I love Steam because it has streamlined multiplayer between my SO and I. I hardly have to worry about our LAN or trying to make our computers talk to each other…as long as Steam is active, it will take care of doing that. Plus of course switching computers…! I switched from my dinosaur XP to Windows 7 last year and all my games came with me easy-peasy.
From where? It doesn’t seem to be integrated into the friends functionality? Or do you need to have the game running first?
(this is different from the friend inviting YOU to the game, mind. They are complimentary, but not the same.)
If you see a friend in a game, you can click on the dropdown menu next to their name (from within the chat box, I think). If they’re in a game that allows mid-session joining, you will see a “join game” option. This will launch the game if you’re not already in it, and then your computer will attempt to join their game.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Weird. Maybe I’ve just never checked someone WHILE they were in a joinable state or something.
You can even avoid the downloads by simply moving the game files from the old Steam folder to the new one. The games show up as uninstalled in the client on the new computer, but they install in seconds.
I don’t actually like Steam’s extra functions beyond that basic store stuff much. But the basic store stuff it does very well indeed, and that’s actually such an uplift from the old system buying game discs that it’s worth it. I also find it better than any of the competition that I’ve used - certainly better than Origin for me.
I use the build in web browser a fair bit, but the chat client is kinda clunky. I would use the screenshots feature more than I actually do if it wasn’t so curiously slow and unreliable.
Overall, though, Steam has been an utter boon to my gaming life. And the fact that it acts as DRM is utterly incidental to me.
Yep. This is also useful for upgrading the drive where Steam is installed to a larger size.
That’s a nice DIY solution, but Steam also has a backup feature that lets you store your game files where ever you want, and restore them from that. I use an external disk when I’m running low on hard disk space, and don’t want to re-download when I re-install.
When you say “built in web browser” you mean using the client to browse the store? I hate doing that, since it always seems slower and with less functionality than just opening it in Firefox. Or is there something else here that you’re referring to?
I think we can all safely agree that one thing Steam does super poorly is inform you of it’s actual features (As opposed “You got an achievement! and a trading card!”).
No, he means Steam’s integrated Web browser, which you can access from the overlay while you’re playing games. I don’t personally like it, as it’s a bit clunky, but some games don’t play friendly with alt+tab and the overlay is a better solution.
I don’t agree that Steam does a poor job of informing people of its features, I think maybe you’ve done a poor job of noticing them. 
I wish Steams web browsing was better. I really wish that if I went to a game’s page from a list, that Steam would remember where I was on the list instead of going back to the top (gets annoying if you’re 9 pages in). There’s a few other minor annoyances that I can’t remember right now.
But it keeps most of my games in one library, and I can install any game in my library on any computer at any time. It keeps my games up to date for me, and contains forums for each game that can be useful for information. Because there’s so many games available, a lot of my friends use it and I can play or chat with them anytime I’m on steam in game or out. The legendary sales have led me (and everyone else) with ridiculously long libraries of games we’ve bought years ago that still need playing.
That’s what I get out of Steam. Of course your mileage may vary.
I wouldn’t call Steam’s library service a “store”. We expect it now because Steam has made it so common but, previously, if you bought something online you could often expect to download it a limited number of times or for a limited period. I remember once going to buy something through THQ’s storefront and you had 14 days to download it and had to pay $5 extra for “purchase protection” with a year’s time to download it.
If not for how Steam changed our expectations, it wouldn’t seem unreasonable for a merchant to not hold your purchase in perpetuity, allowing you access to their servers and bandwidth for years to come just because you once spent $5 there a couple years ago.
That said, I’ve no real dog in the Steam fight and if people want to call its library features a “store feature” or “service feature” it doesn’t affect me in any way. I personally consider it a service though.
Edit: In terms of features, I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned it’s game modding (forget the actual name of it) where you can pick and choose community mods to be automatically added to your game without using 3rd party clients or installers or searching for the right file directory for a file. Steam also now allows you to easily enable or disable purchased DLC which is nice if you buy something like Sleeping Dogs Complete but don’t want all the cars/guns/skill points/cash available to you from the start and making the game super easy.
