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Something Valve has recently made a lot easier, BTW.

The verb tense confuses me. Did the Steambox already come out in select markets?

No, they created a TV Mode.

You can switch steam to offline mode and play all your offline games without contacting steam ever again if thats how you really want it.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555
"Offline Mode allows you to play games through Steam without reconnecting to the Steam Network every time you wish to play - this is particularly useful if you do not plan on playing over the internet and would prefer not to download new updates for your single-player games."

Actually, that's a fact, no a theory. IT's also a fact that it works fine for me.

Anyways, there is this great thing called the internet? someone like you can think of it as a series of tubes. Doesn't matter you wont get it. Anyways on the internet you can find companies business website. Someone like you can think of it as a 'magical store front in you computer box'.

This internet has lots of stuff. A huge amount of stuff. For you simple mind, you can think of it as 'more then 3'.
In order to find one of those websites you can use something called Google at Google.com. yeah, I know is seems like you're being bewitched to go to a web site to find a web site.
Anyhow, you can search for problems with your computer and find fixes! it's amazing. In your case it isn't so much a fix as it is finding out how to properly so something instead of pounding you meat hooks on the 'letter making device' in front of your computer TV thing.

You know what? That sounds to complicated and it might overwhelm your IQ point. You are going to see some text after this. Take the mouse..no not Algernon,. the plastic device next to your letter making device. Use it to move the arrow on your computer TV and then press down on the button. I say the button, becasue I'm sure some like you has an Apple mouse with a button. More then one being confusing black magic.
Click here

Dude I gotta say...TORCHLIGHT 2 ROCKS!!! I pre-ordered for me and my boys, they had a cool deal where you could pay $60 (the same as a single copy of D3) and get 4 copies of Torchlight 1 AND get 4 of Torchlight II on release, what a steal! BTW you can still get 4 copies for $60 but I don't think you get TL 1 for free like if you pre-ordered.

Torchlight 1 is still a blast but to me its not the MP that was missing, it was the challenge. You could save up gems and build a "weapon of ultimate ass kickery" and just slaughter the entire game. Now not only did they fix this but LOOOT BABY LOOOT! The loot is cool but you gotta seriously hunt and fight and you WILL die even on normal level, these bad guys don't play around! There is this Manticore boss out in the desert and when we hit that place it was like walking into hell, just fire and explosions and lightning, and when you are playing MP with friends or family here is some KILLER things about MP..1.-Everyone gets their own loot, no loot snatching, 2.-Trading is simple and easy, if you get something your buddy can use or he gets a cool weapon you need for the set you're building? Swap in seconds. 3.-Bad guys ramp up a LOT when you add players, no going in with your buds and just laying waste, you better bring your A game because they sure do!

I know everyone is gonna compare to Diablo 3, but I don't think that is fair or right. They built D3 to be an online only MMO style real money market thing, while Torchlight 2 takes all we loved about D1 and D2 and dungeon crawlers and just ramps it to 11, making everything better! It really makes it a community, even going so far as to say "Modders are welcome here, come on in!" so we'll be seeing cool stuff added to Torchlight for years, which is something I LOVE LOVE LOVE to see games do, it adds so much to an already great game!

So if you like RPGs? If you like dungeon crawlers? If you liked Diablo 1 and 2? if you don't like always on DRM and real money markets? then BUY TORCHLIGHT 2 NOW! The first time we played the boys kept popping up in game "You only paid $20 a copy for this? Seriously? this rocks!" and I have to agree, its the most fun I've had in an RPG dungeon crawler in years, great loot, great sets, great drops, hard bad guys and bosses,lots of secrets and easter eggs (be sure to look for a basket near where you find the lotion for a cute "Silence of the Lambs" riff) its just a fricking blast!

PCs are popular because people feel they have a choice. If they want to buy software from staples they can. Amazon? sure. With apple, there is only one place you can get your software, and only a very limited selection of dealers to get your hardware from.

While only Apple makes Apple hardware, like Samsung makes Samsung phones (unless you go for the Sansuny Chinese ripoffs), I'm puzzled. There's only one source for Apple Mac software?

Is it this one? Or perhaps this place of PC software as you mentioned? Or too bad they can't walk into a store either.

