Why buy games off Steam???

[Dowly]

Only buy digital copies myself (if available). The price is the same as if I'd go to the local stores. Which blows, digital copies should have lower price tag as there's no extra expenses involved in making the case & manual.

Amazon doesn't ship here or if it does, it'll double the price with shipping so that's a no go.

I'm just waiting when the people on the worse side of the pond (na na naa ) start to pay the same amount of money for their games as we do on this side.

[Archangel]

I like Steam primarily because of the good deals they have during the sales, I saved alot of money during the christmas sale and filled up a decent backlog of games now that will keep me occupied for quite some time.

In addition I do not mind having digital copies as opposed to physical ones, I do in that regard however buy the 'Must haves' in the store, other games I can do without and get on Steam, and I also like the friends list which has made many of my L4D1-2 games much more enjoyable, and community wise there is alot of information tied to one place in the forums.

Furthermore like others have mentioned it is rather nice to just log on and purchase a game and DL it within an hour or so instead of going for the shop in all kinds of weather.

I have only used Steam for about 7 months though, but I am very happy with it so far and I will for sure continue to do so, primarily keeping to the sales, because I do think their prices are rather high, but it is about the same in regards to retail prices here in Norway so it is not very bad, just a comment due to the online part production wise. Other then that then I would like however to have an option to pay in dollars and not euros.

Funny thing is that I have never bought a full-price game on Steam until this saturday when I got BFBC2 in order to tie me over until BF3 as I have basically stopped playing BF2. The reason I used to justify the price as I originally would wait for a discount was that I skipped purchasing another game I removed from my list, SH-V.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

I'm guessing I will be echoing a lot of what others have said:

I only buy Steam games when they're on sale. Also, I can't "lose" the game.

That's about it.

I can also chat w/others w/their IM!!

[Zachstar]

If steam was ever forced to shut down they would likely do a patch to make the installed client work in offline mode permanently. Tho even if things went really south for the company it would be what a decade before that would happen?

[Nordmann]

I doubt they're going anywhere yet, but there's always the chance that someone messes their finances up in a big way (stranger things have happened lately). A lot of big companies have gone bust recently, for one reason or another, so it's illogical to assume that even Valve are completely immune.

If they fold, who's going to be on site to make the patch? Would you come to work after being made redundant? I know I wouldn't.

[CCIP]

I don't think we need to fear that just yet though. I've watched Steam grow for the past 5 years or so, and it seems to be nowhere near having trouble. My understanding is that it's racking in a lot of money for Valve and its catalogue has practically exploded in the last year or so. So I'd take any death-of-Steam predictions as a really distant possibility for now.

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I don't think we need to fear that just yet though. I've watched Steam grow for the past 5 years or so, and it seems to be nowhere near having trouble. My understanding is that it's racking in a lot of money for Valve and its catalogue has practically exploded in the last year or so. So I'd take any death-of-Steam predictions as a really distant possibility for now.

Indeed, but nothing lasts forever. Personally, I try to stick with discs as much as possible, as I feel that I have more control of their use than with a system like Steam. Not to mention their insistence on charging on a basis of $1 = £1, which is just damned stupid.