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What's the Best Video Game Download Service?
ThinSkin writes "Who needs a brick-and-mortar game shop when you have the world wide web of video game download services? Joel Durham Jr. over at ExtremeTech examines some game download services to decide once and for all which virtual storefront has the best deal for gamers. Among the services reviewed are: Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive, Good Old Games, and WildTangent Orb. The most popular site in the roundup, Steam, was also the most favored because of its wide selection of popular titles, while Direct2Drive also scored top marks because it has 'just about every title in the universe.'"
Which service(s) do you like the most, and what have your experiences with them been?
TPB
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
http://www.playgreenhouse.com/
It is affiliated with (and I believe run by) the Penny Arcade guys. They sell games cheap, don't push DRM, and try to find games that offer Windows, Mac and Linux versions. They seem to offer trials for everything as well.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Is this limited to just PC? Because, yeah, I know it's popular to hate on the Xbox 360, but Xbox Live Arcade has some pretty nice stuff on it, especially lately. Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2, etc.
And then there's the Wii with WiiWare and I think the PS3 has some stuff too ;-)
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
For 99% of games available on Steam, if the game will work on your setup so will Steam.
Steam also doesn't limit your ability to have the game installed on any number of computers. It also provides a myriad of features that many people like.
The motivation behind it may be DRM, but it provides a better experience than any other platform, with essentially none of the negative effects of DRM.
I used Good Old Games today. I was pretty happy, because it worked instantly and no fuss. Even came with pdf manual and mp3s of the soundtrack. The game I got was descent 1 and 2, replaying those games reminds me that its not just nostalgia, the games were actually great. I've played similar games since, but even though they have better graphics, they've not been better games. The early descent games *nailed* it. Also, I was impressed at the way it came with a pre-prepared version of dosbox, so it ran right away, no hassel. Very worth the purchase price, and the lack of DRM sealed the deal for me. I'm planning to grab Freespace 1 and 2 shortly.
It's important to explicitly call out the properties of DRM that make it bad. DRM is out there to prevent the player from willy-nilly installing on everyone's PC's, which can be bad as it prevents you from switching computers or backing up your own games. Steam actually facilitates transferrence, as you can download any purchased games on any computer you log into. You don't need a CD to play, you don't need a CD to install on another computer, you can play your games on all the computers you have available.
Steam only runs with your games, doesn't take up a lot of CPU time, and has been stable for several years now. The one outstanding question is "what happens if Valve shuts down," but they have promised to unlock everything in such a case.
If we shout that DRM in all forms is terrible, none of the companies will or can listen. If we work towards removing the problematic portions of the system, we might get a compromise setup that is better than we started with.
All consoles since the NES have had DRM. But because they were actually sane DRM, nobody but pirates and developers ever encountered it. Let's work towards that again.
The ______ Agenda
I guess you didn't notice many (most?) Impulse titles includes activation/hardware lock-in (as in you cannot move the files to a different computer unless you have Impulse there to log on and activate).
In other words, pretty much like Steam.
Oldschool games no DRM
http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/
Gametap is a subscription service, yes, which means that if you stop subscribing your games stop working. However, they have tons of arcade games, classics, Sega console games, and even a startling amount of PC games for roughly the price of an Xbox live subscription. They try to sweeten the deal with tv shows and other extras, but you can take 'em or leave 'em. Some of the games you can buy to own.
Whether Gametap's the best or not is up to you, but it seems odd that they left it out but put Good Old Games in (nothing against GOG, but Gametap's been around a bit longer and offers more games)