Of course, if you were trying to confuse PC software and iOS software... which is disingenuous at best. Android and iOS, yes, you can get software from torrents, file lockers, Amazon, Google Play, Appslib, and dozens of chinese stores as well, which is a definite advantage for Android.

For me, the year of linux on desktops is now. With Steam coming to Linux, along with Crossover and pure Linux-ported games, the inevitable has happened. I'm glad Visual Studio also runs perfectly on Wine (I'm also making sure to have a party with my friends on Visual Studio 2012 Virtual Launch Party, where thousands of geeks around the globe connect together to party the release of latest Visual Studio). Everything I need works in Linux.

Steam coming to Linux is a start. It would take a lot more than the handful of valve games getting ported to seriously interest me, though. In my opinion it will be viable when you can reasonably assume any random game that is released will have a Linux version available. As far as I'm concerned a wine based solution is really no solution at all; unless it's like the last app you need and everything else is already native. I'm all for Linux on the desktop, but I think it's still got a long way to go.

For me, the year of linux on desktops is now. With Steam coming to Linux, along with Crossover and pure Linux-ported games, the inevitable has happened. I'm glad Visual Studio also runs perfectly on Wine (I'm also making sure to have a party with my friends on Visual Studio 2012 Virtual Launch Party, where thousands of geeks around the globe connect together to party the release of latest Visual Studio).

Everything I need works in Linux.

The best way to get Linux on a large number of desktops would be a desktop Android distro. And what would the killer app be that would make everyone want an Android desktop? Why, Steam of course.

Then we we fight over how to 'save' our new home from ourselves, with half being against technology, and half being for it. Thus we are stuck in a disagreement, we try to do accomplish both angles at once.

Kind of reminds me of Anno 2070.

If you are interested in playing this mod, you will need a game that uses the Source game engine. If you don't already have one, Steam has Half Life 2 on sale right now for $3.40. It looks like this deal will be available until 1pm EDT.

Valve has already "blessed" this effort, and the Black Mesa devs have said as much. There will be no C&D letters.

From Valve (in January 2007...)

Congratulations to the Black Mesa for Half-Life 2 MOD team for picking up the Most Anticipated MOD Award for the coming year from Mod DB. Over 80,000 votes were cast for MODs built for a number of different games, and they have been crowned this year's most wanted. More information on this ambitious project to recreate Half-Life 1 from scratch in the Source engine is available on their site. We're as eager to play it here as everyone else.

The only thing Black Mesa did was remove "Source" from the mod name, but Valve allowed them to keep the domain because of fan base recognition.

Are there games requiring windows 7 yet?

Yes. Are there many? No. But if you look at STEAM's HW survey for PC's you'll see that about 57% of the market is Windows7 these days. Now there's at peak about 4-5m users on, there's 30-35m accounts. Probably be a lot more since they're getting into selling retail applications through steam too. Which should give an even broader picture.

The only thing holding back DX11 in gaming is...can you guess it? Consoles.

No, steam reports back all the software on your system. This is how they provide a list of common software on their analytics page. Almost every steam user has bittorrent, flash, adobe reader, etc. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Now, why wouldn't Valve get subpoenaed for the same reasons TFA claims MS would?

If you look at those "kits" the Intel one? NO HDD and NO DVD, they do that to try to make the price look cheaper. When you figure in buying those parts, which are included in the AMD, you are adding close to $100 to the price of the system.

And if we all subscribe to your theory? We should all buy the absolute cheapest shittiest stuff since it'll be out of date next month anyway. But as we have seen that simply isn't the case, the devs try to make the games play on the widest possible machines to maximize sales. Too few gamers actually have Core i7s and HD7950s to make targeting that market viable so I seriously doubt they are gonna be putting out anything in the near future that won't run on a 3GHz quad. Hell until last year my boys were gaming on a pair of Pentium Ds OCed to 3.4Ghz with Geforce 7600GTs and they were able to play a good 70% of the games out there when I retired them, it was DirectX 10 and 11 that hampered more than any actual specs, but since I was gonna have to wipe and start over with Win 7 anyway i figured it was a good time to move them to more modern multicores.

