Tell me about Steam (the video gaming service)

[TheGoofster]

If there are any Disses out there who are familiar with this service, I would appreciate any info / opinions about Steam.

From what I understand, you are actually purchasing the rights to play the game, instead of actually purchasing the game itself. The game is located on Steam's server, and you pay to access it, and play it on your own computer.
I have a new PC, so I'm not worried about meeting the system requirements, and I have pretty good internet speed.
The prices of most games seem pretty reasonable (much better than buying the game new, and in many cases better even then buying the game used if you include shipping charges).
I'm just wondering if any of you have actually used this service, how reliable (speed, connecting, availability, etc... ) it seems. Have you encountered any sort of problems at all? Are you pleased with it? Would you recommend for or against it?

Again, I would really appreciate any feedback from people who are familiar with this service.

Thanks.

 

[dawson5]

My sons use Steam. I pulled him in here, I'm letting him reply:

If there are any Disses out there who are familiar with this service, I would appreciate any info / opinions about Steam.

From what I understand, you are actually purchasing the rights to play the game, instead of actually purchasing the game itself. The game is located on Steam's server, and you pay to access it, and play it on your own computer.
I have a new PC, so I'm not worried about meeting the system requirements, and I have pretty good internet speed.
The prices of most games seem pretty reasonable (much better than buying the game new, and in many cases better even then buying the game used if you include shipping charges).
I'm just wondering if any of you have actually used this service, how reliable (speed, connecting, availability, etc... ) it seems. Have you encountered any sort of problems at all? Are you pleased with it? Would you recommend for or against it?

Again, I would really appreciate any feedback from people who are familiar with this service.

Thanks.

You Kinda understand it, the games are on a server, you download from the server, to your comp, i recommend you have a large area of storage if you intend on playing alot of games, a very relible service, when you buy the games, you do have the rights to the gme you own it, and its tied to your account, meaning if you reinstall your operation system, you install steam and sign in and you have all your games able to be downloaded, once you own a game, probably one of my favorite things you can do is get mods for the games, and steam will help you hold shourtcuts on the steam application like say you buy CS:S (counter strike source) and i recommend you buy with garrys mod, great game if you enjoy forging in halo 3, but say you buy those games you can go to http://www.moddb.com and get half life mods if you search and say you find Dino D-Day mod,(http://www.moddb.com/mods/dino-d-day) you can download the mod install in your source mods folder inside the steam folder and it will use the half life 2 engine from CS:S, and you will have Dino D-day installed and thats one great thing about steam, recently last weekend they Had Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend where you could play from friday at noon til sunday at noon, and you were able to try it out, Overall Steam is very reliable, i have no problems with it, my comp though is kinda nice, from some upgrades that i made, so i recommend you pay attention to the minimal requirements, because the games lag bad if your comp is junk, but Steam is very nice it is a great program if ya got any other questions just ask, or google

 

[TheGoofster]

My sons use Steam. I pulled him in here, I'm letting him reply:



You Kinda understand it, the games are on a server, you download from the server, to your comp, i recommend you have a large area of storage if you intend on playing alot of games, a very relible service, when you buy the games, you do have the rights to the gme you own it, and its tied to your account, meaning if you reinstall your operation system, you install steam and sign in and you have all your games able to be downloaded, once you own a game, probably one of my favorite things you can do is get mods for the games, and steam will help you hold shourtcuts on the steam application like say you buy CS:S (counter strike source) and i recommend you buy with garrys mod, great game if you enjoy forging in halo 3, but say you buy those games you can go to http://www.moddb.com and get half life mods if you search and say you find Dino D-Day mod,(http://www.moddb.com/mods/dino-d-day) you can download the mod install in your source mods folder inside the steam folder and it will use the half life 2 engine from CS:S, and you will have Dino D-day installed and thats one great thing about steam, recently last weekend they Had Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend where you could play from friday at noon til sunday at noon, and you were able to try it out, Overall Steam is very reliable, i have no problems with it, my comp though is kinda nice, from some upgrades that i made, so i recommend you pay attention to the minimal requirements, because the games lag bad if your comp is junk, but Steam is very nice it is a great program if ya got any other questions just ask, or google

thanks for the info. I think I'll probably go ahead and give it a try. I've heard mostly good things about it, and it seems like a good idea.
I do have a pretty good comp (quad core with 8 gig of ram), even though my video card isn't the best (I can't think off hand what kind it is, but I know it's not made to be a very powerful gaming card). Would that make a difference? I know when I buy a game, and install it, the video card makes a big difference, is it the same when playing a game on Steam? (I did recently install Far Cry 2, and that runs without a problem, so I guess it's not too bad).
Again I appreciate the info.

 

[SueInBoston]

My son has been bugging me to get him steam..It was on his xmas list but I didn't get it. Is it suitable for an 11 year old? Right now...he only plays Nintendo games.

 

[Rora]

My DFi and his buddies all use steam. It seems great. We've encountered no problems. I don't know much more than that.

As far as being suitable for an 11 yo, I think so because you can decide what games he chooses to purchase. There are definitely mature games- the one I can think of is Left for Dead, very mature: you kill zombies. But then there are nice games, more my style. My favorite is called Plants vs. Zombies and although that seems scary, it's an adorable game where you have to plant plants to protect your house, pool, rooftoop, etc from silly looking zombies. There are more games but these are the two I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[mill4023]

My son has been bugging me to get him steam..It was on his xmas list but I didn't get it. Is it suitable for an 11 year old? Right now...he only plays Nintendo games.

You don't buy Steam. You download it for free.

It's essentially just an alternative distribution method for PC games.
Instead of buying games in a box on physical discs, you download them using Steam.

Performance isn't any different because all the files are downloaded and end up on your PC, just like they would if you bought the game on CD or DVD.

The best part about Steam is that you never have to worry about downloading updates/patches for your games. When an update or bug fix is released, Steam automatically downloads it and installs it for you.

And like a PP mentioned, once you buy the game, you own it. If you get a new computer or have to reinstall windows, you just download Steam again, sign in, and it will download all the games you own again.

Here's some more info:
http://store.steampowered.com/about/