I like the idea behind Steam. Digital distribution is the future. Fuck walking into an overcrowded department store filled with morons who don't know a decent HDTV from their asshole.
But so far... Steam is not the way to go. Back when it came out, I bought Half-Life 2 over Steam. It was pre-loaded and everything.. and still took forever to load. I remember thinking at the time: "shit I could have walked to the store, bought the box copy, walked home and installed it already".
At the time I let it go, thinking that maybe it was because its new and they hadn't worked the kinks out yet. I was wrong.
Last night I purchased BioShock though steam. It was pre-loaded. Ready to Play when it was released they said. I figured... what the hell, they should have it figured out by now right!?
WRONG.. Not only was not ready to go.. its not even fucking installed! Now I have to wait 45 minutes for it to update? And thats after 10 minutes of 'unlocking'! Not to mention the fact that I could have went out and bought the game when the store opened this morning, or the fact that I could have played it for hours already while waiting for it to be 'released' on Steam.. (it was released at 2PM MST). Last time I buy anything on Steam.
It was a good try Valve, really it was. You almost made a believer out of me. Its a system doomed to fail.. why? Well Valve has no control over when the game is released, thats up to the game developer. So if the developer fucks up like this.. Steam and therefore Valve look like assholes. And of course if they try to force the developer to release it at 12:01 on the release date, no one will agree to put their game on Steam. Excuse me for all my bitching, but really, I had nothing better to do while waiting for this fucking thing to install/update....
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