But if you wanna see what the devs are gonna target look at the Steam specs and see what the most popular chips are. You are looking at dual cores holding 48% with the quads right behind at 39%. Oh and just FYI I didn't go hexa just for gaming, I like being able to game AND have other things running in the background which is nice. Look at the GPU list and you'll see the vast majority are on $100 or less GPUs as well.

Are there plenty of machines that can curbstomp those AMDs at quadruple the price? Sure there are, just as a Ferrari wouldn't even work up a sweat stomping a Camaro in a race. But there are a hell of a lot more Camaros than Ferrari out there and any dev wanting to make back the tens of millions they spent on development will target the largest market.

One final thing...you really can't look back when it comes to PCs and predict the future, why? Because we have only been out of the MHz war for barely 5 years now. Before that each CPU manufacturer was leapfrogging the other by leaps and bounds, hell throughout the 90s if your PC was even a year old it would probably struggle to run the latest programs because the MHz was jumping so fast. That really isn't the case anymore because the thermal envelope was making it so you needed an AC unit just to cool the chips. This is why you see both Intel and AMD worried more about heat and battery life, because frankly for the vast majority of tasks that C2Q or Phenom II X4 is already major overkill. Sure you'll still have the occasional Crysis "must win teh benches!" style game but that is getting fewer and farther between. Frankly this is why MSFT is having a coronary and why AMD and Intel are both reporting lower sales for the rest of the year, there really isn't anything that folks want to do that doesn't run perfectly fine on even 4 year old chips.

If you look at those "kits" the Intel one? NO HDD and NO DVD, they do that to try to make the price look cheaper. When you figure in buying those parts, which are included in the AMD, you are adding close to $100 to the price of the system.

And if we all subscribe to your theory? We should all buy the absolute cheapest shittiest stuff since it'll be out of date next month anyway. But as we have seen that simply isn't the case, the devs try to make the games play on the widest possible machines to maximize sales. Too few gamers actually have Core i7s and HD7950s to make targeting that market viable so I seriously doubt they are gonna be putting out anything in the near future that won't run on a 3GHz quad. Hell until last year my boys were gaming on a pair of Pentium Ds OCed to 3.4Ghz with Geforce 7600GTs and they were able to play a good 70% of the games out there when I retired them, it was DirectX 10 and 11 that hampered more than any actual specs, but since I was gonna have to wipe and start over with Win 7 anyway i figured it was a good time to move them to more modern multicores.

But if you wanna see what the devs are gonna target look at the Steam specs and see what the most popular chips are. You are looking at dual cores holding 48% with the quads right behind at 39%. Oh and just FYI I didn't go hexa just for gaming, I like being able to game AND have other things running in the background which is nice. Look at the GPU list and you'll see the vast majority are on $100 or less GPUs as well.

Are there plenty of machines that can curbstomp those AMDs at quadruple the price? Sure there are, just as a Ferrari wouldn't even work up a sweat stomping a Camaro in a race. But there are a hell of a lot more Camaros than Ferrari out there and any dev wanting to make back the tens of millions they spent on development will target the largest market.

One final thing...you really can't look back when it comes to PCs and predict the future, why? Because we have only been out of the MHz war for barely 5 years now. Before that each CPU manufacturer was leapfrogging the other by leaps and bounds, hell throughout the 90s if your PC was even a year old it would probably struggle to run the latest programs because the MHz was jumping so fast. That really isn't the case anymore because the thermal envelope was making it so you needed an AC unit just to cool the chips. This is why you see both Intel and AMD worried more about heat and battery life, because frankly for the vast majority of tasks that C2Q or Phenom II X4 is already major overkill. Sure you'll still have the occasional Crysis "must win teh benches!" style game but that is getting fewer and farther between. Frankly this is why MSFT is having a coronary and why AMD and Intel are both reporting lower sales for the rest of the year, there really isn't anything that folks want to do that doesn't run perfectly fine on even 4 year old chips.

If you look at those "kits" the Intel one? NO HDD and NO DVD, they do that to try to make the price look cheaper. When you figure in buying those parts, which are included in the AMD, you are adding close to $100 to the price of the system.

