so steam fills the gap. I would have bought them off steam anyway though.
07/02/2008 at 19:47 Feet says:
Valve games:
HL2, DoD: S. CS: S
Ep1
Ep2, TF2, Portal
Non-Valve games:
TR: Anniversary
SIN Ep1
Defcon
Rag Doll Kung Fu
The Ship
Red Orchestra
Garrys Mod
DMoMaM
Yep, Gabe’s done alright off me, so he has.
07/02/2008 at 19:48 Smee says:
Steam is great, and I love it and most everything about it, but I’d like an option to give games away to friends.
The non-Valve games I’ve bought are Bookworm Adventures, Eets, Gish, Peggle, Company Of Heroes, Dark Messiah, Defcon, Psychonauts (again), The Longest Journey (again), Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary, and Uplink.
What I’d like to do is to have every single game I own on Steam and sell off all my game cases that are filling up my bookshelves. It’s massively more convenient than having the disks or backing up the ISOs to external hard drives.
The community is one of my favourites things about it. I could care less about the achivements. I spend too much money on it.
I do however have problems with the Media section, so I’ve just downloaded the HD trailers I want off of Gametrailers.com, natch.
Long Live Steam.
07/02/2008 at 19:49 Ferrous Buller says:
though you Yanquis do also benefit from Gametap, which is a bit rubbish and understocked over here in pale Britain
We’ve also got Stardock’s TotalGaming.net: not as many high-profile titles as Steam, but no DRM either.
07/02/2008 at 19:52 Jim Rossignol says:
Anyone used Metaboli? How does that do on the DRM front?
07/02/2008 at 20:00 Greger says:
I’ve only bought Red Orchestra, Garry’s Mod and Day of Defeat: Source on Steam. Oh, and Geometry Wars. I bought HL2 in squarey boxy version (i.e. retail).
07/02/2008 at 20:09 BrokenSymmetry says:
I love Steam, but its weak point is that the support system for non-Valve games is abysmal. When you have problems with a game, the original publisher will point to Valve, and vice versa, so you’re basically on your own.
07/02/2008 at 20:11 Windlab says:
@Smee:
I’d like an option to give games away to friends.
I thought the same after they introduced the gift feature if you had multiple copies of a game, however, being able to give away any game after you’ve played it would be even better.
07/02/2008 at 20:12 Andy Simpson says:
My sister’s used Metaboli to play Freelancer (bless her, she has good taste) and it seems to do a thing where it doesn’t let you have the whole game on your disk, it streams it, I think, but I think it might be a subscription thing.
Anyways, on the matter of Steam games, I’ve bought all the Valve games, Peggle, Dark Messiah, Max Payne 2, Civ 4 + expansions, Darwinia, Defcon, Uplink, Deus Ex, Sin Episode 1 & Zen of Sudoku (not because I like Sudoku, but I do want an NS2)
I could repeat all the pro-Steam retoric, but I’m not gonna. We all know it’s great. The only thing it really needs is a reliable offline mode. Right now it can be a bit hit & miss.
07/02/2008 at 20:14 Zaptrack says:
The only game I’ve bought off steam is garry’s mod, but my monthly paycheck comes in today and I’ll problally waste a bit of it on the complete first season of sam and max.
07/02/2008 at 20:17 Heartless_ says:
I bought Call of Duty 4 on Steam, and doubt I would have purchased it otherwise. The CoD gamed made by Iron Ward have a wonky history of updates and Steam absolutely streamlines the process for me. I love that simple fact.
07/02/2008 at 20:17 Zaptrack says:
Nvidia can get HL2 deathmatch free aswell, fyi.
07/02/2008 at 20:19 Kevlmess says:
So, since last summer I’ve bought:
- Deus Ex: GOTY & Invisible War
- Sam & Max Season 1 (as two separate packs)
- Psychonauts
- The Longest Journey
- The Orange Box
- Bioshock
- GTA:SA
…which means that in something like six months I bought myself about as much games from Steam alone than from any outlet during the preceding 22 years.
Add to that five retail titles and an Internet purchase outside Steam and we can jump into exciting conclusions.
07/02/2008 at 20:25 Daniel says:
I’ve bought a whole bunch off of steam:
HL2: Episode One
Sin Episodes: Emergence
Shadowgrounds
Sci-Fi Strategy Pack (Darwinia + two other titles I don’t think I’ve even installed yet)
Psychonauts
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Sam and Max Season 1
Shadowgrounds Survivor
Max Payne 1 + 2
Grand Theft Auto Pack
07/02/2008 at 20:27 Matt says:
@Iain:
Don’t get me wrong, I love not having to stick in a cd when I wanna play something. But when I do have to, the bugger usually stays in the drive for the entire week or month I’m playing it.
