Did you try playing online? I didn't think so. If you want to do that you have to us a fake authentication server, keep a few updates behind and play on cracked servers. Sounds really painless doesn't it?

In any case I can't take anything you say seriously. You haven't even tried steam yet you complain about it. I suppose you complain about food before you try it too? I imagine trying it wont change anything you have to say but at least you'll stop saying things like how steam isn't integrated or used in a game at all and then try to backtrack by pretending all the features it adds to the game you aren't going to use, so clearly it doesn't matter. Great. I guess game developers should remove extra levels and maps since you won't be playing those either huh?

If you want to complain about how terrible it is, use it first, then pretend that it did bad things to you (since we already know that's what you'll say) and complain about it after.

The "Don't say something is bad if you haven't tried it" argumant is stupid. I've never tried wiping my ass with razorwire either, but I sure as hell know it would hurt.

Well technically it isn't idle, among anything evil it may be doing, (matter of opinion,) It also provides the following functionality, so if steam isn't running the following shouldn't work.

Achievement Tracking
Multi-player Authentication/Authorization
Matchmaking
Community Information (aka the little display icon next to your name in a multi-player game),
Networking api (sockets implementation that is NAT aware)
Valve Anti-Cheat
Voice
and DRM

Personally I have an always on internet connection, and my isp hosts a steam mirror, so all my downloads are not counted. I am willing to put up with DRM and steam taking resources, for actually being able to talk to my team members and not having to play against people that cheat. The Achievements are a nice feature, being able to see display pics really doesn't add anything to a game. I haven't played a game that required match making so I can't comment on that. I occasionally send messages on steam, to people that don't do dual screen, who are too lazy to alt-tab to talk to me elsewhere.

So steam doesn't just sit there eating resources (48,032K, sitting idle) while you play your game, it provides a lot of functionality, whether you want it or not. If these features are not important to you, well I guess steam possibly isn't for you. But saying all it does is provide DRM and eat resources, isn't accurate, and doesn't add anything to the argument. Just because you don't use those features, doesn't mean that other users don't want to use them.

Imagine from a developers point of view, you can't know what features a person has turned on and off, because they don't want particular things, having to check about each, its easier to force it on some users that don't want it, so that a developer can assume that all are available.

This is what steam provides at this point, these features may increase in the future, I am pretty sure the DRM isn't going to change.

Now onto my bias personal opinion, I remember in the early 90s going to a store and buying a top end computer game was still $70 (AUS), games have actually come down in price, if DRM can force the prices lower again, I will buy more games. I'm not the person to run off and get a hacked copy, I balance how much I want to play with how much it costs. Too expensive and I just won't play. Because I am always online anyway, the DRM in steam is unobtrusive, and the whole thing just works. So with the features that it provides, the cost of the DRM to me 0, I am more than happy to use steam and keep using steam. Why all of it needs to be loaded when its sitting in the system tray, I don't know, but I have 4gig of ram 48meg isn't that big a deal.

If you want these features in your allegro game, you can get it here Steamworks, but I am pretty sure it would kill cross platform compatibility. >:D The API and Libs are free, but not surprisingly it locks you to the steam platform.

If everyone else who has tasted it says it does, you can. Sure, you could be a stubborn prick and choose to not believe other people, but that's another matter.

See, the problem is I do believe other people. Steam has DRM, does it not? It can prevent you from running apps because it can't log in with remote servers, can it not? This is what people say, and I've seen this myself. No one is saying it doesn't do this. Don't get upset because I call a spade a spade.

On my system (XP, 2GB RAM) it's only consuming ~15MB ATM when idle according to Task Manager.

Steam is done considerably differently from most DRM solutions though. For example, you can download the games you've purchased to as many computers as you want as many times as you want (but understandably must be logged in as the licensed user to play and can only be online once). I don't think I've heard of any other services that permit you to do that. Which means you don't have to worry about losing or damaging discs and I don't think you need to worry about activation keys either. Usually it saves a lot of hassle. As with all solutions, there can be hiccups, but I don't think that's any reason to avoid the platform all together. It's mostly a satisfying solution or it wouldn't be as successful as it is.

Kitty Cat:
I didn't mean to imply that you said it does. I was just throwing out why I like it, and things I think that are good about it. Too much of this is people telling other people what to think, and who is wrong.

You've hit the nail in the head. However I'm forced to use Steam if I want to play one of the games distributed via it (no matter if there's a CD version, you still need it). Just to make myself clear I'm not against it as a distribution platform, in fact I think it's great, it's like many package distribution systems on Linux.

However I'm running package manager only when I need new software. Not everytime I use it. I'm quite fine in registering the game after I download it, but afterwards I'd expect no need for Steam, because I want to play offline game and don't want to mess with community. Besides it's been a long time since I've played online regulary. And when I do today, I do it with friends I know personally. Not with total strangers who have time to play the game every day and have insane skill and often shout n00b.

After a frustrating struggle against BSODs and shitty drivers (note to self: never ever buy ATI again) I've managed to play the single-player portion of the demo. The game looks promising. Its network code... not so much. I have yet to get a multiplayer game working.

And for the record, the Steam forum's search function is among the worst I've ever come across - no keyboard navigation in the humungous listbox, 60 second cooldown plus an anti-captcha (it's so unreadable you need a computer to crack it!)...

While we're complaining about some steam aspects I'll complain about the valve store (Not technically steam but Oh Well). My only issue is that the abbreviated the shipping methods and didn't provide any description of what they were. My headcrab hat I ordered came nice and fast though;).

As far as steam I haven't had any issues so far. I was pleasantly supprised to receive some other games when I entered my Half Life CD code into steam.

I see what you mean... Which ones go to Canada!?

Hey, I finally got a game running. All it took was ~20 tries, and when I finally managed to connect to a game it had taken the bloody thing almost a full minute to find it.
And consolification has struck again - not only can you not select a specific game to join, it seems you can't even see your in-game ping. And latency seems to be a big issue with this game...

The game itself seems awesome, however, so if they fix that I'll probably buy it.