$80 game and I feel that the 4 hours ive played so far tonight has been worth it.

Only thing I don't like is shelling out 80 bucks then having to ask permission to play.

I can see three reasons for Steam.

One, to cut out the middle man developer, which I happen to like. Artist should get the money that people are willing to spend on their product.

Two, its a way to keep people updated and to track the wants/needs of Valve's consumers.

Three, they are worried about piracy.


Well in my mind they have failed number two already and its only a matter of time for number 3.

I would venture that most people dislike Steam, dislike the fact that they need get authentication for something they paid for.

I'm all for online distribution. I use it very frequently with many utilities. Games are another story though, especially games that take up 3 or more CDs.

I want a hard copy of whatever I purchase, its just the way I feel about these things. In my case a hard copy could be a burn of the downloaded program that I can install whenever I want.

Its funny that safeguards like the ones that Valve is trying to implement only end up hurting the legitimate consumers. The crooks will just wait a few weeks for when one of the cracking houses releases an offline version for the masses.

Personally I can't wait either and I will be downloading the no-steam crack when its available.

Steam is a step forward and a step back. Great idea but bad implementation.

Give us a downloadable program and an email with a key. Make the program authenticate each time its installed with its key to the user who registered it.

Oh and another thing. What happens if you want to run an older version of the software because it runs better on your system before the patch? Are you SOL?

Who knows ... I could be wrong.