Steam: Valve's best move yet?

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The way I see it, for the past 9 months, steam has virtually been a beta with the goal of having it working smoothly by the time HL2 is released(and it appears it will meet that goal). It used to be crap, but now it's great.

BTW, I pre-loaded HL2, but was worried about having to redownload after a planned reformat. So, I copied all the CGF files in my 'steamapps' folder to a DVD, and after a reformat and reinstall, I copied these files back to the steamapps folder with no problems at all. Worked great for all my steam games. Now I have HL1, DOD, CS, and HL2 all on one DVD. No need to redownload every time.

 

Im downloadin it at 660 kbs rite now, bout 70% down
Steam was jittery at the start, but all of us ( who can play ) cant live without it now

 

I dunno which version of Steam you're all using but the one I have still sucks pretty much. The friends service is erratic at best. The whole server searching side is fairly good but, whilst I haven't been part of the HL2 preload, release day when a CS patch comes has always managed to knock things fairly dead.

As for theflingers bit-torrent approach to rollout games, as long as you mean shared accross several download servers paid for by the publisher or sponsors that's fine - although most download sites already do this, or at least have several mirrors.
If we're talking the p2p BT that most people are used to, why on earth should I sacrifice my connection to let some sap in Milton Keynes download half life 3?.

 

I stand corrected

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/20/news_6107712.html