I just like having my collection down there for me to see, rather than just in a list in digital form. Same for my music, I buy the cds, then stick em on me itunes library for the easy of use. I just prefer to have something in physical form rather than digital, but then I am a bloody hoarder.
And what’s not to like about those big old boxes :D
07/02/2008 at 20:40 Theory says:
No offline mode, which is hardly surprising given it’s subscription-only. Otherwise there’s no discernible difference from Steam until you start getting really technical: you still need the app running and it still needs to spend a few seconds “launching” the game but that’s about all you’ll ever see.
07/02/2008 at 20:58 cereal_killer says:
Back when HL2 came out, I was a little wary of the new-fangled “online distribution thingy” so I bought my copy of HL2 at a brick and mortar and got me a no-cd crack asap (in case Steam went bust.) I had waited years for HL2 and I wasn’t about to let some server thousands of miles away take it away! Fast-forward to the present, I pre-ordered the Orange box the instant I could and have bought several Introversion titles on the service.
07/02/2008 at 21:11 Chris Evans says:
Great to see Steam is continuing to power ahead :D
Bought a small amount of games from Steam, though as I am fortunate enough to have a Press Account right now there is little need for me to purchase stuff.
Long live Steam!
07/02/2008 at 21:25 Fleimur says:
o/
Bioshock, Shadowgrounds, Rockstar pack, Sin, Dark messiah and more
07/02/2008 at 21:29 malkav11 says:
I have a fair amount of Steam content, mostly from retail purchases of Valve software (they’ve never had competitive prices on Steam) and “eh, might as well” purchases when things I already owned dropped into the $5 range on some sale or other. The only thing I ever bought straight off on Steam was Bioshock. Everything else has been on sale, special offer (like getting Shadowgrounds with preorder of the sequel), or just a decent price for a game that wasn’t in stores anymore, like Bloodlines.
On the whole I still prefer having a retail copy, as it keeps on being available whether or not Steam is. And it makes me happier looking at shelf after shelf full of games than looking at titles on a scrollable list on Steam. Plus it’s quicker to install from disc than download the whole game again.
Steam doesn’t precisely have a monopoly, incidentally. They’re the only digital distribution option for some games, but there’s quite a few competing services, including TotalGaming.net, EA’s download service, IGN/Fileplanet’s Direct2Drive, GoGamer’s download thing, EB/Gamestop’s download thing, GamersGate… Gametap kinda sorta counts now that they offer direct purchase, but they’re really at heart a rental service. What I’d like is to see digital distribution become more like retail in the “everybody stocking pretty much everything” respect so that I can do my purchasing based on whose policies and prices I like best, rather than who actually has the game.
07/02/2008 at 21:29 J. Prevost says:
I’ve bought… a whole bunch of stuff. Many things I wouldn’t buy in a store—combination of not wanting to deal with the physical media, and the fact that the PC software selection in game stores is utter crap these days.
07/02/2008 at 21:31 frank says:
I’ve been a big fan since I bought the Silver HL2 pack. Since, I’ve activated a $5 store-bought Valve back-catalog and bought XCOM 2, Deus Ex 1 & 2 and Psychonauts. Of course, I got the OB and Episode 1 as well, along with the over-hyped Bioshock. Once Vivendi (Riddick, Starcraft 2) and Ubisoft (PoP:SoT, BGE) have signed on my modern library will be complete, though Vivendi might still be huffy about that lawsuit.
07/02/2008 at 21:37 Volrath says:
I use steam mostly to purchase adventure games, and I also think more indie developers should take adventage of it.
07/02/2008 at 21:44 Dinger says:
I had a steam account some five years ago, and didn’t like it. Now it’s cool.
Don’t have any gaems on it (either they killed or deactivated my old account, which raises the question: “15 million accounts by what count? total? active? logins this year?”) beyond the Orange Box, in part because, as a jet-setting international playboy, I’m almost never in the countries that correspond to my credit card billing addresses. So buying from Steam can be a pain.
But outside of that (a standard convention in online sales, unfortunately) the system works really well.
07/02/2008 at 21:54 yxxxx says:
Half Life 2 Episode 1
Day of Deafeat Source
Orange Box
Peggle Deluxe
Sin Episodes: Emergence
garrys mod
rag doll kung fu
red orchestra
Probably some more too.
steam is definatly the best system that i have used
07/02/2008 at 22:02 Dan Forever says:
Lets see, I’ve bought [the following off steam]:
Dreamfall
Ghost Master
Peggle Deluxe
Psychonaughts
Rocket Mania Deluxe
Sam and Max 1-3
Sin Episodes: Emergence
Titan Quest + Immortal Throne
Then of course there’s HL2 Silver, Episode 1 and the Orange Box.