And if we all subscribe to your theory? We should all buy the absolute cheapest shittiest stuff since it'll be out of date next month anyway. But as we have seen that simply isn't the case, the devs try to make the games play on the widest possible machines to maximize sales. Too few gamers actually have Core i7s and HD7950s to make targeting that market viable so I seriously doubt they are gonna be putting out anything in the near future that won't run on a 3GHz quad. Hell until last year my boys were gaming on a pair of Pentium Ds OCed to 3.4Ghz with Geforce 7600GTs and they were able to play a good 70% of the games out there when I retired them, it was DirectX 10 and 11 that hampered more than any actual specs, but since I was gonna have to wipe and start over with Win 7 anyway i figured it was a good time to move them to more modern multicores.

But if you wanna see what the devs are gonna target look at the Steam specs and see what the most popular chips are. You are looking at dual cores holding 48% with the quads right behind at 39%. Oh and just FYI I didn't go hexa just for gaming, I like being able to game AND have other things running in the background which is nice. Look at the GPU list and you'll see the vast majority are on $100 or less GPUs as well.

Are there plenty of machines that can curbstomp those AMDs at quadruple the price? Sure there are, just as a Ferrari wouldn't even work up a sweat stomping a Camaro in a race. But there are a hell of a lot more Camaros than Ferrari out there and any dev wanting to make back the tens of millions they spent on development will target the largest market.

One final thing...you really can't look back when it comes to PCs and predict the future, why? Because we have only been out of the MHz war for barely 5 years now. Before that each CPU manufacturer was leapfrogging the other by leaps and bounds, hell throughout the 90s if your PC was even a year old it would probably struggle to run the latest programs because the MHz was jumping so fast. That really isn't the case anymore because the thermal envelope was making it so you needed an AC unit just to cool the chips. This is why you see both Intel and AMD worried more about heat and battery life, because frankly for the vast majority of tasks that C2Q or Phenom II X4 is already major overkill. Sure you'll still have the occasional Crysis "must win teh benches!" style game but that is getting fewer and farther between. Frankly this is why MSFT is having a coronary and why AMD and Intel are both reporting lower sales for the rest of the year, there really isn't anything that folks want to do that doesn't run perfectly fine on even 4 year old chips.

How much do I make off mods?

Nothing

Yeah because Valve hasn't made a dime off of Counter-Strike, right? I mean they've only shifted 27 million units in the franchise since buying the rights to the mod. I'm sure they really regret opening that can of worms now.

Lets try Borderlands 2 for example, while not as bad, it still shows...

The Australian price is $69.99USD
The price in the US is $59.99USD
In the UK it's the equivalent of $47.31USD
Here we have the Europeans being stung for $62USD
And the Russians paying a whopping $18.84USD

How can it be justified charging ridiculous amounts for the same products, distributed through the same method, using the same amount of bandwidth?
(All prices are current exchange rates based on the time of this post)

Lets try Borderlands 2 for example, while not as bad, it still shows...

The Australian price is $69.99USD
The price in the US is $59.99USD
In the UK it's the equivalent of $47.31USD
Here we have the Europeans being stung for $62USD
And the Russians paying a whopping $18.84USD

How can it be justified charging ridiculous amounts for the same products, distributed through the same method, using the same amount of bandwidth?
(All prices are current exchange rates based on the time of this post)

Lets try Borderlands 2 for example, while not as bad, it still shows...

The Australian price is $69.99USD
The price in the US is $59.99USD
In the UK it's the equivalent of $47.31USD
Here we have the Europeans being stung for $62USD
And the Russians paying a whopping $18.84USD

How can it be justified charging ridiculous amounts for the same products, distributed through the same method, using the same amount of bandwidth?
(All prices are current exchange rates based on the time of this post)

Lets try Borderlands 2 for example, while not as bad, it still shows...

The Australian price is $69.99USD
The price in the US is $59.99USD
In the UK it's the equivalent of $47.31USD
Here we have the Europeans being stung for $62USD
And the Russians paying a whopping $18.84USD

How can it be justified charging ridiculous amounts for the same products, distributed through the same method, using the same amount of bandwidth?
(All prices are current exchange rates based on the time of this post)

Lets try Borderlands 2 for example, while not as bad, it still shows...

