EA turns to Steam

[Latro]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081222-ea-games-officially-come-to-steam-sans-drm.html

Now, selling something as DRM free that requires an internet connection and account verification to play is kind of backwards... but I prefer to download my games anyway.  I don't want to have to worry about where that DVD was or decide if I should keep the box or not..

I guess this also eliminates easy resale of products.. ?

[Labyrinthine]

Hey, the more games which are distributed digitally, the better. When steam first came out I was incredibly leery of it (I have to be connected to the internet to even play my games? WTF!?!?!) Now I have come to love it so much more than worrying about boxes, discs, cd-keys, etc.

It's so nice to be able to download the client and install everything on any computer.

Yeah, I imagine it does eliminate easy resale of products, which will more than likely impact the economy in some tiny way. At the same time, the lack of packaging, discs, brochures, etc which reduce the carbon footprint make it worth the hit in my book.

[mikehale]

i've loved steam from the get go. now i buy my physical discs (for quick install) but appreciate the fact that i can also download them if i lose the disc or it gets messed up.

[libtech]

+1 on what Crackie's saying.

I bought L4d in the store in disc form (for quick install.) But it's nice to have it be activated and become part of your steam games profile.

[Latro]

With 20mb down.. it only takes an hour or so to install... And usually with new titles and you pre-install...

[Mongoose]

+1 on what Crackie's saying.

I bought L4d in the store in disc form (for quick install.) But it's nice to have it be activated and become part of your steam games profile.

After a couple month's of updates it will take longer to install and update from disc than to download and update.  I installed CS Source and HL2 from Disc twice, when the second time took at least as long to update as to install I decided not to do it again.

[Labyrinthine]

+1 on what Crackie's saying.

I bought L4d in the store in disc form (for quick install.) But it's nice to have it be activated and become part of your steam games profile.

After a couple month's of updates it will take longer to install and update from disc than to download and update.  I installed CS Source and HL2 from Disc twice, when the second time took at least as long to update as to install I decided not to do it again.

Yep.

I used disc until I installed and sat through a few hours of updates. Then I just spent the few hours downloading and didn't need to worry about the updates.

[ikonoclast]

You can copy the CSS .gcf files, start up steam and it'll verify/update them. It takes a little while, but not hours.