The Age of Steam

Ant writes "Edge Online has a six-page article titled "The Age of Steam" about Steam's history that begins: 'The name could hardly be more appropriate. Just as railroads swept the US, leaving in their wake a west that was significantly less wild, so has Valve's Steam client spread across the PC, centralising, simplifying and consolidating. What started as a way of administering updates has become a delivery platform so powerful that it has threatened to render even the big publishers' alternatives obsolete, an online community so well-supported that it sets standards even for those found on consoles, and a no-fiddling environment that allows your games, settings and saves to follow you from one PC to the next every time you log in. Looking back, such success seems inevitable, but in reality Steam was far from an obvious idea. Creator Valve was a developer, not a publisher or distributor, and the service's opening months were marred by bottlenecks and a frustrating online registration experiment. More interesting than the triumph, then, is the journey: what has made Steam such a powerful platform? Which forces shape its evolution? And how can it rewire not just the PC market, but the way that games themselves are developed?'"

Comments

Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adopter

[Shadow of Eternity]

It still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of reliability and user-friendliness. Turnaround times alone make steam a hassle at times, just because I remember how quickly I could go from playing TFC to Pirates Vikings and Knights in the old WON clients, and I tended to register FAR more servers for the list than the ~200-500 tops I get now.

Re:Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adop

[MR.Mic]

I used to have the same problem, where the server list refresh would stop at around 200-400. I read somewhere that you have to delete a file and let steam rebuild it on the next run. As I recall, it was one of those .blob files. I did that, and my problem was solved.

My experiences so far

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a physical copy of the first Half-Life back when it was released. When Steam entered the picture, I registered Half-Life to it, making the CD-Key useless since at least the online portion of the game was now completely tied to the Steam account. Then I forgot my Steam password and was unable to recover it - for five years. So I couldn't do much with the boxed copy of the game I had, nor could I access it through Steam.

However, a week ago I suddenly remembered my Steam password, and installed Steam to see if my account was still alive. Not only did I find Half-Life associated with the account, but also several commercial mods and two expansion packs that I had never bought. All of these automatically downloaded/installed with just a click of a mouse. Turns out that the commercial mods/expansions were awarded at some point for free to those who bought Half-Life before Steam existed. On top of that I noticed the (apparently long-running) NVIDIA and ATI campaigns on Steam, through which you get a couple of games for free if you have their graphics card, most interestingly for me Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. And all of this works flawlessly through Wine on Linux.

All in all, I must say I'm quite impressed with Steam, as long as you don't lose your account credentials.

Re:My experiences so far

[SanityInAnarchy]

I hear you on the credentials...

I forgot my steam password, once, when setting up a new machine. The old one wasn't exactly functioning, and I'd simply copied all of the files off the hard drive, assuming that would be enough for anything I needed. Fortunately, I also had a disk image, which i convinced to run in a virtual machine, then downloaded and ran a small utility to find my password (from a very isolated virtual machine, so no way it could send it to anyone).

I'm sure it's possible to do it without actually running the Windows in question, but there was no ready-made script, and it was way more than I wanted to learn about Windows crypto.

But yes, after that, there is no way I'm forgetting that password.

Re:My experiences so far

[Khelder]

I think I must be misunderstanding, because it sounds like the company broke your physical copy because you used their on-line service, and you think this is a good thing.

I'd like to thank you for helping me understand Steam better. Now I'm *sure* I want no part of it.

Re:My experiences so far

[geekoid]

Man can't access game for 5 years, says he's impressed.

Really? is the excitement of finally being able to play your game completely wipe away the fact that you couldn't play it for 5 years?

Shit, I wish I could fuck up for 5 years, then be competent one time to impress everyone.

Support and development

[Xiroth]

Creator Valve was a developer, not a publisher or distributor, and the service's opening months were marred by bottlenecks and a frustrating online registration experiment.

And in fact, the problems stemming from Valve being historically corporate-facing (publisher-facing) rather than direct consumer-facing company are still being felt. Their customer service is infamously bad, and their policies when things go wrong seem almost specifically tailored to piss off the customer as much as possible.

The software is decent (although I'm still quite unhappy with the intrusiveness of the DRM), but software alone won't take them all the way. I'd suggest that there needs to be a near-complete split in the company - one which focuses on game development and one which focuses on game delivery, as the two are completely different in the approach they need: product development vs service delivery.

