Let's see:
- The internet is not always available. (e.g. 24h disconnect, problems at the ISP or in my case being to poor for 3G...)
You can run Steam offline and I had no problems playing games with it when I lost internet for a day and had to do so.
- The Steam client has a tendency to bug out, sometimes making reboots necessary to launch a game.
Can't argue with this, I've had it happen a few times. It's annoying, but then, my laptop often has a habit of bugging out without Steam so I barely notice it by comparison.
- Automatic updates means you are locked out of your game until the update is done.
Automatic updates can be disabled, last I checked?
- And then you can't play on your server because it has to be updated, too.
Not being able to play on servers that aren't using the same version as you is something that routinely happens with online games, regardless of Steam?
- Steam only sells you the version intended for your country.
So do most stores, holy shit, fancy that. Kind of a pain in the ass, yeah, especially for me, since I live in fucking Australia, but there's fuckall chance of my acquiring non-Australian-region versions of games anyway outside of piracy or some other method that is far less easy than Steam.
- You can't just change your screen name to get a new identity.
Uh... you can change your screen name, so I'm not sure what you mean by this, do you want changing your profile name to erase all your previous history? 'Cause it doesn't. But otherwise, you can change it, so... you're just plain wrong on this front, unless I'm mistaking what it is you mean?
- Steam tracks and puplicizes your behaviour.
Your gaming behavior? Yeah, it does... so? I mean, if that bothers you then I guess, sure, it's bad, but I sure as fuck don't care that people can look up on the internet that I played fifty hours of Skyrim and twenty hours of S.P.A.Z. in the last week.
- Steam sometimes decides that your game files are corrupt and forces you to redownload them.
This is actually a legit complaint and one I share, I've had this happen more than a few times in the month or so I've been using it, so it's a major issue.
I don't hate Steam as much as you, I guess? I recognise it's not perfect, but it's a very easy and convenient way of purchasing videogames and also I have friends who have a strange and delightful habit of using Steam to give me free stuff on a whim. Their Christmas sales netted me a good chunk of games.
Apparently bitching about the price of games in Australia can cause American friends to on a whim say "Fuck that! $90!? Here's Skyrim for Christmas." And that's why I don't hate Steam
Sorry for all the fucking quote-splitting shit, I guess it just seemed the simplest way to address each point by point complaint.
houser2112 wrote:Sarevok wrote:I would recommend buying from the SPAZ website. Go to buy and select "Minmax games".
If they had made it obvious that buying from Minmax was actually buying from them, I wouldn't have made this query. I would always choose to support the devs directly instead of 3rd party leeches like Valve.
EDIT: I feel kind of stupid that I didn't even notice that Minmax was the devs' company. *sigh*
I guarantee without "leeches" like Steam, many Indie games such as S.P.A.Z. would not sell so well and make such a profit. Steam takes a cut because they distribute and advertise the game and I sure as fuck doubt Minmax begrudges them that, considering how many Steam sales they've gotten, with people who may or may not have known about or purchased the game without Steam advertising it so much.
I agree that wanting to support the developers more is a great thing, and buying directly from them is definitely a good idea if that's what you want, but Steam isn't "bad" towards small developers like this shitfuck Sarevok says. Valve wants to make money, of course, so of course it will only approach Indie developers whose games they think will sell well and are marketable. Holy shit, what else do you expect? Otherwise they'd end up like the X-Box Live Indie Games service which is so chock-full of horrible shit that you're lucky to find a single comptentantly made game in a batch of ten, and people expect you to pay money for that shit. Steam helps indie games sell far more than they often otherwise would. That's a plus in my book. But if the option to buy direct from the dev is there, and you know about it, and already know you want the game? You're correct, there's no reason at all to use Steam to purchase it.