I also have Prey and Race WTCC on Steam. The former I got separately and was able to register on steam, the latter came with my graphics card and is tied into steam the same as any valve game is.
07/02/2008 at 22:04 MrNeutron says:
I love Steam like crazy, I’ve bought a large number of games off it. I was one of the haters, back in the Half-Life 2 days, but after Episode 1 came out and I purchased it online and found the experience to be utterly seamless, I’ve never looked back.
I didn’t think I’d be into the Community features very much, but I was so, so wrong. They’ve made my inordinate amount of time playing TF2 even more joyful, because it’s so easy to get together with friends.
So basically, I’m a shameless Valve fanboy who is slightly disappointed when a game I want comes out and *isn’t* available on Steam. “You mean I have to *walk* to the *shop*? What is this, the middle ages?”
07/02/2008 at 22:12 brog says:
> I also have Prey and Race WTCC on Steam.
I read that as “Race WCC”.
Cube racers!
07/02/2008 at 22:17 nimble says:
I still haven’t used Steam, but I suppose it’s just because I’m too cheap. I usually wait until games are around $30, which usually happens in sales and such within a year of their release. And for that $30 I’m getting a game that I’ll be able to lend to a friend, and one that I’ll be able to play as many times as I want, even in 10 or 15 years. Steam asks me to pay twice that price for a game I won’t be able to do either with.
The ability to play a game again in the future without having to pray for the continued existence of a publisher and that publisher’s infrastructure of permission granting servers is an especially attractive one for me. I will be surprised if 10 years from now people will still be allowed to play the games they “bought” from steam. Which is why the excitement over Steamworks and the much heralded success of Bioshock’s DRM concern me, and paint a picture of a future of PC Gaming that is going to drive me away from the platform. A future in which everything either charges a monthly fee (MMOs) or requires a large upfront payment for a game that will only be playable as long as the publisher continues to see a profit in supporting the game (digital distribution or DRM), before they move on to providing the game in a new format and stop allowing access to the old format.
So I’m holding off on purchase and trying to avoid as many spoilers about Bioshock as possible until they get around to releasing the promised patch that will allow you to use the game without activation (or until enough time has passed that they’ve stopped support of the game and the cracking community has caught up with the latest version — not to pirate it, but to be assured that I will be able to own it when I purchase it). I’m resigned to the fact that Introversion won’t ever be a part of my gaming life, and I’m hoping that someday I’ll see the Orange Box available for $5 or $10, which I’d consider a reasonable price for a few years rental. I know that even $20 isn’t a reasonable price from Valve’s point of view for what is almost their entire franchise, but if they’re only going to rent it out, more than $10 is unreasonable to me. Especially since I suspect that Half-Life 2 single-player and Portal just won’t be such an experience for me as they have been for others, both because of the passage of time removing some of the shine from them, and because of how many spoilers I have (and will) come across over the years.
On the other hand, I do pay for GameTap, but there’s no question about the fact that it’s a rental service, and so it’s priced as such. You pay each month, and you get full access to all of the games they have available; you stop paying, and you stop getting access to the games. But they only charge $5/month if you pay by the year, and that comes out to 1/2-cent per game per month, albeit without choice as to which games you’re paying for (and many are just chaff). It’s good for the games I’m not going to want to play again but want to try, or discovering games that are worth purchasing a copy of.
07/02/2008 at 22:45 TychoCelchuuu says:
<3 Steam, so very much:
Company of Heroes, and Opposing Fronts
Red Orchestra
Bioshock
Day of Defeat: Source
Sam and Max: Episode 4
Plus, of course, Half-Life, HL2, CS:S, and the Orange Box.
07/02/2008 at 22:47 Mr.Brand says:
Metaboli certainly lets you download the whole game, but it’s also wrapped in an encrypted chunk of data. What this meant in
practice when I was a subscriber, was that big games like Company of Heroes had a horrible time patching.
After one of the patches, the game blobs were two FIVE GIGABYTE chunks of encrypted data; no simple patching of the existing block which worked before the patch. Dawn of War had similar issues, and both games took 10 minutes to launch on a very healthy, modern computer.
I used Stardock long before Steam, and still prefer it in theory, but some titles are only on Steam. Stardock is working towards making their downloader more like the Steam app, but I’d prefer them to slim it down to being JUST a storefront. No embedded browser, newsreader etc. And frickin’ let me use Opera to browse! Same goes for Steam; don’t force a browser I don’t like on me.
