Having only been a Steam member after purchasing the Orange Box last year, I'm no expert on their store features. However, I will say that many of the games you can purchase are not available in stores, because they're either too old or an indie game. For example, I bought Audiosurf for about $10 a little while ago and have had scads of fun with it.

Basically, Steam is worth looking into if you like indie or retro titles.

That may be true for the US or wherever you live but in europe, steam owns.

Orange box
Steam $49.95 +19% btw = €37.29 and $59.95
my store €60,- +20% btw = 95$,-

So steam is the best for europe. PLUS you don't have to reinstall with cdkeys and all on a fresh install, saves time and time=money

For those pointing out how it's safer to buy games on Steam since you don't have to worry about losing your discs: won't you be kinda screwed if someone hijacks your steam account?
I don't know what measures Valve has to prevent that or to help you recover an account, but when you think about it, you're really putting all your eggs in one basket - a couple years from now that's gonna be one hell of a basket.

Another benefit from owning the discs is that you can trade/lend/sell the game when you get bored with it..

In spite of this, I'll still prefer buying games on Steam as long as they are reasonably cheaper :)

I don't know if you guys have ever done it, but I've only installed off the discs once, for the CS:S Multiplayer Pack and The Orange Box. After that, I can and have used steam to reinstall them from the Valve servers, so it is still better to get the discs, because even if you lose them, you can reinstall, and if you need to reinstall with shit download speeds, then you have the discs. Plus with the discs, you can do account recoveries if your username and password are stolen and changed.

Singing Gremlin:

CyberAkuma:

From a backup perspectivem even buying game sonline from STEAM is terrible from that viewpoint.
If you got a new HDD you will have to re-download the whole game from STEAM servers.
Mind you that Call of Duty 4 for instance is 6 gigs. The entire Orange Box is 20 gigs!
If your HDD crashes and you want to recover everything you will have to re-download the whole thing. Having the game disc in that case is an obious advantage since the read speed of your Optical Drive will surpass the download speed by the factor of a thosuand.

Ever lost a disk? I know I have.

Ever lost a 200 Gig HD? :D

Credge:
There's a major difference between a console game and a PC game though. Consoles require you to have the medium to play regardless of format. PC games do not. In fact, one of the biggest reasons people go out and rebuy PC games is because they are insanely hard to keep track of. PC games, for some reason, have obnoxiously large boxes. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough room for all those cases.

Hey? Where I live, all PC games come in DVD boxes just as small/big as the ones for 360 and PS3.

To further this, the majority of PC games have CD keys that are required for you to play online. Sometimes the instruction books have them, sometimes the cases have them... all depends. This means you HAVE to keep those cases around somewhere 'just in case' you have to reinstall your game.

Huh? Precisely not, for the very point you make in your next paragraph:

This is a lot of clutter, especially for me. In fact, I have two 200 page CD holders filled with games and their CD-Keys. This doesn't take much room, but I still don't have the niceness of having all the cases. That, coupled with the fact that some PC games don't actually have cases (just a box with CD sleeves) makes this incredibly annoying as you either have to do what I did or keep the box.
Downloadable media means you don't have the clutter. It also means you don't have to keep track of CD keys... which is the biggest pain in the ass ever. Lose an instruction book while moving? Looks like you can't play your favorite game online anymore.

It requires just a bit of backup to avoid those problems, like copying the keys on paper or in txt files.
Downloading games require backup as well, unless you don't care about downloading all the stuff again.
Of course, there's an undisputable gain in room with downloadable content, and the gap is only going to get wider.

This isn't an issue with consoles or movies, this is why owning them is fine.

So your problem, after all, has nothing to do with volume, but flimsy CD keys you loose?
I don't want to get argumentative, but you seem to switch back and forth between your points.
:|

There are other bonuses to downloading your games online, such as usually being able to play them before others, cheaper prices some of the time, unique content (usually MMO's), amongst other things.

Well, only if you're craving for the little bonuses which are generally irrelevant to a great lump of the population. :)
Playing a MMO in advance... I don't see the point. You dodge the retards, but the point of MMOs, besides being sure that you waste your life, is to have people on them, not play on empty servers.

I would NEVER want to download a console game unless, somehow, it was tied to an account of mine like how it is done with Steam.

Isn't it what they already do?

Movies are completely different though. Movies don't go through the same wear and tear that games do. They are also much cheaper than games are. Accidentally scratch a brand new game making it unplayable? Looks like your forking over another $40-50 (U.S.) for another. Scratch a new movie making it unwatchable? Looks like your forking over another $15-20 (U.S.) for another.

Yes, that's also an advantage of download, in theory, as you can download your content again. You're marked as the virtual owner of a copy for quite some time I think, once you've spent the money.
Or are there systems which allow for only one download?
This would be most curious, when download is supposed to get rid of the physical retail support.

Akuma: once you've downloaded the stuff, the loading time would matter little, be it from the CD or the HD. I'd rather use the HD actually.

I have yet to notice a significant difference in pricing between Steam and retail, possibly because im in America. Sometimes, Steam games have a special deal, and are quite a bit cheaper...Vampire Bloodlines for $10 on Halloween is a good example, as well as Prey for $5. I have yet to see a game more expensive.

