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[Eviltyphoon]

I also have a CS:S 3 day guest pass, so if you're interested (say you want to try before you buy) just post your ID and I'll send it.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Picking up Men of War so I can finally compare it with Company of Heroes.

Debating over Wings of Prey though. Still too expensive.

[andrea]

I am trying to buy Civ iv: beyond the sword, but it tells me that the game I am trying to buy needs ownership of another game which you I don't currently own. I tried adding Civ IV to steam, but it doesn't seem to change anything. suggestions?

edit: it says that it is compatible both with retail and steam versions, so I suppose that buying it without buying also steam civ 4 is possible

[Grendus]

I love how Valve does all this crazy profit murdering shit almost on a weekly basis, and yet still makes more money than they are able to use on their projects. I guess that's what happens when you only have 220 people in the corporation total.

Actually, it's brilliant. A large portion of the cost of a game you buy at the store is done by the publisher. They absorb the shipping and distribution costs and tack on large amounts of profit. Valve has completely gone around that with DDL, distribution is dirt cheap when all you need is an internet connection. So they can sell these games at $2 (they probably work these things out way in advance with the developers) and still make a killing because it only costs them the overhead for servers and maintainance.

In addition, many of these games would barely get shelf space in a dedicated gaming store, much less in places like Wal-mart where you get half an aisle or so dedicated to games (and half the aisle is dedicated to WoW, the Sims, and PopCap games). They're either too old or too indie to be worth carrying. Valve has, by selling them at huge discounts, made these small games much more valuable by sheer numbers and will make a killing doing so, both for them and the developers.

As much as I hate to sound fanboyish, I love the marketing plan Valve is using. A lot of people are going to make a lot of money over the course of the event, and a lot of gamers are going to pick up old games they lost/sold or couldn't afford at full price. Everybody wins.

[Rilder]

And valve gets to mess around with people who buy games, like banning accounts of customers who probably will just make a new account and buy all their games again....

Or stuff a little less harmful like deleting 7gb games off peoples hard-drives when they try to download a 1.5mb patch (Oh and you can't stop it from downloading the patch either)

[Zaranthan]

And valve gets to mess around with people who buy games, like banning accounts of customers who probably will just make a new account and buy all their games again....

Or stuff a little less harmful like deleting 7gb games off peoples hard-drives when they try to download a 1.5mb patch (Oh and you can't stop it from downloading the patch either)

[citation needed]

[MetalSlimeHunt]

^
Seriously. Leave Valve be, they're the Lawful Good of game corporations, damnit!

[Ephemeriis]

And valve gets to mess around with people who buy games, like banning accounts of customers who probably will just make a new account and buy all their games again....

Everyone likes to ban accounts now.  It has less to do with forcing people to buy new games than it does forcing them to play nice.  You'll see folks banned on the EA boards (and that login might be tied to your game, which keeps you from playing) for simply mentioning that The Pirate Bay exists.

I haven't seen any evidence that Steam is any worse than anyone else in this regard.

Or stuff a little less harmful like deleting 7gb games off peoples hard-drives when they try to download a 1.5mb patch

Shit happens.  You don't need to use Steam to have a simple patch eat a chunk of your data.  Sure, usually it'll be limited to the software you're actually trying to patch...  But CCP managed to hose the entire C: drive with one patch.

(Oh and you can't stop it from downloading the patch either)

Yes you can.

You can either set the game to not update automatically, or you can play in offline mode.

Of course, this assumes that the game itself isn't going to force you to update.  Some games do that, like WoW.

[Rilder]

You can either set the game to not update automatically,

But this option doesn't do anything... All my games are set to not patch automatically yet that doesn't stop them from patching.

[dogstile]

You can either set the game to not update automatically,

But this option doesn't do anything... All my games are set to not patch automatically yet that doesn't stop them from patching.

Then you didn't do it right.

[Ephemeriis]

You can either set the game to not update automatically,

But this option doesn't do anything... All my games are set to not patch automatically yet that doesn't stop them from patching.

That isn't necessarily Steam's fault.

Steam's auto-patching mechanism is just one of many ways that a game can be updated.  Just because Steam is not downloading and installing updates, doesn't mean the game itself isn't going to.

Some games publish a version number and individual patches to Steam.  Steam will check the version of your game, check for patches, and download and install those patches.  Some games force you to stay up to date, others give you a choice in the matter.

Other games check for updates themselves, independently of Steam.  They might use Steam servers and bandwidth to handle the network connection to check and transfer the files, but they aren't using Steam's updating mechanism.  So they might very well update all by themselves.  Setting Steam to "offline mode" should keep them from updating.

Other games don't use Steam at all to check for updates.  They don't use Steam servers or bandwidth at all.  So setting Steam to "offline mode" won't do you any good at all.

[Volatar]

(they probably work these things out way in advance with the developers)

They do. They developers have to stay under an NDA over the whole thing though. Can't let slip that a sale is coming

[Soulwynd]

May I point out, amidst all this discussion, that Ghost Master is less than one dollar right now?

[nichaey]

ill take her

Need a steam id and stuff.

i_cook_peons, thanks.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Old school AvP for less than $2, pretty much fail if you don't get it I might add.