Steam and retailers

[Xest]

It's odd how different retailers are taking different stances with Steam. But also, here's why I think retailers are stupid to support Steam as is.

Gamestop in the US I believe refused to stock Dawn of War II because of the fact it forced the user to register, update, and play the game via Steam. This is understandable as they'd basically be selling a game that forces a competitors sales tool on their system.

Here in the UK though, I purchased it online from GAME. They shipped me it to arrive on the Thursday before the Friday release and although GAME got it me early, I couldn't play it because I couldn't activate it via Steam.

I still personally think Valve are in the wrong here, just because I have to register with them does not mean I should have to activate via them and activation was not mentioned on the box or GAME's website. Still, who is in the wrong is debatable, neither did anything legally wrong, but one thing is clear, you might as well just buy via Steam anyway as you can still preload it and download as many times as you want from them.

But here's the twist, I complained to GAME because I was still pretty pissed that I'd bought a GAME off them that I couldn't play until Valve decided that I could so I complained to them and oddly, rather than having Gamestop's stance, that they agree, it's bad for their customers to have to deal with Steam they actually wholeheartedly supported Steam and their DRM and actually took responsibility saying they shipped it early to ensure I got it for release but that it shouldn't have got to me before release but that if they'd shipped it a day later I might have got it after release, blah blah blah. I also made the point that their website didn't at the time mention Steam, Windows Live activation and also complained that this is important because should Steam ever go titsup and not have chance to release a patch (which wouldn't be an impossible scenario for any company as the current economic situation has taught us) that I may never be able to reinstall or play the product again after that point.

I find that stance rather interesting, it's almost as if GAME actually wants to be destroyed and replaced by the likes of Steam. So is there more to this? Do they think they can actually benefit from Steam in some way? Was it just political correctness in that they wouldn't want to slag off a company whom they sell software for or is there something else to it altogether (maybe they only care about console sales?)? I as a customer sided entirely with them stating that I felt the activation and such was stupid but rather than seize that, they turned around and agreed with their competitor (Valve) that their method of distribution and service was effectively inferior even though there's no reason they actually needed do so.

For what it's worth I also contacted trading standards who agreed that my complaint regarding the DRM was valid, and that it was not illegal for GAME to ship me the game early and as such I should've been able to play it at that point. They are looking at taking action at very least for the fact the game box and GAME didn't advertise that the game was only usable when a 3rd party (Valve) states it can (or can't) be used through activation even if it did mention registration is required.

I also pointed out that the alternative is that many may just resort to piracy if it's difficult or troublesome to play legitimately purchased games. I received a rather amusing response that contained the ultimate freudian slip (or perhaps not??) stating:

"The DRM software that must be installed is designed to prevent privacy"

I'd imagine they meant piracy, but privacy works for me too.

Still the crux of it is this, I'd like Steam a lot more if it avoided DRM. You can do preloading without DRM- just give people the entire game except the executable needed to run it. I'll also never buy from GAME again, not particularly out of spite, but more because the only feeling I got from them was one of arrogance, effectively the

Re:Steam and retailers

[mewsenews]

Here in the UK though, I purchased it online from GAME. They shipped me it to arrive on the Thursday before the Friday release and although GAME got it me early, I couldn't play it because I couldn't activate it via Steam.

So to be clear, you received a game before the street date and got upset that you couldn't play it early. Were you aware that you ran into one of the huge assets of Steam, that games can't be played by those who beg/bribe/steal the game early?

It was a HUGE victory for Valve when Half-Life 2 was released and paying customers were the first to play it, rather than pirates downloading leaked gold master copies two weeks before the street date.

Steam isn't going away because you are upset you couldn't play a game a day before its release date. And your retailer was right, if they had shipped you the game later it would probably have arrived days after the release date, and for a guy so concerned about 1 day of waiting that probably would have infuriated you even more.

Re:Steam and retailers

[FinchWorld]

It was a HUGE victory for Valve when Half-Life 2 was released and paying customers were the first to play it, rather than pirates downloading leaked gold master copies two weeks before the street date.

I don't recall that at all. I do recall not being able to activate it via steam, because the servers were too busy. Luckly by this point a crack had been released.

If I'd had payed for the game (I got a coupen for it bundled with my ATI 9600xt) I would have been annoyed. But I can assure you, many people who payed played after the pirates.

