For the un-initiated ...

[Manyfingers]

Convince me whats so great about Steam etc .. why shouldn't I go down to a shop and buy a disc?

What do i need to be careful of? Whats the advantages? Do I save money on new releases? Is there extra content?

My previous experiences (granted, a few years ago) have left me highly skeptical.

[Benda]

1. What happens when you lose the disc? Disc's take up space.

2. Don't give out your password. You'll save money most of the time, especially when the Aussie dollar is so high against the greenback. Lots of DLC, depends on the title/genre.

3.Give it a shot.

[Smoke]

With the exchange rates at the moment you pay about $55 for a game you would probably pay $90 for in an Aus store.

[Reoh]

You usually end up paying less money for a steam game, and you will NEVER have to turn the house upside down to put the disc in so you can play. If you damage or lose a disc, you're screwed; but with steam you can always just download it again. Many ISP's even offer Steam servers which don't count to your cap.

Over and above that, you then have steam friends lists and in game chatting, steam groups (many tog groups for each of our divs) to help you find players to hook up with, and easy ways to join them.

The really good games even tie in with steam cloud, so you can keep your saved games across different computers.

Whats not to like? Sure there are the occasional steam problems. Most of them are intermittent and fairly easy to resolve. Steam's even good at refunds for pre-purchased games, despite their claims that they don't offer them.

Not to forget the steam sales, where you can pickup massive sales (some as good as 90% off).

[Manyfingers]

hmm .. not really convinced (haven't lost a disc yet) but who can argue with the whole saving money thing

I'll try it out for the next game i buy, prob BF:BC2, and i'll see how it all goes.

Thanks for the feedback folks Appreciate it

[Reoh]

Happy Steaming then mate, and just watch out for the Xmas holiday sale. Its 12 days of insanity guaranteed to fill out your games list.

[Ned]

I love the idea of not having to find a disc to allow me to play. That's the main reason why I use Steam.

[Mixer]

Mind you with the pricing, you can buy MW2 for about $60 boxed, online, which is around US pricing, but on steam its over $70 USD!

These sorts of regional ripoffs really get my goat about Steam. No doubt the really cheap deals are great, but this kind of thing to protect the local disti of the boxed product should be ruled anti-competitive.

[Reoh]

Most distributors don't use regionalised on steam, I've found. There's a few though, like 2k games for example.

[Beavis]

You can save your steam folder and copy it to a new pc or harddrive without having to re-install all your games.............or you can find all your disks and spend hours re-installing rhem