The Australian price is $69.99USD
The price in the US is $59.99USD
In the UK it's the equivalent of $47.31USD
Here we have the Europeans being stung for $62USD
And the Russians paying a whopping $18.84USD

How can it be justified charging ridiculous amounts for the same products, distributed through the same method, using the same amount of bandwidth?
(All prices are current exchange rates based on the time of this post)

That's only a 78% increase, and as you mentioned there's the tax difference plus it's a physical product and the EU tends to have more expensive compliance rules for things like dealing with returns and handling disposal.

So here's one without all of that:
A 60% increase but it's a software download. There is no tax in either, there are no compliance rules for returns and disposals. There's no presence in the non-US country even - heck the foreign price is in USD so the buyer pays all the currency costs (the foreign currency transaction fee on the credit card in this case).

$79.95 if you happen to be in Australia*, $49.99 if you happen to be in the US.

* Or more accurately if you haven't got yourself a credit/debit card with a US billing address.

That's only a 78% increase, and as you mentioned there's the tax difference plus it's a physical product and the EU tends to have more expensive compliance rules for things like dealing with returns and handling disposal.

So here's one without all of that:
A 60% increase but it's a software download. There is no tax in either, there are no compliance rules for returns and disposals. There's no presence in the non-US country even - heck the foreign price is in USD so the buyer pays all the currency costs (the foreign currency transaction fee on the credit card in this case).

$79.95 if you happen to be in Australia*, $49.99 if you happen to be in the US.

* Or more accurately if you haven't got yourself a credit/debit card with a US billing address.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZC-5519

However reading up on this, a while back Steam changed their policies, banned accounts can still access their games, they are only stopped for purchasing new games/trading/gifting/redeeming gifted games so this entire thread is rather pointless. You don't lose access to anything you bought when banned.

The game is on Steam too with a 2 pack deal. The first is sometimes sold for 75% off (2.50 or 3.25 with all the expansions). The first one is a blast and I can't wait to try this one out. Both games have demos.

On the topic of tower defense, check out Defense Grid . It's a more pure tower defense game (with a crapload of polish). Free demo on steam. Do note, it's cheaper to buy the game (with expansions) on their kickstarter (belive $15 gets you the game + expansions + any games developed from the Kickstarter even the full sequel, I did the $60 level to get 3 sets of codes for friends). They'll send you one steam game code right away (which you get to keep even if they don't make their funding goal). They're also aiming to port their engine to Linux and Mac OS.

Last there's Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum on Steam. Both co-op tower defense games. DD seemed more slow paced but had more rpg elements in it (and 4 player co-op). Sanctum I was not too impressed with. That said Orcs Must Die is very solid, humorous, and fun.

But really, if you haven't tried a tower defense game yet, start with Defense Grid (again free demo) and you'll see what a good polished game it is.

The game is on Steam too with a 2 pack deal. The first is sometimes sold for 75% off (2.50 or 3.25 with all the expansions). The first one is a blast and I can't wait to try this one out. Both games have demos.

On the topic of tower defense, check out Defense Grid . It's a more pure tower defense game (with a crapload of polish). Free demo on steam. Do note, it's cheaper to buy the game (with expansions) on their kickstarter (belive $15 gets you the game + expansions + any games developed from the Kickstarter even the full sequel, I did the $60 level to get 3 sets of codes for friends). They'll send you one steam game code right away (which you get to keep even if they don't make their funding goal). They're also aiming to port their engine to Linux and Mac OS.

Last there's Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum on Steam. Both co-op tower defense games. DD seemed more slow paced but had more rpg elements in it (and 4 player co-op). Sanctum I was not too impressed with. That said Orcs Must Die is very solid, humorous, and fun.

But really, if you haven't tried a tower defense game yet, start with Defense Grid (again free demo) and you'll see what a good polished game it is.

The game is on Steam too with a 2 pack deal. The first is sometimes sold for 75% off (2.50 or 3.25 with all the expansions). The first one is a blast and I can't wait to try this one out. Both games have demos.

On the topic of tower defense, check out Defense Grid . It's a more pure tower defense game (with a crapload of polish). Free demo on steam. Do note, it's cheaper to buy the game (with expansions) on their kickstarter (belive $15 gets you the game + expansions + any games developed from the Kickstarter even the full sequel, I did the $60 level to get 3 sets of codes for friends). They'll send you one steam game code right away (which you get to keep even if they don't make their funding goal). They're also aiming to port their engine to Linux and Mac OS.

