Well, I finally got a Steam account. I've had it for about 30 minutes, and I hate it already. But I'm a whore for games, so I'll probably keep it.

1. They want your DNA in order to buy a game. Seriously, paying by CC and they require my address and phone number?

2. There is no login required to access my Steam account. Wow! I could probably force a login requirement by electing to not store credentials on my machine, but that would disable "offline" mode ... which apparently doesn't work anyway, judging from forums.

OK, two complaints. But hey, only been there 30 min.

You get used to it. I'm not saying that you'll hate it any less over time, but you come to accept it in the same way that you get beggars knocking at your door and in the same way that a sizable chunk of your income is reduced by taxes and insurance.

As for the credit card issue: Asking for your address is a normal thing. Steam's payments handler checks the address against the card number to make sure it's genuine. Most websites do that. What this isn't so understandable for is with a website like PayPal.

What jamyskis said



Why don't get some titles from the summer sale? GET Terraria! You won't regret that!

When did GoG last ask for your address and phone number?

Plus .. I'm now finding that you can't play a Steam game without the Steam application launching, "offline" or not. I know the tools exist to determine whether I'm actually offline with regard to Steam, but that's more than I care to do.

Do I trust Steam? ... about as far as I can throw my Honda. I am not paranoid enough to believe they're uploading my machine to their overlords; but neither am I naive enough to trust their competence re security.

Oh yeah, another peeve. Can't access forums with my Steam acct. OK .. create an acct just for forums ... ooops, apparently can't access support with either of those. I clearly see what's happening here: sphagetti code .. just keep adding noodles till you got enough.

Argh .. where's my fine manual? Am I missing something here, or do I not get manuals for Steam games?

Last edit for this particular post: Steam gives me the impression of "you vill conform!", while GoG gives me the impression of "hey man, want some stuff?".