Re:Steam and retailers

[brkello]

I think people find bizarre things to complain about. GAME got you the game before they were supposed to so that you could play it the instant the activation servers allowed it (i.e. its official release date). They could have sent it later and made you potentially wait a day or two to play the game, but they didn't. I agree that they should state on the box that you can't play it until the activation server is up. But really, you are complaining about getting really good service. I really can't believe how anal people are on this site sometimes. You got the game before the date, you got to play it when you were supposed to be able to play it, yet you are still unhappy.

Re:Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adop

[discord5]

It still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of reliability and user-friendliness.

True in some areas (as the ones you mention about multiplayer), but I have never bought as many games in retail as I have since I've got access to them through steam. The convenience of being able to buy a game I feel like playing and within the hour playing it far outweighs the problems for me. You could argue that I could pirate/steal/whatever the game and be playing it in the same amount of time for free, but by spending a little bit of disposable income I can be entertained for a couple of weeks and I get the added benefits of steam.

I remember how quickly I could go from playing TFC to Pirates Vikings and Knights in the old WON clients

I remember how much of a pain in the ass it was setting up a game between a couple of friends (not talking about WON here), and with steam that's done with a few clicks. I'm not going to paint a picture of a utopia here, but it's much improved from the old routine of getting on IRC or some IM client and alt-tabbing back and forth between your game typing "Can you connect now?"

The criticisms that I'd have on steam is the DRM (although compared to the draconian forms of DRM, Steam's DRM is acceptable) and of course the big question of "What happens if Valve dies and I want to play my games?"

All in all I'm really happy with Steam. It's made me buy more games than I used to, probably because now I buy on impulse rather than holding a box in a store and saying "Nah, I'll get it through other means", and it's decreased the time wasted on connecting to others.

Steam pricing is the weak point

[GReaper]

They might do some great offers if you manage to catch them, however any long term users of Steam know that if you want to get the best deal for a game then sometimes you have to look elsewhere. This is starting to build up a lack of trust for customers, games on Steam are often more expensive even though it costs less to sell than a physical box - customers will end up doing Google searches for the cheapest deal elsewhere. It reminds me of people going into stores to find the product they like, then ordering off the Internet to get the best deal.

Apart from pricing it's a nice platform.

Re:Steam pricing is the weak point

[east coast]

I see your point but the fact that it appears that you have unlimited downloads of purchased games that makes it more valuable, IMHO, than a store bought game. I have no less than 4 box games that I'm missing a disc from or a disc is no longer readable to. I could get a new disc if I pay a price (assuming it's an unreadable disc, with a missing disc I'm SOL) or I can use Pirate Bay if they have it there but with Steam it's just a legal and fast download away.

I will buy a Steam version before a box version assuming that there isn't a vast difference in price (let's say 20 USD versus 50 USD). So Steam has me as a customer unless they change their policy. It's a much better deal than iTunes in that fashion.

Re:Steam pricing is the weak point

[dapendragon]

Steam pricing in Europe went from good to poor after they decided to implement the 1 € = 1 $ pricing scheme around new year.

This happened at the same time that they introduced the € as currency for everyone in Europe but UK residents, even for countries that do not use the euro. There's a long topic of complaints and documentation about this on the Steam forums.

Up until this change I would usually buy from Steam since it was cheaper or the same price as any other place, with the digital distribution as a bonus. Now I'll only buy from Steam if there's no other option available.

Despite Valve's reputation as an open company, there's currently been no official comment regarding this change.

Re:Steam pricing is the weak point

[Clovis42]

This is starting to build up a lack of trust for customers, games on Steam are often more expensive even though it costs less to sell than a physical box

The production cost of an item has little to do with how much it is sold for. The selling price is determined by how much people are willing to pay for it. Why should Steam offer lower prices when people are buying the games at a higher price? There's no need for Valve to pass along the digital distribution savings to their customers. The best example of this (ie, capitalism) is text messaging. That basicaly costs nothing, but the cell phone companies charge up to $.25. Why? Because hordes of morons pay for it.

Valve does a pretty good job about listening to its customers, but when it comes to pricing, they aren't going to listen to a few forum users boo-hooing about it.

Re:Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adop

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve has promised in the event they go under, they'll release the DRM validation.

Of course, if they go under, it may not be their call to make. You never know who'll wind up in control. They're privately held now, but if the choice is between going public or going under, they may choose to go public first. Or they may take a loan against some of their IP like Flagship did before they imploded.

And, of course, who knows what their contracts with third party publishers look like? They're selling first run titles from other publishers now, Dawn of War II for example, or Spore.

