News Bohemia's Arma 3 becomes a Steam exclusive

Steam is one of the best things to happen to PC Gaming ever.

All Hail the Newell Order!

 

And when steam has the monopoly or even becomes the only place where you can buy games from if the game makers decide it's the only outlet through which they will sell their games you can obviously kiss any competition amongst game prices goodbye and it will be a case of "Buy from steam or f**k off".

Steam might now sometimes throw some appealingly priced games at customers but if they really get the market to themselves and have no competition to worry about steam and the game makers can charge what they like as there will be no reason for them to drop their prices and that will be the end of any cheap games.

 

Yes yes, the future of Steam and how will it all pan out if Steam goes belly up and takes your games inventory with it. It's really the only negative issue about Steam, but from what I've experienced as a Steam user (since the early days of HL2 and the initial activation problems I had) I can honestly say it's a great platform, it can max out my 100Mb connection without a problem, downloading, updating, patching... it's taken the pain out of the whole process.

But look at other Platforms like the PS Vita (download only, no media what so ever) and the problems Sony had recently, the PS4 could fail and fail hard, Sony's executives could quite easily pull the plug or even worse, Sony could fold. They don't have the luxury of being the respected brand they were in the 80's and 90's. Yes they have their core base of fans of course, it's no guarantee that they'll stick faithfully to one manufacturer/product. Like with anything in this life, there are only 2 certainties... death and taxes.

What I guess I'm trying to say is Steam, or Sony for that matter aren't immune to problems, and if recent events haven't already demonstrated, the high streets aren't what they used to be either.

Where do you place your trust and ultimately your wallet? I have no issue with Steam at present, I have over 90 games plus other software on Steam and I love it.... Oh, and I don't mind Origin either!

TL;DR
Steam is here, if you don't embrace it you'll miss out on Steamworks titles. It's your loss.

 

Only issue with origin is that's certainly over priced compared to retailers seems to work well.

As has steam, I've ran it solidly over the past 7 years without issue at all even after a number of system rebuilds and formats its easy enough to pull down your purchased games!

 

Steam backups are your friend, or just install your Steam games to a non-OS drive and when you do a rebuild, run up Steam and it should rebuild your registry files and you'll have all your games instantly.

In fact, I've done this for both Origin and Steam and it works a treat.

As for the prices on Origin, it's swings and roundabouts. They have 40% off BF3 premium right now which I'm seriously considering, pre-ordering Sim City @ £65 still gives you £15 off your next purchase too so it pitches it in at £50 for a new title, which while it isn't exactly a fair price to pay,compare that with console new releases?

 

Fair enough, but my concerns about Steam are not so much about it's longevity my biggest issue is with the game manufacturers as more of them use Steam to distribute and activate their games, I object to paying £50 for a game that after it's one and only activation is worthless, not everyone can afford to buy a new game as soon as it is released and I have often sold older games to help pay for new ones but that's no longer possible and it's all very well saying that you just need to wait a while for the prices to drop but why should you have to do that when you can have a pile of perfectly good games sat on the shelf that have been activated and played once but can't sell as they are worthless, I think it's a shi**y way to treat gamers

 

Yeah fair point, you're also paying for the convenience! That's why I bought BF3 from them, I wanted it there and then on a Sunday night, suited me

 

@Shinyali

you might object , but they way PC games have gone is exactly what you have said , look at all the digital platforms now - you pretty much buy any game and it has a serial which is tied to a uplay/origin/steam account anyway

 

I don't see what's so great about Steam. I have probably gone though 20 pots of boiled water and it doesn't seem to do much of anything.

 

Steam is the leading way to distribute pc games these days and Arma 2 is one of the best selling games on steam, so not really surprised that Arma 3 will be a steam exclusive.