[Glenn9999]

What kind of experiences and things do you run into in buying games online? I'm specifically looking at sites like Steam, Direct2Drive and so forth. What kind of hoops do you have to jump through on most of them after you lay down the money? Activation? Have to have an active Internet connection? Limited installs? Other things? Any problems in dealing with such sites that I should be aware of if I were to try buying a game online?

[Zenskas]

If you look here, you will see I have had good experiences with Steam. Games are really cheap and are updated automatically. If the steam client and games are fully patched then you can play offline as well. It is not all good though as because games must launch through the steam client it just puts one more thing there that might stuff up.

[ripken204]

steam is the only place i buy games online.
i would rather have the physics media though.

for steam some games have DRM.
but you do get unlimited installs.

This post has been edited by ripken204: 04 July 2009 - 01:00 PM

[VMSandman]

Yep. Steam Games are the way forward.

Only place I get mine online!

[eksasol]

edit: wow I didn't realize how old this thread is.

I have no idea about drm with games, haven't buy any games lately. But my experience with Steam has been positive. They are very big and carries everything now. There are no hoops, you just pay for the game and download it immediately. As long as you can log into your steam client with your account you can download the games and play them.

Of course if you have Half Life 2 on steam you can also get other highly quality mods which are like a full game themselves, such as Insurgency.

This post has been edited by eksasol: 15 September 2009 - 05:36 AM

[Zenskas]

I can fairly well take back my positive comments on Steam. I recently got VAC2 banned for reasons I am unaware of after returning from a short holiday. That means no more CSS, TF2 or any multiplayer source games anymore without going out and creating a new account then re-buying them! I am very dissapointed with Valve, Steam and VAC for this. A permanent ban from 99% of servers. No warning, no temporary ban, just a permanent for life ban unless I throw some more money at Valve. I don't think I will
I am currently trying to trade my account which has loads of Valve games plus all the Unreal games to a friend (whose account has all of the Valve games) as the Unreal games work fine on my account but I do not play them very much so he can play them but not CSS etc and I can play CSS etc but not the Unreal games anymore as he doesn't have them on his account. Then I have a non-banned VAC2 account but he gets some games he might actually play
Anyway, the point is, is that if for some reason (known or unknown to you) you are VAC banned then it means it is permanent and you are banned from all the games with the same engine that are attached to your account. A load of b*** if you ask me. I have not even gotten around to playing any of the other source games on my account (HL2 multiplayer, TF2, HL2:Deathmatch etc) except for CSS. Very annoying.

[eksasol]

I have heard these stories, but I don't know how frequent it happen to people. Banning from an entire game is kind of like stealing your money to me, banning all games using the same engine is ridiculous. Everyone in your server got ban? It is possible to share the reason why you got banned? Or was it ban for no reason?

Truthfully I only play DODS on it, my favorite fps game, I could careless if they ban me from all the other games.

This post has been edited by eksasol: 16 September 2009 - 03:15 AM

[Zenskas]

eksasol, on Sep 16 2009, 06:58 PM, said:

I have heard these stories, but I don't know how frequent it happen to people. Banning from an entire game is kind of like stealing your money to me, banning all games using the same engine is ridiculous. Everyone in your server got ban? It is possible to share the reason why you got banned? Or was it ban for no reason?

Truthfully I only play DODS on it, my favorite fps game, I could careless if they ban me from all the other games.

I don't know if anyone else got banned, I was away for a few days then got back and found I was banned. I asked Valve twice on why I was banned but they would not tell me. Yeah your right there! Banning from an entire game engine is a horrible thing to do and its permanent!