Apart from Activision being cocks about prices, Steam is a cheap place for us Europeans to get games. But Stardock aren’t doing staggered releases, so when a new strategy game is out, it is available even here in the third world.
I both love and hate Steam. Nice launcher, decent selection of games at OK prices, but offline mode never, ever worked for me. I know how it’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t. Not on my system. The DRM makes me love Stardock a notch more :)
07/02/2008 at 23:05 Andrew says:
I’ve bought loads off Steam besides Valve games. Bioshock, Dreamfall, Red Orchestra, Vampire: Bloodlines, X-COM: Terror from the Deep…
I love Steam to bits. It’s wonderful.
07/02/2008 at 23:41 Prospero says:
I’ve actually stopped buying games unless they come out on Steam. The prices are decent enough, the selection is pretty solid, and being able to click to re-install on any computer is fricking civilization. It’s a life saver on holiday when everyone is asleep and you’re jonsing for some gaming.
07/02/2008 at 23:44 Kadayi says:
I’ve bought quite a lot of games through Steam (more than are worth listing). I love the fact that I don’t have to worry about the CD changing or that my discs might get scratched, and can just redownload them anywhere any time I want. I wish Itunes was as flexible tbh.
08/02/2008 at 00:18 Morte says:
I bought the Orange Box, in an actual orange box, from Amazon.co.uk for about 60% of what Steam were charging. Then I had to make a Steam account to play it.
All things considered, waiting for the post beat several GB of downloading in that particular case. But maybe sometimes I’d prefer the download.
Why does Steam take so long to launch? Before I stopped it launching with Windows, it was doubling my boot time. I’m used to getting no CD cracks for my (legitimate) games so I won’t have to swap discs, now I’m tempted to find something similar so I won’t have to wait for Steam when I launch a (legitimate) game.
I guess the auto-patching is decent enough, but it’s nothing revolutionary.
The Steam client seems to be a whole new channel for unsolicited commercial advertising.
If I played multiplayer and needed the matchmaking stuff, I expect I’d like it a lot more.
08/02/2008 at 00:43 Fumarole says:
My Steam directory is 56 GBs and growing. Yes, Valve loves me very much.
08/02/2008 at 01:45 James says:
I’m very happy to see Steam juggernautin’ ahead, but I’m afraid it’s just not the tool for me.
I’m a hoarder too- though I’d prefer to dodge the box fetishist title – and never being able to see the physical object I’m paying for makes me nervous. I like being able to point at a big old bookshelf and say ‘that’s my games collection’. I get a feeling that the days of a physical games collection are quickly drawing to a close, but I think I’ll hang onto them while I can.
So yeah, I haven’t bought a thing from Steam, but it’s possible that it might change at some stage. The way that it’s growing, that stage might come sooner than later.
EDIT: And of course, the other two major factors of me avoiding it are rubbish Aussie internet connections and rubbish Aussie games availabilities. All together, it makes downloading a game more trouble than it’s worth. A two day game download? I think I’ll pop down to the shops instead, thanks.
08/02/2008 at 01:52 Fedora.Pirate says:
I agree 100% with what James said edit and all, and to add more to the edit downloading a game’s going to eat up my precious monthly bandwidth allocation so fast it’s not funny.
08/02/2008 at 09:42 Bidermaier says:
I am trying metaboli since the last month. It is better than i expected. There are a lot of vivendi, atari and ubisoft games, so there is a lot of stuff that is not available on steam atm.
My problem with metaboli is that i keep playing games i really dont care since i am “paying for them”.
But in general the service worth a try. The software is not as sleek and fully featured as steam, but it is ok.
08/02/2008 at 10:01 malkav11 says:
Oh, that’s one thing I don’t like about Steam: it piles all of its games under its directory. Some of us have multiple hard drives and need to spread the pain out according to what drive’s least full at the moment…
08/02/2008 at 10:13 Alec Meer says:
Yeah, that infuriates me too. Let’s hope there’s a Customise Install option in a future update.
08/02/2008 at 11:42 Shanucore says:
Mmm, I like Steam. Have mostly only bought Valve games from it, though. I would buy add-ons for games I bought elsewhere but I’ve heard they don’t play so nicely together.
08/02/2008 at 11:44 Tim says:
It’s a pity windows xp doesn’t support symbolic links, you could trick it into using a different drive transparently.
I’ve bought the orange box, bioshock, peggle, puzzle quest, and culpata innata (which I don’t really recommend, I felt like risking $20 at the time).
It was the orange box that got me hooked into it, so their retail release definitely worked for them, they were my first valve games believe it or not. I convinced two other people to buy it over steam too.
