Game end Joy

Note Editor: Alec is a writer for the site Destructoid sister Flixist. It has some interesting ideas on the situation still controversial DRM. Enjoy! -Chad

Just over four years, I bought

The Orange Box

to a local Wal-Mart. I believed in the physical media. I prefer to deal with the five disks needed to reproduce the original

Far Cry

(a play for the installation of four) that allow the games to sit on a hard disk could be destroyed, causing me to lose forever.

As you guessed, I was young and naive at once, and I was a kind of consciousness that was DRM and how it worked. However, I went home and installed Steam (as required by the purchase of my physical disk). I thought it was good, but I still was not convinced that we must "abandon" the property of my games. I went to buy

Left 4 Dead

on a target (though some of it was due to a $ 10 discount on the sale), but it would be the last game that I bought in the valve in a store. In fact, the game would be the last PC I bought in a store. In fact, it would be one of the few PC games I will buy steam.

My only regret is that I have not started earlier.

I will not pretend that I like DRM. I'm not going to pretend that DRM "and" steam. I am against DRM as an entity, but I am more than willing to live with him in some cases. More than that, the steam is a case in which I welcome with open arms by DRM and deal with occasional blows can give me. I know that good old games will give me a service that is to give and receive it, but why should I? Steam loves me, and because of its DRM.

is just more comfortable, you know? Let me explain.

Steam My account says I have 89 games, only 47 institutions have been much less in reality. I fell in offers the same good as everyone has. It's a strange feeling, as many. That's a lot of games. It can be pressed "Buy" 89 times (many of them are franchise packages and many others from different packages), but it's much more than any other system (and probably close to the combined total of physicists have games for my other consoles).

As the number increases (and during the selling season, which increases dramatically), it becomes even more difficult to think of a world without steam. You see, last year was a particularly unpleasant experience with my laptop (and horrible customer service from ASUS). On five occasions in the space of eight months, they sent me is a new hard drive, or my current form. At this point, I realized that the steam was really a dream come true.

Imagine that I bought 89 PC games in a store in brick and mortar. Even though I'm just installing 47 of them, the amount of time required to install this number of games (if 12 MB or 12 GB) is ridiculous. Imagine that the more I am using dial-up internet or something painful. Although technically less time to install the 47 games that you download and install Steam for them, the first change requires at least 47 disk (probably more) and a couple dozen clicks at least for installation. To install a game on Steam requires four strokes:

Once you've done that, you can leave it or even create another installation. If you let it run overnight, you can wake up to find (depending on your connection speed), most / all games installed and ready to play. The amount of steam takes the time to download and install the game may be less, about the same, or you may have to do it manually, but moves the steam load. The first 188 clicks can be much, but it's the end of my participation. Instead of taking an entire day (or more) of my time, took me 20 minutes (or less) and then go to my work. When I return, I can start playing

Metro 2033

The Maw almost immediately.

* The "almost" warning is that each party will have to spend a short period of time (usually one minute or less) to do some initial installations at a time (the mostly different versions of DirectX). It is, however, is not the fault of the valve, and still more to do with it and before it becomes a real problem.

But more than that. It is the fact that I have a single repository for all my games. The valve can be controlled, and therefore to some extent control my access to my game, but I can cope. I trust Valve, probably, the more I trust companies like EA. During my many reinstall my operating system, I forgot all games at least half a dozen that I bought on Steam. Only when I sat down to think that I realized several years ago, he bought

Sins of a Solar Empire never pulse (double meaning here ), but he played. I also have the Penumbra

Series, which I bought directly from friction Games. There are a couple other games I have on disk somewhere, and I hope there is, but I really forgot.

Even as I remember, though, I'm not so sure I want to deal with downloading and restarting again, only to forget the next time you need to format my hard drive ( especially in the case of

Sins of a Solar Empire

, which is now available on Steam, curiously). There are two layers of the convenience of steam, which allows me to know where all my games and I can download them anytime and anywhere (relatively) free of problems

most likely not have to deal with it as much as me, so maybe we are not convinced. Well, there's more. I think for most people at least, is the reason to buy anything with DRM on Steam for something without DRM. And what is it?

Right. The community. There are only two games across the different consoles, I can I play online with any frequency: Team Fortress 2 and

Find best price for : --Projekt----GameStop----Xfire----Valve----Steam----Alec--