Widescreen Gaming Forum

First I never used steam, I was no big fan of the whole system when it was launched back at the time, however I didn't dig deeper than a bunch of news here and there and the simple fact that back in those times I didn't have the knowledge to easily setup a shared internet connection for @home LAN parties (which came in conflict with online authentication of course...).

Which brings me to this post, I'm pondering whether or not I should change my opinion.

So I'm here because while looking for information about steam I stumbled upon some things which kind of arose my curiosity :
-it seems there's pirates out there generating keys and registering games, which then prevents legit users from using their game, true or not ?
-is there ways to correct the previous situation?
-it seems you have to talk english or be doomed if you want support ?
-every steam game needs to be launched while online and connected right ?
-it seems a steam game property is not transferable ?
-any other quirks that come to your mind ?
-any opinion on the service ?

Ho and please refrain criticizing the fact that there's some games I MUST play and that not having steam is pure heresy. Nothing's an absolute must in my book, everything's just optional.
Thanks. ;)

-it seems there's pirates out there generating keys and registering games, which then prevents legit users from using their game, true or not ?
-is there ways to correct the previous situation?
-it seems you have to talk english or be doomed if you want support ?
-every steam game needs to be launched while online and connected right ?
-it seems a steam game property is not transferable ?
-any other quirks that come to your mind ?
-any opinion on the service ?

1. False, there's actually only a handful of games that you can actually register keys with on steam, Those are the games that you can buy in store that integrate with steam such as HL2 or MW2. See here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7480-wusf-3601 and it is no more likely that someone would generate your key for a
steam game than any other game.

2. Null

3. Absolutely not; the support wiki is available in 14 different languages and human support is available in 8 popular languages.

4. As I pointed out in #1 there's really two different kinds of games on steam, ones that require steam and ones that do not (95%+.) The ones that do not interact with steam at all you can play without even having steam open. Many games which require steam such as HL2 work fine when run in Steam's offline mode as well.

5. Correct steam games are not transferable; which is actually a good thing in a way (unless they had some drastic protection on it...) Account hijacking would fly through the roof.

6 & 7. Nothing major; I just think that one should not exclusively use steam, as much as I prefer to have my games on steam it's always better to buy it where ever i can get it cheapest. I do miss the boxes, but god damn I love steam.

thanks for your answers

2. ha thanks to your link I read that you can reset your cdkey should a problem arise with a new product

5. I have difficulties foreseeing how account hijacking would go through the roofs ?
you could have the same system as for Domain transfers for example

5. Correct steam games are not transferable; which is actually a good thing in a way (unless they had some drastic protection on it...) Account hijacking would fly through the roof.

Actually, I believe this is done to prevent reselling.

Love the service, love the overlay it adds to games. I've been buying most of my recent games on it. Hell, it seems they handled the Dragon Age release best too. I realize something could happen to it and I'd be screwed out of all my games but so far, so good. I'm not going anywhere else, digitally.

The integrated invite system for the Valve games is great. And now that they put in the browser I can surf WSGF while waiting for peeps to join the server.

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EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 3.5GB | 3 X LG Flatron 24EA53VQ in Nvidia Surround | Optoma HD20

5. Correct steam games are not transferable; which is actually a good thing in a way (unless they had some drastic protection on it...) Account hijacking would fly through the roof.

Actually, I believe this is done to prevent reselling.

Well yes of course, the industry does not want reselling. Trading digital copys would be too easy, Just imagine if you bought a game, beat it in a few days gifted it to your friend, he beat it, passed it to the next friend etc etc. That's a handful of sales lost.

wow, lots of good information here. I used to hate steam aswell but now I see the light, I might intsall it just for boarderlands.

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I still visit occasionally.

Yep i have ~30 games on steam...

I absolutely love it for valve games and cheap older games...

BUTTTtttt for non-vave new releases i prefer the real deal bought from brick + mortar... but have been relaxing that due to the awesome exchange rate between australia and the usd at the moment which means instead of paying $90 AUD i pay ~$50-55 AUD for a new full release game e.g. borderlands....

So yeah... for valve games... it's wicked. But for other games (which means other publishers that are still around) you have to read into it a bit as they don't tend to tell valve all the details (e.g. release dates get mucked up (borderlands), or the securom isn't listed).

But as i said about two times already:
-old games >3 yrs old
-valve games
-indie games
STEAM = the best thing ever.

Ya, it has its' ups and downs. It's improved greatly since it first came about. Personally, i love it for the weekly deals they have. Other than that, I prefer retail, overall.