Originally posted by: skace
Steam has become amazing. Especially the recent additions such as the shift-tab frontend and the working friends list. Both pushed it beyond anything I ever expected it to become. Joining servers with a group of friends has never, ever been this easy and I don't think I can go back to the days of gamespy or anything else for that matter.
Plus, the auto-join features are freaking amazing. Playing on 1 server full of crappy players while you have auto join running in the background against that constantly-full but incredibly fun server just streamlines the whole process. Makes me remember the days of auto reconnecting while staring at a console and just laughing.
That was a good read also, I liked hearing about the early days when Steam was a really bad step from WON. I mean, I kind of expected they may have been sweating it a little bit, but it's nice to hear from them on how they saw the events unfold. Also, kind of funny hearing warez lingo like 0day used in the article.
Exactly. I dont understand why people are going so crazy about paranoid delusions of DRM and valve taking away your games. The benefits of the unified community far outweigh the negatives. More and more gamers are shifting away from the PC to the consoles because of the online experience is so much more streamlined (on 360 at least).
I dont want to have to manually patch my game, I dont want to have to coordinate with buddies outside of the game to meet on the same clogged servers, and I dont want to dig out the damn disc just to bypass the DRM. I'll take steam type activation DRM over disc-verification DRM any day .
Two anecdotes:
I'm actually the owner of both the PC and the 360 versions of COD4. I decided to go back and play it - fire up the game, it didnt work. Oh yeah, theres a bug that requires me to have a microphone plugged in order for the game to not crash. (dont ask me, I know it sounds ridiculous). So I dig out my mic, launch the game again. Ok, I need a patch. Alright, that'll be 70mb, should only take a few minutes. Wait a few minutes, download patch...install patch. Ok, fire it up, everything is working. Now find a server. Theres one - oops, too much lag. Find another one nearby, and everything is working alright, except for the douchebag cheater thats ruining the game. Screw this - turn on my 360. Pop in the disc. Patch? 15 seconds to install, from within the game. A friend is on. Invite sent, one click, and I'm in. Pretty much lag free, and no one is cheating. And everyone is talking. It literally took me less time to turn on the 360, insert the game, DL and install the patch and get into a match on the 360 than it did *just to download* the PC patch. Despite having a raptor in my system and a decent gfx card on a well kept system, the 360 version also loads faster and runs smoother. Something is clearly wrong here.
My brother just got a new PC. Wanted to install his favorite game, SWG. Had to dig out the discs, and it took him over a half hour to install because one of the discs was slightly scratched. Installs the game, then he needs to download a *HUGE* patch. Still didnt work. Had to figure out he needed new ati drivers, but he had to call me up so I could explain how to do that. Now, granted steam doesnt have auto driver updating or notification either, but thats a feature they can easily add. His experience likely would have been MUCH smoother if he could have just DLed the latest version of the game from the start, especially considering the scratched disc. These are the kind of things steam can bring to the PC, and I'm supposed to believe thats a bad thing?