PC Gaming is Dead!!!

[satoon101]

Ok, just kidding. In case you missed it, Valve is reporting that sales via their Steam platform increased 205% last year. Here is one of many articles on this story:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62158

I personally love Steam, and will continue to support it by continuing to purchase my games there. There are some games that I prefer to have a physical copy, but most are much easier to just buy through Steam, and download/install them quickly and painlessly if I ever need to re-install Windows.

Satoon

[skier]

only problem is steams file system, certain games can get really screwed up over time, that and the friends list constantly goes down, and the offline mode is lackluster at best(rarely works if you go from having to NO internet(say, if Time Warner decides to cut your cable randomly without warning or reason) so no internet = no games )

[satoon101]

Well, I use the offline mode all the time when I take my laptop to work. It hasn't let me down yet. The friends list rarely goes down. Maybe you have had a different experience, or maybe you get online at times when they do work on it (which is typically when the least amount of traffic is on Steam Friends). For me, it usually only goes down if something goes wrong with my internet, which is usually quick to recover (and not Valve's fault). Not really sure what you mean by "certain games can get really screwed up over time". They are still updating Steam constantly to fix issues and add new features. They may not seem like they listen to their users, due to lack of good responses with support (and no response by actual Valve employees on their forum), but many of the issues I have had in the past are no longer there, and many new (requested) features have been added in.

Satoon

[skier]

well, i play competitive TF2, which means i play it for at least ~2hours a night, just about every night of the year, and we usually connect to servers off friends list, so no friends list = bad news bears, and pretty much -if the list goes down, i know about it 98% of the time.

as for games not working when they get old, try playing a game for hours a day every day for months, it'll stop working randomly, trust me.

[wildabeast]

I'll say this for Satoon that he writes enough code for games on Steam to know that there is something wrong on your end for games just not working. Seriously he has been doing work on Source based games like Counter Strike Source with the same exact one on the same exact hard drive for years. Plus I see you on my Friends list every night playing TF2. If it was not working then I would not know this. You sure there is not something going on with your internet or Steam install. I have tons of old games on some of my older drives and I have not problem with them playing. The offline thing can be a pain at times I will agree with that. You have to login to that game ever so often while online or it will not work in offline mode. I don't really agree with this, but it is made to keep us honest.

[satoon101]

As Wildabeast said, I play many different games all the time, mostly to test scripts I write for EventScripts. This includes TF2. I have not had any issues with any of those games randomly not working. Pretty sure that Steams "file system" would have nothing to do with an issue like that. Changes to the game, changes to your system (hardware or software) can cause issues like this, not a file system. Both of my 'gaming' systems I use for exactly that, gaming. I do not use them for any other purpose. I don't even surf the internet on them. If a (non-Steam) game needs patched, I will download it on either my laptop or my main system (which I run the game servers off of), and copy it over to the gaming systems. More than likely, it is something you did which causes games to 'stop working randomly'.

Enough of this talk anyway. This thread is supposed to be about PC gaming not being dead and Steam sales absoluting soring for the 5th year in a row. Let's try to stay on that topic if we can.

Satoon

[wildabeast]

Other than the derailing of the original post that is amazing of Steam to pull off. The Holiday sales were a huge success for them. It even mentions they added 25 million new active accounts as well. This shows that PC gaming is very live and doing just fine.

[jimmyz]

I say if you can do it better than steam does then get on it, You could be very wealthy if you were better than steam.

BTW do you file tickets, do you complain, do you let Steam know when there are outages? If not you should probably be more pro-active. Like the old saying "the squeaky wheel gets the oil".
I have had my issues with Steam they are not perfect but no online system (or offline for that matter) will ever be without some outages and service losses.

[skier]

i guess its just the timing that they work on it, if they did it in the morning when no one uses it that'd be just gravy, but they tend to do it at around 8-11PM eastern when we need it most

ps, how the hell would i know Satoon works for steam

[markozutic]

Good Joke there, PC gaming will never be dead, it can only increse, like steam reports

Me personaly dont like steam since if i payed for a game i dont want to watch milions of advertisements for other games while steam starts or browse.
It is really annoying,
i guess i's thing of taste, i just dont like it since first day i have installed it and had chance to use it

[tunafish]

there's no way pc gaming can die, ever, the sheer fact of the competitiveness and massive multiplayerability of pc gaming is a force to be recoded with

[riptor]

Dirty!
I really thought you were serious. Man we hold so many LANs so when you said this I freaked. Granted the new Battlefield is online only and not offline LAN play. Lame!

[madfiiwefdg]

I am on the computer more than on a console. I am on the computer more than I watch tv. However I play console and watch tv at my desk as my monitor can do both. sweet right? I only move the console when I have guests.

[Amasero]

On a side note, has anyone tried out that new Steam client beta? It's about time they spiced up the look.

[Clue]

I used to be vehemently opposed to digital distribution in all it's forms. I remember the when Steam first came out and I had to tie Half-Life 2 in with it. Ugh, I hated it so much. I pretty much vowed to never use it again. At some point, I got tired of swapping and scratched discs (cause no matter how safe you try to be it always happens to at least one), the constantly changing random DRM, searching through stacks of boxed games, and worst of all the increasingly difficulty in finding boxed copies of even 2-3 month old games that weren't blockbusters. ( I miss having stores like Egghead where it was just all PC games, ah the good old days). I slowly relented and went back to steam about 3 years ago. I was pretty shocked at how different and improved it was. Now I'm at the point were I only buy PC games if they are digitally available from Steam, Stardock, or my favorite for the oldies GOG. I still worry that at some point they'll go poof and I'll lose the things I bought but at this point the convenience and other benefits for me far outweigh that fear. I can honestly say Steam saved PC gaming for me, and I'm back to the point where I choose PC games over their console version for all but a few specific instances.

Nah, PC gaming isn't dead, just morphed as it will continue to do in the future.