I highly doubt publishers like EA would be happy with distribution contracts that would allow Valve to pull the plug on the DRM.

Re:Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adop

[Chabil Ha']

"What happens if Valve dies and I want to play my games?"

It is, as you point out, a valid concern. But I frame this problem in context of the cost/benefit I have received from a game. For the amount of money that I payed for TF2 and the hours I've spent playing it, I feel like I have already gotten the better end of the deal. Throw in the fact that the game has gotten so many additional updates (free of charge!) and I feel like I have already gotten value. If the game were to evaporate or be gone forever, I take comfort in knowing that I played it a lot, got enormous entertainment value out of it, and if I really missed it *that* bad, there's a cracked version out there to keep playing.

So that argument from the anti-DRM boogie man doesn't seem to hold too much water with me. I mean, at least some secu-rom rootkit isn't being installed on my machine, right?

"an online community so well-supported that..."

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love Steam, I love Valve, and I loves me some HL, but I've been trying to walk through that door in "Opposing Force" since LAST SEPTEMBER without crashing the game.

Seriously.

September.

Fix it.

Re:"an online community so well-supported that..."

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

It's not a corrupted save, according to the Steam forums. It's a long-standing bug in the game that no one seems to want to address. You can work around it by bringing up the console and doing a bunch of tinkering, but this is the sort of thing that Steam was supposed to make obsolete. One coder should be able to fix this in a day and have the patch rolled out to the entire userbase within hours, so it's quite frustrating to still be waiting to open that door for the past six months.

Re:Good sales :

[Chabil Ha']

A lot of these deals will pop up on your Steam client when you first start it up. Also, they typically show up with much fanfare on the 'Store' page. I picked up L4D for 50% off on President's Day weekend.

There was an interesting article on Valve's sales strategies of late.

Re:Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adop

[Anonymous Coward]

Let steam log in and authenticate.
Close steam completely.
Disconnect your Internet connection.
Start steam, log in offline.
Close steam.
Save the steam .blob files somewhere else.

The next time your ISP is down or the steam servers are down. You can still use your local games if you copy the blob files back. Don't allow steam to try to connect at all after you replace the files. I use Comodo and just disallow all Internet connections.

It used to work anyway.

As an early adopter...

[PHPNerd]

I remember when they first pushed Steam with Counter Strike 1.5 (or was it 1.6?) oh well. Before you could launch CS without Steam in a stand-alone client and after you had to have Steam. I was in college at the time and everyone (with but few exceptions) in my entire dorm hall played CS together at nights. Then Steam came out. Everyone hated Steam at first because it was clunky, slow, and impeded our play. It would frequently crash and sometimes kick people for no reason. It was Steam that killed dorm CS and left a bad taste in my mouth. Several years later when HL2 came out along with CS:S and I saw that they were still using Steam, I almost didn't buy it. When I found out what they had done with Steam (improved it substantially, made it actually work, added an online community, etc) I was happily surprised. Today I use Steam all the time and just last night downloaded a new game (UT3). Steam allows me to play with my friends in just a few clicks, keep tabs on their achievements and progress, and voice chat rather easily. I have real-life friends scattered all across the country now, and we can still very easiloy get on and play CS together. I know of no other platform that allows such seamless play for such a variety of games. Just my 2 copper coins.

Re:Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adop

[Lord Ender]

Steam's DRM certainly is NOT acceptable. I purchased a game, boxed, at Best Buy. When I installed, it would not let me play until I activated it through Steam.

Guess what? Steam's activation server was down for the entire evening! Steam kept me from playing a game I purchased in a retail store! Utterly unacceptable.

Steam Objector

[vincanis]

As with Lord Ender, my complaints with steam derive from the online activation component on retail titles. Half-Life 2 was the first and last Steam title I ever purchased. While I can appreciate Valve's frustration at the HL2 code thefts, I still have an encrypted, unplayable DVD of Half-Life 2 sitting on my office shelf. While I can see the utility of Steam, I simply haven't recovered from this insult.

That being said, I have no qualms about a one-time authentication process for games purchased online, or when CLEARLY disclosed on the box and in the game description before purchased. However, throwing an activation routine on a disk-based retail game without prior full disclosure is simply unacceptable.

I'm a huge fan of digital distribution. I just wish that I had never purchased the retail edition of HL2 (still have the shirt) so that I could give Steam one more chance in good conscience.

