N3wb Question - What is STEAM?

[BigWoof31]

So I've been reading alot of gaming blogs lately - mostly trying to find good package deals for the newest team raider game and bioshock infinite.

Everyone keeps talking about STEAM.
"The best indie games are on steam"
"I loved Journey - but it's only available on Steam"
"Such and such has DLC available on Steam...."


So what is it? Is it safe for use with the Xbox 360 and do I have to have an annual membership for it?

 

[FCollinsBuckeye]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)

I've never used it, but I was curious too.

Who on here uses Steam? [strike]It is soley for PC games? Looks like it has some functionality with platforms too? Also OSX (Mac)?[/strike]

Edit: NM - I skimmed the wiki.

 

[FCollinsBuckeye]

So what is it? Is it safe for use with the Xbox 360 and do I have to have an annual membership for it?

From the wiki link:

Other platforms
The Xbox 360 does not have support for Steamworks. Newell had indicated that they would have liked to bring the service to the console through the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which would have allowed them to provide the same feature set that they did for the PlayStation 3,[117] but later affirmed that cross-platform play would not be present in the final version of the game.[118] Valve attributes the inability to use Steamworks on the Xbox 360 due limitations in the Xbox Live regulations on the ability to deliver patches and new contents; Valve's Erik Johnson stated that Microsoft requires that such new content must be certified and validated before distribution, which would limit the usefulness of Steamworks' own delivery approach.[

 

[jwinslow]

It ruined Counterstrike when it first took off, but has matured into a pretty nice game content delivery system.

 

[Deety]

Steam is awesome when they have their big sales, especially the big vendor multipacks. Other than a few big games, everything I have bought there has been 75-90% off, and if you do get a duplicate game with a pack, you can gift it to someone. It's easily to reinstall games to put them on desktop and laptop. You can also use it entirely with free games, if you like. They really promote indies, though the only one I've tried so far was pretty meh.

There are a few things to keep in mind. Some games are updated more regularly on Steam than elsewhere; for others, it's the other way around. Some games are more easily modded via Steam, while others become more difficult. And you can't give the game to someone else when you are done.

Steam also tracks a fair amount of data (don't recall what, exactly, other than game use and stats). Also, since all the big gaming aggregators are major targets for hackers, don't store your credit card number, and consider using your credit card's temporary number service, if it has one.

 

[ulukinatme]

Yeah, you can basically think of Steam as a giant online video retailer. You can buy and download thousands of titles to run from the Steam application on your PC.

Personally, I strongly dislike/hate Steam. Yeah, it's convenient to use now, but I have issues with it lasting the test of time. I still play a lot of older games now and then like TIE Fighter, Fallout 1 and 2, Imperialism, whatever. Whats going to happen in 10 years or more when the older games you purchased through Steam are no longer available for download? It's going to happen eventually. Either the next big thing comes along and Steam shuts down, or they'll have to drop older titles to remove the bulk.

Digital copies of games can be fine, as long as you can save the installation files and reinstall at any time without running into licensing issues. Thats my big complaint with Steam. Right now even if you have a hard disk copy of Skyrim for PC, you still need to install Steam before you can access/launch the game. Yeah, you can launch it manually from the Steam folder, but if I recall theres a system check to make sure you're not playing a game prior to a release date. That could throw a monkey wrench in things in the future. I distinctly remember being locked out of Fallout New Vegas after getting it at a midnight release...had to wait till 12am PST, 3am EST to play according to Steam, while my buddy was happily playing on his PS3 next to me. Theres no telling what's going to happen to games like this if Steam was unavailable in the future. It may try to access their servers to confirm the date, return with nothing, and you're never able to play a game again.

In short, Steam sucks if you plan on buying and playing games at midnight on release days, and theres no telling what the future will bring if you ever need to reinstall a game or if you'll even be able to play it should the Steam empire collapse. Theres also the risk of losing a lot of your bought and paid for games if your Steam account would happen to get hacked. On the plus side it's a very convenient software delivery system for now.