It seems like everybody is using "WinCustomize talk" for general discussion. I cant actually find a general discussion catagory.
So heres the latest for steam exclusive games being advertised on Impulse:
"Half-Life, Portal and More! Valve Games Are Now Available on GameStop PC Downloads!"
When I first saw this I thought "wow thats pretty cool". In the fine print however, it says the steam client is required, and thats at the bottom only after clicking on the "read more" and in small letterings.
This trickery is done, ON PURPOSE by Gamestop no doubt having some sort of agreement with Steam. Steam sees the threat impulse poses. Impulse, while not very widely known, has a very superior DRM scheme to Steam.
Its very easy to miss that *steam required* fine print when your purchasing an "impulse" game. Even on retail copies, the part on the back of the game where it says the said fine print is designed to be overlooked.
So, why is Steam so bad? If you have an excellent internet connection then you wont have any problems with it, but people like me who have the lowest end connections speeds absolutely abhor it and even still people with decent connection speeds find it annoying.
Heres the stupidity of Steam:
The DRM is designed to prevent "unparalleled anti-piracy, making it a very popular retailer for software publishers and developers", yet every game on Steam has been pirated or will be pirated in the future. This raises questions as to how necessary Steam's intrusive DRM scheme is.
Mandatory updates: I have no idea why updates are mandatory when you have to be securely connected to Steam in order to play in the first place. Whoever in the company decided that this requirement was a good idea to implement was high or something, because anyone with half a brain can clearly see its not going to prevent pirating.
Games install more than once: I dont get this either. You buy a retail copy of the game, "install it from the disk" and then you are required to "update" when in reality you are just downloading and installing the whole fucking thing over again. Utter. Fucking. Stupidity.
Games download from overly secure connections: Even the worst internet connection in the world doesnt take 2 whole days to download 2-4 gigs of data. Thats how long it took me to install my game.
This is why PC gaming is dying, or at the very least vastly reduced.
