Valve has their heads too far up their own tails to notice those who don’t like their wasteland-of-IQ community. Unlockables and achievements completely exacerbated the problem of these losers with more time on their hands than a security guard at a used Hyundai dealership in Texas. As such, I’m staying well away from this until it’s cheap enough that I can gift it and play with people I actually LIKE.

Even with tax mentioned after this post, he makes a point. Why on earth would one pay [i]more[/i] (or even equal) for a game with no box, manual, disc, bonuses, etc? On top of that, I then have to download the game, which can often take some time.

I’m not really getting any benefit if Steam stuff costs more.

To be fair, running a bunch of servers continually to service a pretty big community must also cost quite a bit.

Downloading a game is a benefit to me – it’s not as if I can’t do other stuff on my PC while I’m downloading. I can even play another game, which is nice. You don’t have to sit there staring at the progress bar.

Concerning time downloading, it beats going down to a store, which also takes time and I’m not even going to start on interacting with the “staff” in a games shop.. Also, when it’s finished downloading, it’s installed, including all patches (if available), it’s done, you can start playing.

For me the real handiness of buying games on Steam is that I can install my games on any PC with an internet connection. For example, a couple of months ago I was housesitting for a week at my brother’s house – I download and install the Steam client, I login to my account, pick a game, I have to wait a bit for a game to download and then I start playing. And when Steamcloud gets up and running I’ll be even happier.

I always wonder how much of the price you pay for a boxed copy actually goes into the boxedness – we all know the stories of CDs, how little they actually cost to manufacture (including cases, booklets, etc.). I’m guessing it’ll be a very small part.

third-party publishers need to remember to check their prices every now and then, for example :( And since the value of the pound against the dollar has just nosedived, every game on there could do with being reassessed.

Or, as has been mentioned before, introduce more currencies. Hell, make it an optional feature for each company on a region-by-region basis whether the price appears in dollars or in local currency. Arguably, if they’re wanting to charge more in different areas, it’d be _better_ for them as comparison wouldn’t be so easy ;)

When it gets closer to the release date, it should show up as an entry in your Games section in Steam.

Also, as I couldn’t find it mentioned here. Pre-purchasers will get access to part of the game on the 6th November, everyone else who wants to try it, 11th. Ends on the 18th.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/1945/