Re:Steam Objector

[Creepy]

true - it'd be nice if they had some phone number you could call to activate it like Windows in case you didn't want to use the service for privacy reasons, but since games tend to be less of a sure thing than Windows (well, at least until Vista...) or MS Office releases, I don't think the game companies always have that luxury (maybe Activision Blizzard could do it, but companies like Midway or NCSoft are struggling too much as it is).

Privacy issues aside, I've actually had some pleasant surprises with Steam lately, like when a friend dropped by and we were able to play left4dead between my desktop and laptop and all he had to do was log in (since I had it downloaded on both machines but I only had one license). I also can switch steam to offline mode on my laptop and still play the games, which some intrusive DRMs don't allow (I forget the game, but I had at least one that checked back with the mothership every time it started, so it was no fun when I was on the road with no internet). It's also nice to be able to switch between my laptop and desktop and not have to worry that I only have a 3 or 5 install limit. Since I typically don't back up games that is an issue - I average about 1 system wipe a year due to hardware failure, and my laptop had two wipes within two months because they had failed to set a bios setting when it was sent in the first time and Windows update wouldn't work. They also forgot to install the restore partition the first time (is it any wonder why I don't have any respect for repair people...).

Re:Steam Objector

[Goldberg's Pants]

I'd much rather have online transparent validation than crap like Starforce or Securom infecting my store purchases.

I love Steam. Yeah, it has issues. As DRM goes, I'm happy with the compromise. However, what I am increasingly unhappy with is Steam allowing other companies to bundle junk like TAGES with games on Steam. Valve could clearly take the high ground and say no since they're the 800 pound gorilla of online game distribution right now, and could use their power for good, but they don't.

What's doubly sad is around Christmas they started listing on the games pages if it had third party infections likes TAGES. That information has quietly disappeared again I've noticed, making buying new games on Steam a much riskier proposition. (The new X3 game had TAGES listed for example, a listing which disappeared shortly after Christmas, despite it still being bundled with the game as far as I'm aware.)

I like Steam because it has spared me from the system damaging issues of Starforce and the like (own one system that Starforce damaged, and a friend owns two), but now that cancerous malware like TAGES, Securom etc... is slowly spreading on there, I am no longer as enthusiastic as I once was.

Steam: Designed for Abuse

[drinkypoo]

Steam was created to prevent you from exercising your First-Sale Rights. Not coincidentally, it also prevents you from exercising your Fair Use Rights to make an archival copy (specifically 17 USC 117 (a)(2).) Steam has a backup process but you can't play the backups until your Steam installation has been updated and blessed, by connecting to the Steam network. Steam backups are no backups at all! They are backups of game content but you can't really call it a game until you are able to play it. Until then it's just a collection of files taking up disk space.

Those who purchase a Steam-"powered" game while Steam does not permit both the immediate play of a restored game backup and the transfer of Steam games from one account to another are voting to give up their legal rights in the only way which matters in a capitalist society - with their money.

Re:Speaking as a valve fanboy and steam early adop

[kalirion]

You should still back up the Offline blobs. That way next time the steam servers are down you'll be able to start in Offline mode. Otherwise it's a Catch-22 situation - you won't be able to switch to Offline mode until you log in.

I will never buy another Steam game: Dawn of War 2

[admiral201]

So I read about a new RTS game, Dawn of War II, and since Strategy games are my favorite type of PC game, I picked it up at Best Buy while on vacation.

I've been a computer programmer for 26 years (professionally for 22). I was part of the Microsoft team which put out the first version of Windows NT. I know how computers work, inside and out. I know how operating systems work, although I will admit I don't use Vista for anything except playing games so I'm not very good with it.

I go to install it on my MacBook Pro with 3G RAM and 512MB video card running Vista 32 Home Basic (I have MSDN with all the Vista versions, but this is the smallest install so that's what I used).

First, it makes me install something called "Steam." This is something I have assiduously avoided installing because I have heard it is very intrusive and prevents you from actually owning any game you own, but since I was on vacation and could easily wipe my Boot Camp if it did something unsavory, I decided to go with it. This Steam install seems to take a very, very long time (an hour or two) and forces me to create some sort of Steam account, which I do because it didn't ask for any information other than name and e-mail address. (I would have given it a fake name too, except for the fact that my e-mail address is a give-away for my name anyway.)