Using Steam is so much easier as a PC gamer then retail. I could go to the next town over, and hope that the EB is selling the computer game I want...or, I could purchase the game on my lunch hour, and play it when I get home. Not to mention that if I want to play a game once its released, I can just preload it, and play it instantly, once its released.

Also, there has already been a few games that I have lost the CDs for, but kept the case around just in case. Once the came out on Steam, I added them, and played them again. Having a hard copy is nice, but I have to admit that that is a bit old fashioned in my thinking. Much better to be able to find a game again by right clicking, then rooting through CD cases and manuals filled with keys. And if I can back up my games manually on steam...thats a great tidbit, Ill look into that. These days, a game not being on Steam makes me seriously consider not buying it.

Lastly...selection anyone? Steam is only getting bigger, and the library is better then your average EB (Note that I must admit, I kinda live in the sticks)I have definitely browsed the library, and found something new and interesting to play that I hadn't heard of before (Like Audiosurf).

As I see it, the only place where buying the box is better then on steam, is that technically, if 1 person using steam and another wanting retail decide at the exact same time that they want a game thats fairly new and popular and sure to be in the store, the retail guy can probably drive to the store (Gas money has been mentioned already I believe), race back, install and update the game, and play it before the guy using steam. Of course, the steam guy is putting forward a whole lot less effort. So even if Steam games are more expensive, I think its worth the expense for the convenience, but as ive seen it, its cheaper on Steam

Steam isnt a ripoff in my opinion.

i dont want half life 1 or two i just want portal and team fortress2 and that is still halkf the price of my local JBHiFi

plus they recently brought out a free game call TrackManiaNationsForever. and that is good, yet they are not making any profit from it. shine on steam shine on

Damn man, I'm surprised to see that because it's the other way around here, the only site I've seen that competes with good deals on steam is GoGamer.com - but most stores here are very overpriced, and Steam is usually only good when they have special discounts.

The problem with steam I guess is that it greatly depends on where you live.

First off: I sometimes buy games at Steam, but mostly budget titles below 20$ (Steam prices). I do that for mainly two reasons:
a) I live in Europe and the €-$ exchange rate is just awesome for us right now. A game costing 20$ + VAT at Steam roughly comes down to 14 to 15€. 10$ games cost as much as having two beer in a bar and are generally more fun ;)
b) For budget games I mostly don't want the physical items coming with a retail version.

But I doubt I will buy a full-priced title at Steam anytime soon. The games I buy soon after their release are games I'm really interested in. As I actually loved the times when games were released in big cardboard boxes, I often get the Collector's Edition of a game I want, but at least I want the normal DVD case to put on my shelves. There's nothing really rational about that, it's just the way that I like it.

For Europeans Steam currently is not a rip-off, thanks to the current exchange rate we can save a lot of money by buying through Steam. For Americans in my opinion it is. You pay the same prices as you would do when buying retail, but in the end you get less. I wouldn't do that, and that's independent of whether I'd like the DVD box and DVD of the game or not. It's a simple matter of principle: If I had the choice to pay 50$ for a retail version or a download, I'm pretty sure I'd buy retail. Valve and the other publishers now available on Steam save quite some money by using that online distribution, and I think the customer should get a share of that. Games are expensive enough as they are, if the publisher can skip producing physical items, I'd demand a price cut for that. Pretty simple.

The original reason I got Steam was so I could buy Portal independently from the Orange Box (this was back in early December), and the only other game I've bought through it was TF2, which I got for $20 because it was selling at a discount last weekend. I also live in Canada, which doesn't really have those exchange-rate issues.

Personally, I like Steam; I don't care about the download time (my connection is quite fast), I can download the game as many times as I want and to multiple computers, and I don't have to worry about losing or breaking a disc. I do think that the possibility of having one's Steam account stolen is a valid concern, but it hasn't been an issue for me personally. Also, not having to leave the house is a major selling point for me, since I don't have a driver's license and my parents are disinclined to drive me to the mall on short notice.

culade:

richasr:
you should probably get an American's point of view...

i believe the real American point of view would be "i need this money for gas so i won't be getting expensive game"

Haha well despite his or her initial thought of "I like to drive", the mere thought of how the prices stack up compared to the main gaming stores would be quite an insight.

As has already been mentioned which I completely forgot about, I like the idea that I can buy a game and essentially have the cd/dvd stored on a server and because I've already bought it, I can download it again without any fuss, also saves the space on my shelves because I have a tiny room and not much space for any more games or CDs.

I don't think STEAM is a rip-off, not for me at least since I live in England and all prices on STEAM are halved due to the exchange rate. This makes it brilliant for buying games when they're on offer. For example, STEAM had a weekend price-cut of PREY, they dropped the price to around $9.95 so in the end I paid £4.97 for a game that's now worth $24.95 (£12.47). If that wasn't a good deal then I don't know what is.

STEAM doesn't provide all the games I want so I do have to go out and buy from my local store but it's not as convenient as STEAM which is one of it's biggest advantages. I can load up STEAM at 3am and buy a game if I want, unfortunately, the same can't be said for my local store.

P.M.