Video games that use Steam to activate them...

[Jaqhama]

This is a legitimate complaint from many on and of line gamers these days.
75% (it has been said) of new video games for your PC come with a must use link to a company called Steam.
The gripes are thus:
You can't activate the game, even for home PC single player, or home PC lan between 'putas, without having an internet connection and logging onto to Steam, registering and then typing in your activation code to make the game on your computer work.

Now as folks have said, I've got the actual disk in my hand, with an activation number, why the hell do I have to log onto some gaming website to get my game to work?
It's not like all of us play multiplayer.
Now before I buy a game I gotta read the back very carefully, to make sure I don't have to connect to some internet server just to get the game to work.
It sucks big time.

If you don't have an internet connection you won't be playing any game that relies on Steam at all.
They don't make mention of that in great big letters on the front, either. A lot of gamers have been discovering this the hard way.
I just returned two new games because I won't connect to a third party company to activate them.
And if you change computers you will need another confirmation activation, as I understand it.
If I wasn't such a fan of First Person Shooters I'd swap over to Playstation or Xbox, but consols suck for FPS.
Why PS and Xbox don't have a keyboard and mouse option I'll never know. They must have no idea how many FPS gamers there are in the world.
Oh well, just have to keep playing my older games I guess.

Oh yeah...you can't sell your used copies of games to anyone either, because they won't be logged onto your Steam activation code.
And apparently it's against Steam's TOC to allow you to sell your Steam account.

For much more detailed info just type Steam Sucks into Google.

[Jennifer P]

Steam is actually a pretty good service for downloading games.

Phone home DRM of all kinds is the worst invention ever. If you have a laptop and are on a long flight...you can't play your video games. It doesn't stop piracy and it inconveniences legitimate users.

In fact, the anecdotal evidence I have indicates that phone home DRM increases piracy. I know at least a dozen people in my small circle of video gamers (I don't play 'advanced' video games) who buy the game, leave it in the box and then go and download a pirated copy without the DRM.

I'm sure these people all support SOPA, too.