[BloodEagle]

For people with more Steam experience than myself: If I buy Braid through Steam, will I have to use Steam to play Braid? If so, is there a better way to get it?

[Fury]

For any game bought through Steam, you will need it to play the game.

[BloodEagle]

Curses!

[General Battuta]

Unless you're on dial-up, though, Steam is pretty great.

[Liberator]

Didn't use to be that way, Steam was **** the first year or so it was out, crashed everything and ate all your resources so you couldn't even play the games you bought.  I'm still not 100% convinced there's not some kinda spyware in the damn thing.

[General Battuta]

It was indeed crap for the first year or so, but if there were spyware, Valve wouldn't have the good name it does.

[Colonol Dekker]

Can't you buy braid from the official site?

[Flipside]

I used to be dead against Steam, I now have quite a sizeable collection of games and no real complaints other than the fact it can, on occasion, take a minute or so to connect to Steam when booting up a game, but other than that, I've been pleasantly surprised.

[Colonol Dekker]

I don't like Steam until i get a perma-on connection. It'll probably eat all my bandwith in the first week to be honest

[Bob-san]

I don't like Steam until i get a perma-on connection. It'll probably eat all my bandwith in the first week to be honest

Downloading games, yeah. I bought the orange box months ago and since then got a sizable collection thru Steam. Notably, Assassin's Creed, GMod, L4D, Red Orchestra, Mount & Blade, Civilization IV, Bioshock, Penumbra, both STALKERs, and Tomb Raider. Their shop is pretty big but there's still a lot of my interests that aren't on Steam. Most notably, Microsoft and Lucas Arts games, as well as some more mainstream series like The Sims 3. But oh well; cutting down visits to GameStop by 80% is good enough for me.

[BloodEagle]

Can't you buy braid from the official site?

They shunt you off to Steam (which isn't an option), Impulse (which I'm against), and a couple of sites that I've never heard of before.

[Fury]

Lucas Arts games

http://store.steampowered.com/publisher/LucasArts/

It's a shame you don't like Steam, BloodEagle. I like it a lot when games sold there actually are cheaper than in a local store. It just works (for me anyway).

[eliex]

Also note that games you buy from Steam are permanently tied to your account so selling them once you're done with them can be tricky.

[Flipside]

That's where I have an advantage, because I never sell stuff on, I've found that when I do, I'll just end up seeing it in a shop later, remembering that it was quite good, and wanting to play it again.

[Bob-san]

Lucas Arts games

http://store.steampowered.com/publisher/LucasArts/

It's a shame you don't like Steam, BloodEagle. I like it a lot when games sold there actually are cheaper than in a local store. It just works (for me anyway).

They don't have the older games on Steam, though. I wouldn't mind purchasing a backlibrary of quite a few Lucas Arts games (mostly centered around Star Wars, ofc).

[Fury]

Older games? Certainly you don't mean games like The Secret of Monkey Island, The Dig, LOOM, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis? All those are in Steam.

But yeah, no old SW games though.

[BloodEagle]

Okay, so, Greenhouse, or GamersGate? Right now, I'm leaning towards Greenhouse (as GamerGate appears slow as all Hell), but they don't say anything about how you get the files or the key after purchase. Do I have to install a client? Is it then tied to them? I'd like to avoid that kind of thing.

----

It's a shame you don't like Steam, BloodEagle. I like it a lot when games sold there actually are cheaper than in a local store. It just works (for me anyway).

When Steam is dead, I'd like to be able to play my non-Valve games without needing to pirate them. :/

[Ransom]

Valve have made it quite clear that they have a system in place to give everyone the ability to keep playing their games in the event that Steam is discontinued or Valve go out of business.

There's really no good reason to avoid Steam so long as you have a constant internet connection. There simply isn't anything wrong with the system any more - in my experience it gives you more flexibility, not less.