Last there's Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum on Steam. Both co-op tower defense games. DD seemed more slow paced but had more rpg elements in it (and 4 player co-op). Sanctum I was not too impressed with. That said Orcs Must Die is very solid, humorous, and fun.

But really, if you haven't tried a tower defense game yet, start with Defense Grid (again free demo) and you'll see what a good polished game it is.

The game is on Steam too with a 2 pack deal. The first is sometimes sold for 75% off (2.50 or 3.25 with all the expansions). The first one is a blast and I can't wait to try this one out. Both games have demos.

On the topic of tower defense, check out Defense Grid . It's a more pure tower defense game (with a crapload of polish). Free demo on steam. Do note, it's cheaper to buy the game (with expansions) on their kickstarter (belive $15 gets you the game + expansions + any games developed from the Kickstarter even the full sequel, I did the $60 level to get 3 sets of codes for friends). They'll send you one steam game code right away (which you get to keep even if they don't make their funding goal). They're also aiming to port their engine to Linux and Mac OS.

Last there's Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum on Steam. Both co-op tower defense games. DD seemed more slow paced but had more rpg elements in it (and 4 player co-op). Sanctum I was not too impressed with. That said Orcs Must Die is very solid, humorous, and fun.

But really, if you haven't tried a tower defense game yet, start with Defense Grid (again free demo) and you'll see what a good polished game it is.

Orcs Must Die 2

You don't see box art in Steam.

And it appears as though they finally added a "3rd-party DRM" section to the game details.

Well maybe this is not a common thing but this game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was $60 when it came out last November and it is still $60 on Steam after the brief 25% off sale ended.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/115300/

And on top of that, they'll be coming out with a new Call of Duty in November probably like they do every year and a lot of the online players will migrate to that which reduces value of the game a bit for me. The game from 2010 is going for $40 now. http://store.steampowered.com/app/42700/

Now I found it somewhere cheaper luckily (just bought it) but it wasn't easy to find. To address your comment, I'm not looking to resell (though would be nice). I'm thinking of my perspective where I'd like to buy a game cheaper after it's been out for a while or secondhand if possible. I imagine there are people that would sell it to be on the other end of this. I have some older games I'd sell for $5 or something. Things definitely don't work that way though.

Well maybe this is not a common thing but this game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was $60 when it came out last November and it is still $60 on Steam after the brief 25% off sale ended.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/115300/

And on top of that, they'll be coming out with a new Call of Duty in November probably like they do every year and a lot of the online players will migrate to that which reduces value of the game a bit for me. The game from 2010 is going for $40 now. http://store.steampowered.com/app/42700/

Now I found it somewhere cheaper luckily (just bought it) but it wasn't easy to find. To address your comment, I'm not looking to resell (though would be nice). I'm thinking of my perspective where I'd like to buy a game cheaper after it's been out for a while or secondhand if possible. I imagine there are people that would sell it to be on the other end of this. I have some older games I'd sell for $5 or something. Things definitely don't work that way though.

I'd be glad to be pointed to evidence stating the opposite, but I'm under the impression it's just a handful of publishers who are getting rich and the rest of the industry isn't getting a lot out of selling PC games.

I think it's more accurate to say that like all mature markets, there are a handful of companies at the top of the heap raking in the dough by the double bucketload. However, unlike the console market, the PC gaming market has plenty of alternative storefronts for the smaller publishers to sell their wares and remain profitable. (And I haven't even really scratched the surface!)

The end result is that there is a far, FAR richer variety of games available for PCs than there is for consoles.

This is. Until Oblivion is modded with tracks, it will never be worth a 94.

My understanding of Steam, which since I'm a Linux user comes from posts from earlier threads (e.g.), is that you don't have to launch Steam to play the games (though that's the easy way) [...]. [...] So, yes, they can revoke your account and block you from their servers and stop you from buying new games, but they can never stop you from playing the ones you own.

I really like Steam, but the above ignores something very important: it's only true (if it's even true; I'm skeptical, but not currently in a position to test it) if you have actually installed the games you've purchased through Steam.