I don’t really agree; For me personally, this was one of THE major reasons I didn’t make the move to online purchases for a long time, and I have NEVER bought from a store that didn’t promise that I could redownload my product at any time. I think rather that Steam became so successful because it met what everyone thought was the ‘reasonable’ way to do these things instead of making people go “What? No? Why would I do that?”
I mean, really, if you think about it, there was a LOT of opposition to digital download only stuff at first, and the reason so much of that has gone away is because stores like Steam, GamersGate, Humble Store, etc have done away with all the stupid.
So it’s sortof a chicken-and-egg thing. You say “Steam changed expectations and that’s why…” and I say “Steam finally MET expectations and that’s why…” It wasn’t even really that pioneering, I don’t think, since the only piece of software it had sold by 2005 (when Microsoft launched a store with “download forever” on the Xbox 360) was…Half Life 2. Admittedly, that was a big sell, but …
Eh. six of one…
I am referring to the browser available through the steam overlay in game. I actually use it mostly as a chat client - I get Pidgin to run a local web server and then use the steam web browser in-game to chat without having to alt-tab, which I don’t really like doing. It’s not featured at all (it doesn’t even have bookmarks) but it has tabs, and works for looking up walkthroughs.
Unless you’ve only bought software online, you’ve definitely bought software from stores where you couldn’t go back and get it again if you lost it. You can’t break your CD and get another copy from a store.
The expectation that a store will keep a copy for you is actually rather strange when you think about it. With any other item, you have to keep track of it yourself, and if you lose it, it’s your fault. The idea that it was something people expected before it was even offered doesn’t make sense.
I still have games downloaded from the Internet from the early 1990s. None of them came with an ability to redownload. If I lost my shareware key, I’d just be lost. It’s not like you can’t keep track of these sorts of things.
Steam provided redownloading because it’s pretty much necessary for the way the system works. The game is installed for you. You don’t get an installer file you can keep track of. You had no way to install it again on another machine.
You seem to think that Xbox Live is a service, and far superior to something like Steam. What is it that Xbox Live provides that Steam does not? What about PSN?
The reason it seemed like you were arguing in bad faith is that there doesn’t seem to be any entity that meets your gold standard that you require. You seemed to be creating an impossible standard. Steam is only begrudgingly a service. So what would it have to do to actually be a good service?
I get not thinking Steam was a service if you didn’t know about most of its features. But you know about them now. So what’s left that it would need to do?
Steam DOES have built in voice chat, and DOES allow you to click on someone and join their game…
Online stores are obviously held to different standards than offline stores. I don’t think we need to get into “but I can’t redownload the CD I bought at Best Buy!” here, and I don’t think anyone is arguing that Best Buy is providing a service either.
Xbox Live seems to provide a meaningful service to me. It has:
Information about what my friends are doing beyond “playing game X”
Ability to quickly and easily see who is joinable and then join them (apparently Steam has the second part, but not the first)
Integrated voice chat and “parties” (ability to voice chat with more than one person in a relatively organic fashion)
Integrated marketplace that allows me to buy DLC from within the game without the game company needing to code their own store.
PSN has none of this, and I view it as a POS. 
(Seriously. If I select the “downloadable content” menu option it a game, it has to CLOSE THE GAME to start the store? Seriously?)
Advertise them better. 
No, seriously, at this point, I am persuaded that it is a service, it just has an awful UI.
Steam does show me more info about friends. It lets me know the games they’ve been playing, shows me the screenshots they’ve taken and the videos they’ve uploaded to Youtube. I do think they should surface this a bit better, IMHO, but it’s there.
DLC support and group voice chat is also part of Steam.
I don’t disagree that their desktop UI is in need of improvement.
Why, in the context of a gaming service, would you care about anything more than that?