Len Balas,

Hi Len,
Once almost 11 years ago I would have totally agreed with you. I ended up buying two Steam work games (Galactic Bowling and Defense Grid: The Awakening) not knowing what Steamworks meant (I actually missed the reference until I'd already purchased and attempted to install them, at which point I was asked to first install the Steam client). When I discovered I wasn't able to play the games without the client first being installed I was furious and complained to the provider, who did offer to return my money. However, I really wanted to play the games and there was no other purchase options for either game as they were only available as Steam games; so I decided to keep them. Within a few weeks I discovered their weekly sales and was astounded to find I could buy several games that I wanted for the price of just one of the games due to the very generous discounts they offered. I didn't check most of what was available via Steam until I started playing games such as Half-Life 2: Deathmatch with friends over a year into first installing the client, but once I did, I soon discovered the many benefits of using the Steam client; for example, all my games were automatically updated (if I chose) whenever patches were released, there was an excellent market place where I made over £1400 over a period of just over a year selling trading cards that I'd received for free by playing various games on Steam. The Steam workshop allows you to add modifications to any game that supports mods just by clicking a button. If you don't like the mod you just click the button again and its deleted with no issues. For example, one of my favorite FPS games called ArmA 3 now has access to thousands of modifications that are all easily accessible and added to the game. If you add various mods and find that one conflicts with another, a click of a single button removes the conflicting mod and all is well again. There are now thousands of games that support the Steam workshop, which saves so much time searching for mods via other sites. There are so many other benefits of using a game client such as Steam; especially when, like me, you have thousands of arcade and AAA games. The client introduced a reasonable way of categorising each game, including non Steam games; which for me was essential as I could barely remember the names of 5% of my game collection (which numbers well over 15 thousand, including non Steam games, but I knew what games I had, just not the name of it). I now have around 900 categories which helps me to find specific games that I can't remember the name off, I just have to look up specific categories that I know the game includes and easily find the game i'm looking for. A recent major update has made this even easier. There are so many other things that have been added to Steam over the decade + that I've been a community member; the least of which is having made many good friends through Steam. No client is perfect, but of all the game clients I have or have had in the past, I personally think Steam is far superior to any other.

I've never had any issues with Steam and if I buy a game and don't like it I'm able to get a refund so long as I claim it within a specific time period (I think its two weeks) or have played for less than an hour. Though there are exceptions for example I purchased two copies of a particular game that cost me around £60. I gifted a copy to a friend so that we could play cooperatively. Sadly he passed away a few months after I'd gifted the game. I contacted Valve to explain that I'd bought two copies specifically so that I could play with a friend, but he had passed away. They gave me the copy that I'd gifted him back months later so that i could pass it on to another friend. Most digital distribution sites and definitely any shop that sells hard copies once the cellophane wrapper has been removed would never do that. Also, you don't have to be online to play most games that Valve sell via Steam. Of course, if its a multiplayer or cooperative game, then you do, unless you have access to dedicated servers that the developers have set up, or if you've bought into a specific server. However, any single player game you can play with the client set to offline and quite a lot of the arcade games can be played without Steam even being booted up, so long as you start the game directly from the installed executable. There are exceptions to the multiplayer games that require Steam; for example, one of my favorite RPG games called The Elder Scrolls Online even though its a Steam version, I don't need to have Steam booted up to play the game.

All that said, I still prefer hard copies, but as I can no longer get out on my own and all the game shops that sold PC copies of games no longer exist within 20 miles of where I live; and those that still sell PC games in the nearest city, are usually limited to the latest releases with no games older than a few months held in stock.

I'm curious as to why you don't like Steam and would never install it?
Regards

W.R.

Whiterabbit-uk,

Oh yeah, forgot to mention (despite Mark W's comment which was deleted because it was inappropriate w.r.t. the forum rules. i.e. no flaming, bullying, being a ****, trolling, being rude etc, Mark, read the rules of this forum, no) there are 90 million community users signed up to Steam, with upwards of 9 million online and active at anyone time, this often increases during weekends and holiday periods to over 15 million online at any one time. I'm just curious as to why you would never have Steam installed?

Bodson,
Hi Bodson, thanks for posting the link. Though i'd already mentioned that you can get this directly from Steam and even included a link.

Century22,

There were only 500 keys. becasue Steam key giveaways are very popular and are also advertised on various Steam key giveaway sites, such keys are hoovered up fairly quickly. That said.

Fehér László, Hi Fehér László, I've just received my key after completing all the activities about 15 minutes ago; I had no problems sharing on Facebook. Maybe your security is blocking the activity?