I bought Ghost Recon Future Soldier today. $12 on amazon, figured it was worth that.

First I downloaded it. Amazon's servers aren't as good as Steam, it took damn near 10 hours to download a 10GB game.

Next I installed it. It took forever, slowly copying to my HDD and then doing separate install processes for shit like punkbuster. Oh yeah, it uses punkbuster, wtf?

Then it launched Uplay. Whatever. I click play, have to tie the game to my account. I get all that figured out (no copy and paste, must type the serial manually) and then try and launch the game.

"Ubisoft found an update" it says, and starts downloading a few hundred MB. Okay whatever hurry up.

Update downloads, then installs. Takes forever, I notice it is installing in like 6 languages. Whatever "yeti.big1" is, and 2 and 3 are, they take FOREVER to update.

Anyway, update done... great let's go.

"Ubisoft found an update"... what? Didn't we just do this? Oh, that was 1.1 and this is 1.2... okay, one would have thought we could do this all at once but whatever, let's go.

Then 1.3.

Then 1.4.

Then 1.5.

Then 1.6.

The installation and patching process has taken me over 2 hours at this point. If I could have just jumped to 1.6 they certainly never presented that option.

Oh and after every patch punkbuster has to update as well.

And have I mentioned I will never play online and most of these updates and punkbuster itself are useless?

Call this an outlier experience if you want, blame Ubisoft if you want, but I've had similar experience with other non-steamworks games the past several years. At the end of the day if this game were Steamworks I would have been playing hours and hours ago with less hassle and wouldn't have punkbuster installed on my system.

I share the DRM concerns but the alternative to Steam is not AAA modern games on GOG, it's this bullshit.

Just because everything else is worse doesn't make Steam good. Getting kicked in the nuts is better than being stabbed in the guts, but it still isn't good. The difference is that some people will put up with getting kicked in the nuts to get their games while others will just say "screw that" and not play at all.

So... what exactly are the problems people have with steam?

Steam is not PC gaming, it's console gaming on PC hardware. True PC gaming is true freedom. With true PC gaming you pop in your disk (or download your installer), launch the insaller, follow the instructions and you're done. But what about automatic updates? Neverwinter Nights has automatic updates and that game is older than Steam. The thing wth Steam is simply that it's better than the other software-consoles.

I had some fun and games with Steam with Flat Out - Ultimate Carnage but it was mainly GFWL related
Steam tried to launch the installer for GFWL after installing the game, failed, didn't tell me it'd failed and the game wouldn't run at all, again with absolutly no error messages, until I went into its install directory and ran the GFWL install exe by hand
Also Steam didn't seem to let me copy/paste the GFWL serial only type it by hand
Therefore I didn't get round to activating the GFWL stuff until I'd clocked 30 hours of play, once I had it created a new, blank progress file so I lost all my progress until I went in there and swapped the names of the .sav files over!

So, yeah, Steam's not foolproof...

That("true" PC gaming) is DRM-Free PC gaming, not all of PC gaming. Also opinions, opinions everywhere.
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Automatic updates are fine as long as you can turn them off/manually update if you want to/play the SP portion of the game without having to update.

Any impulse I had to debate with you is dead.

P.S. Update 1.7 now!

My experiences with typical Steam game:
1. I buy an access to a game with price tag 75% off, so it's at same price level as boxed copies at local stores (I don't like physical).
2. I have to download 10 gigs overnight (8-10 hours). I mean instead of just downloading it in 30 minutes and install it another 10.
3. I launch the game but I have to wait another 10 minutes until it reinstalls already installed DirectX.
4. It tells me it needs me to install a publisher's SW to run while the store didn't mentioned it anywhere on the site (AC2 comes to mind).
5. I play the game.
6. Next time it threatens me to agree with new Steam's license agreements if I want to play the game I "bought" ever again.

There is no difference between Steam and Origin, the alternative. Their EULAs are same, they practices are same, they customer services are same, they both make boxed copies incomplete since they require that you download a part of game from their service.
I can't judge Amazon since it bans me from purchasing because of my country.

By the way, I don't understand your constant urge to create threads on GOG about advantages or disadvantages of other services. I don't visit Steam's forums to make sure its customers know what service is superior.

I abhor steam and all it stands for except... i will be exclusively Steam/GoG/GamersGate...

the new Stream-a-thon consoles with there DRM that makes steam look mild is enough... gimme a bajillion hour patch. but hey i got my game that can be played for many years on any hardware, not just a $200 brick thats depreciated every next generation...

I think SV was trying to illustrate that Steam automates alot of stuff that many who use the service would not rather have to do/learn how to do themselves.

(Also[like SV I expect] I have no worries if Steam shuts down as I can just download cracks for all my Steam games.)

I have no problem with steam, sure it's a little crappy that i can't play anything from my library on the other pc while my brother plays something on steam and the drm is a little poopy, but it gets the job done, Offline mode always worked for me if I found myself without an internet connection for a while, they have really cheap games which is a huge plus. Sure I'd rather buy something from gog instead of steam but steam does have some nice features.
Call it console gaming on pc or whatever, I'm too old to worry about stuff like that, I just wanna play my games and steam never stopped me from doing that yet.

since some games do not allow copy pasting of cd keys , steam client shows up the cd key for you to type in easily , it even keeps showing the key during when the game is run , unless you just clicked on copy to clipboard and disabled it from opening

But PC gaming will end if you use Steam because Steamworks will rape your mother and burn your dog, it also tracks all your hardware and burns it as well when it doesn't like what you have, Valve will also deny you access to all your games every other day because they feel like it and if you try to crack them and play them anyway, they will even find and rape you! Best you can hope for is that they'll send a really hot female employee to rape you. Oh wait I'm getting sidetracked.

Love through resentment of others is the best kind of love.