I would have bought COD4 from steam, but I’m boycotting the game completely since the publisher raised the Australian steam price to near double that of what Americans pay (presumably to appease Australian retails being undercut in price).
08/02/2008 at 15:32 Edgar the Peaceful says:
I’ve just subscribed to Metaboli in order to play Neverwinter Nights 2 & STALKER. Instead I seem to be playing DIRT and Tomb Raider: Legend – games I never would have conventionally bought in a million years.
I’ve found it excellent as I have a 22mg connection with BE* and no download cap (for £18 a month!). If I was on pay-as-you-go bandwidth or a slow connection it would really suck.
There are some annoyances – e.g. Neverwinter Nights 2 is not patched up to date which makes multiplayer virtually impossible, plus occasionally there are problems starting programmes up.
220 odd games for £13 a month is pretty good value I think, with World in Conflict due to come ‘on stream’ soon.
08/02/2008 at 15:37 Leelad says:
@Rich Powers
The only thing your account can get banned for is VAC bans, this only prevents playing Valve games online on protected servers.
Never heard of an account being closed.
08/02/2008 at 17:33 Fumarole says:
@Shanucore
So far my Steam version of Opposing Fronts works perfectly with my retail version of Company of Heroes. And when Soulstorm arrives I’ll be purchasing that via Steam to go along with my retail versions of Dawn of War and its two existing expansions.
Come on in, the water’s fine!
08/02/2008 at 19:28 Colin says:
I have one fundamental problem with these download services – if you cancel your account,you can’t play what you have paid for. Does a game shop stop you playing a game you bought if you don’t go to it any more?
08/02/2008 at 19:31 Jim Rossignol says:
Colin: isn’t it more like game rental, like video rental?
These are quite different services, of course, Steam allows you to buy and since there’s no sub you’d never need to cancel.
08/02/2008 at 19:47 Benjamin Barker says:
I got it to play Vampire: Bloodlines, which I don’t think anyone mentioned above. It’s a game you’d have a tough time even finding anywhere else any more. I was delighted to find that you can patch and modify games off Steam just fine– Bloodlines is a game where you definitely need the unoffical patch. Then I had to get the Orange Box (and then Peggle, hooked by the demo) and I’m planning to get S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and maybe X3 ($20 games, like Bloodlines– good deal!).
It’s also great when you upgrade to a new system. Just log on and start installing– no need to find and fiddle with disks.
09/02/2008 at 01:12 EMPty=IRL= says:
Valve Games:
HL2 (HL2, CS:S, DOD:S,…)
HL2 Episode 1
Orange box(EP2, Portal, TF2)
Other:
Sin Episode: Emergence (Sadly not EpisodeS)
Bioshock
Peggle
Gish
Rockstar Collection (10 games, LOVE this!)
COD4
Plus 4 or more free mods…
TOTAL: 39 Games…
Damm… I might be addicted to steam…
10/02/2008 at 10:40 Kadayi says:
nimble says:
“I still haven’t used Steam, but I suppose it’s just because I’m too cheap. I usually wait until games are around $30, which usually happens in sales and such within a year of their release. And for that $30 I’m getting a game that I’ll be able to lend to a friend, and one that I’ll be able to play as many times as I want, even in 10 or 15 years. Steam asks me to pay twice that price for a game I won’t be able to do either with.”
Seems to me that you haven’t even looked at Steam at all, because your wildly off with your comments. Firstly the prices of the games do go down over time from their original retail price and are fairly competitive, secondly unless the actual Steam service went completely belly up (v.unlikely) then you’ll always be able to redownload the games (there are no limitations on reinstalls).
03/06/2008 at 02:51 Bob says:
My god $70 is cheap for cod4 hear in australia its like $120 off shelf!
03/06/2008 at 03:30 Al3xand3r says:
Well, since this popped up again, here’s a reply:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/3159/steamzorlh0.gif
Some games from the last couple of panels were cropped :(
Bob, I thought US dollar has different value to Canadian, just using the same name, but as different as say, the Euro or the English pound in practice. So I imagine the price difference isn’t as bad as that makes it sound. Unless you mean they offer it for $70 Canadian on Steam as opposed to the local insane prices? In which case, ignore me.
25/09/2008 at 15:27 Eamo says:
Whoa, I just checked and I have 72 games on Steam. I have bought games on steam that I never played and even bought games that I already own (mostly because they were part of some sort of package deal).
I don’t mind saying that I simply refuse to buy any PC game until it appears on Steam now. It just isn’t worth the hassle. Once their method for storing save games online goes through it will be perfect.