Finally, it gets Steam installed, which does lots of back and forth on the Internet and then keeps running in the background. Mind you, I'm trying to install a single-player game for which I own the DVD and it's sitting in the drive. But, the game is not installed, I learn, when I tell it I want to play the game and there are no games listed in the "My Games" section. Well, that's stupid, so somehow I figure out how to tell it to install the actual game Dawn of War II.

This goes amazingly slowly. I mean, it's already been over an hour and I don't even have a game installed. This takes about two hours - no joke - to install 3.6 GB of game from a DVD. I can watch a 2 hour 7 GB DVD in the same amount of time, so I have no idea why copying files takes 2x as long as viewing them. Hard drives just aren't that slow.

So, I eventually gave up and let it install overnight and came back to it the next day.

There is no desktop icon for Dawn of War II, so I hunt around the hard drive to try to run the installed game. I finally found it, and all it seems to do is run Steam, connect to the Internet and hang. I try running it a handful of times, and then I run the Steam program (which was actually running the whole time in the system tray, wasting my memory and CPU resources). There, it says Dawn of War II is installed so I attempt to launch it (with the launch button). It shows some multiplayer code on the screen and says I need to enter it into the game to get it to work. I ignore it because I couldn't give a damn about multiplayer, I just want to play the game already after several hours now in the second day of trying.

The game hangs for a long while. I cancel it and re-launch several times. Finally I just give up and let it sit there for like 30 minutes. It does something about patching, or installing, or updating, and pops up a command line window which then disappears again after a while, and finally dumps me back at the Steam games list which now has a button saying "news" and some comment about it being fully installed. You mean, it's only now fully installed after three hours?

Anyway, so I launch it again, and nothing. I kill the program, exit Steam, and try again. Still nothing. After a few more tries it turns out it was popping up an error message underneath all the other windows, saying that my Windows Paging File size must be at least 1.5GB. Wait, what? Why? I have 3GB of RAM and I don't want any virtual memory being used. But, it doesn't care, and eventually I give in and tell Windows that it can allocate a paging file anywhere between 16M and 1536M (1.5GB). I re-launch the game and, guess what... Same thing! So I tell Windows it can create a paging fil

Re:Steam was obvious

[Chabo]

I also wander why it says it deletes something, but still keeps all the files on my system.

I think I know what you mean.

When you right-click a game in Steam and select "Delete game files", or whatever the option is, it deletes the .gcf (game cache file) associated with that game. The GCF is a large archive file that contains the game files created and sent to you by Valve. When you install a game, only GCFs are created.

When you run a game for the first time, a folder is created in your account directory that contains downloaded files (third-party files downloaded from multiplayer servers), saved games, etc. This directory sticks around after the game is deleted from Steam. They assume that just because you wanted to free some disk space by deleting the game doesn't mean that you want your saved games erased, which is a good assumption IMO. However, for multiplayer games, these folders can get quite large (~1GB for my TF2 folder, I think), and if you're worried about disk space, they need to be cleaned every once in a while.

I prefer Impulse.

[Ifandbut]

I'v used steam alot, and still do (I wanted to get Left 4 Dead a few weeks back an no local store had it so I bought it from steam instead).

When Stardock launched their Impulse I was a little bit annoyed that I had to download another application just to update Galactic Civilizations 2. However, I am quickly becoming a fan of it. I pre-ordered Sins of a Solar Empire and was able to play the beta immediately. When the full version was released the Impulse client took care of everything for me. I recently bought the Sins of a Solar Empire expansion, Entrenchment, and the whole process was hassle free.

The best thing about Impulse is:
1) No DRM. I think everyone here at /. will agree that this is the #1 reason steam is not as good as it should be.

2) You dont have to launch it to play your games. How much time do you waste when trying to play Left 4 Dead while steam launches and decides that not only steam needs to update but 5 other games need to update and start to all by them self.

3) You dont have to update a game if you just want to play single player. I cant remember how many times I wanted to play Portal real quick and I had to wait for it to update before playing a SINGLE PLAYER game.

4) It automatically detects if you have a Impulse game installed. I picked up a copy of The Political Machine 2008 in BestBuy because I had some gift cards to blow. I installed it and played it for a while then forgot about it. It was not until I wanted to check my GalCiv 2 and SoaSE games for updates that I remembered I had Political Machine installed.

Currently Steam is more popular because everyone who plays HL2 or Portal has to use it. However, if a game is ever released on both Steam and Impulse I'll take the Impulse version any day.