I have over 70 games through Steam. Obviously it's impractical and completely unnecessary for me to have each and every one of them installed. I only have about 20 installed at the moment. If something were to happen that prevented me from logging in to my Steam account, I have no access to those other 50 games; games that I legitimately purchased.

As I said before: I like Steam. The above is "scary" to think about, but my confidence in Valve is relatively high at the moment, so my concerns about the above situation aren't enough to keep me away.

I also understand that you can transfer your license to someone else's account (I've seen people give away games when they ended up with multiple copies), so it doesn't even shit on first sale.

That's not entirely true. Most games can not be transferred away from the purchasing account. The "giving away" of a duplicate copy of a game is only available for a relatively few titles, or under special circumstances like promotions (link. For example, I purchased Braid a while back. I then purchased the Humble Indie Bundle V, which eventually included Braid. I was not able to gift this second copy of the game.

I pick Episode 3.

I thought LEGO Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was already on Steam, as part of the VI-pack.

Want EVE, but single player? Check out the X-Series. Very similar, AND moddable. Some of them available for Linux too - check the developer's site's store for those.

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Egosoft
http://www.egosoft.com/

Yep - only about 10.5% of gamers use Intel - source: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey suggesting very few of this almost 60% care about graphics at all - all they want to do is bring up their Office spreadsheets or play Solitaire or Facebook games at best. Integrated graphics are extremely cheap to add and they often are added at almost cost to the motherboards and chips they are embedded on (because Intel cares more about selling Motherboards and CPUs). Also many people I know own a desktop for better graphics/games and a laptop or netbook for travel, and very few of these laptops have good graphics (mine and a friend of mine's wife, because she played WoW and is on the road a lot).

I, however am in the other court - I can't even start my day without a GPU on my work laptop, and it needs to have at least OpenGL 1.5 on it. Anything less and I can't bring up CAD visualization software. Some of the newer software I'm working on actually support OpenGL 3 features (which is a huge step in the CAD world - OpenGL 4 would be really cool with hardware tessellation, but they aren't there yet).

This should help.
The most important part is that you need to ensure your account credentials are being saved to your computer. Probably not the best thing for security, but what do I know. If I remember right, following those steps should allow you to start steam in offline mode when you don't have a connection.

you are not entitled to...host or provide matchmaking services for the Software or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Software, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Software, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks, without the prior written consent of Valve

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

Do you really want GNU/Linux to become that sort of a platform? One where you are free to use the software as long as you never try to peek under the hook or escape some software vendor's online services? The point of GNU is to be a free OS (this is not necessarily the point of the Linux kernel), one where people do not have to worry about license servers, arbitrary restrictions on use, lawsuits, NDAs, or other unfriendly licenses.

I've already got most of these games, except for Psychonauts. I took a look at Steam and they've got Psychonauts on sale right now.

In fact, there's a DoubleFine package on sale for the next 24 hours. Pyschonauts, Stacking, & Costume Quest for $15.

Not in Australia.

On Steam now Skyrim is $49.99 in the US and $89.99 in AU. So $74 is 18% off, not what I'd call a bargain but for the crazies who don't keep a US billing presence...

Not in Australia.

On Steam now Skyrim is $49.99 in the US and $89.99 in AU. So $74 is 18% off, not what I'd call a bargain but for the crazies who don't keep a US billing presence...

while we are on it, can i get game demos back too :)

Yes, you can. Next question?

Steam

245 Mac titles at the moment http://store.steampowered.com/search#category1=998&os=mac&advanced=0&sort_order=ASC&page=1

No, there was a previous competition that did largely the same thing: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=37.0

Basically, one group made art, another group made games from the art. A pretty successful game called Realm of the Mad God came from that: http://store.steampowered.com/app/200210/

Yeah, many games will suck, but it doesn't mean they all have to. Hope we see some great results like from the first Assemblee contest (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=38.0)

Not that it really means much (and neither is the article), but according to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey, the most common resolution is 1920x1080, by far.
Surely this only includes Steam users, generally gamers and desktop users, which care for having a reasonable monitor setup.

Advantage Origin has:

- You can install a game anywhere. Steam requires you to install games inside it's directory.

just a quibble -- I can (and did) move my Steam dir off my system drive to my storage drive.