Steam: A PC Gamers Best Friend

We all know Valve as the creators of the Half-life series. And for those of us who've played Half-life on the PC, we also know of Steam.

I just built a new PC recently, and have been experimenting with Steam, and it's been such a great experience, I had to just talk about some of the things that make steam great and why if YOU are a PC Gamer, you absolutely NEED THIS APP.

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As you can see, it's very simple to keep your games organized and bring them all up in one application. No more endless icons and so on. Just turn on Steam and voila, it's all there. For all non-Steam purchased games, it's as easy as clicking that games tab at the top and then selection "add non-steam game", doing a quick browse and adding it into Steam. And speaking of purchasing Steam games...

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This is the Steam store. Just click on the Store tab and it brings you right here. The prices are competitive here, and at the very most at store prices. And every weekend they have a sale, I recently bought the game Call of Duty 4 for $39.99, and in comparison to $59.99 price tag for a 360 copy, I was happy to oblige. I've also seen deals like the game Prey for $4.99 and A couple of episodes of Sam and Max have gone for completely FREE.

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This here is to show you three things:

A.) Battlefield 2142 is a game that I bought on disk, and it works on Steam.
B.) First Strike is a mod for Battlefield 2142, and also works on Steam.
C.) I can bring up my Steam Friends list in non-steam purchased games.

With a simple press of Shift+Tab you bring up your Steam Friends list. It's just like any other IM where you can talk to other players if you want. Also, if you're in a game, and happen to make a friend, you can Shift+Tab, click on "Add Friend" and it'll bring up a list of others playing in your server. After that, just click their name to send an invite. Also, you can invite multiple people into a chat at once, and even begin a voice chat, that anyone with a microphone can join, making things like Ventrilo and Teamspeak almost useless. And after all is said and done, let's say you've just started Steam, and the icon pops up "Friend is playing Team Fortress 2", simply click on their name, hit "Join Game" and you will instantly join them in their server.

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And finally the community. Steam Community is just a simple "MySpace" like interface for all users. It's mostly an easy way to communicate with friends and clans, along with organizing games by sending out announcements to other users that a game is scheduled. Also and finally:

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We already have a group, though small, no one should be left out. So even if you don't have any Valve made games. If all you do is play World of Warcraft. Just download Steam, join the Jedi Council group, and play your games through the Steam application. It's super easy, and it just makes the community that much bigger. ALL PC GAMERS NEED STEAM.

Add me as friend: Steamveggie

 

Steam was utter crap when it came out.
It forced CS 1.6 upon us, and by forced, I mean, made us download patches, from servers which didn't work.

But now you can download the best episode of Sam and Max Series 1 for free, which is good.

 

I bought Deus Ex Invisible War through Steam.

I was peeved for ages though because my dual core processor kept making it crash.

AMD dual core optimizer sorted me out though.

Steam is good, I just have no steam friends. I tend to just load it up when I get home, go straight into a CS Deathmatch for anything up to an hour, then crash in front of the tv

 

Prey for $5? That's like 3,15?

oh yeah, the conversion rates lately are one reason I love Steam. Without them I wouldn't have bought Audiosurf. And Orange Box was a little cheaper, too.

Never bothered to add non-Steam games to it, though. Starting Steam for them is pretty much a waste of time (and I try to reduce the amount of stuff that autostarts)

 

Aye, I want nothin open that can clog up my resources

 

I haven't gotten on steam for a while because I've been doing a lot of console gaming. I'll probably be back on soon though. Anyone want to throw down some TF2 or Counter Strike: Source?

 

Hey I'm always willing to throw down if I see someone on my friends list in-game.

 

snap, when I get home I'll post up my steam name, can't remember at the mo

 

my steam id is logskywalker

I'll let you know in advance that I'm a bit of a noob, and when it comes to deathmatch i'm an awp/deagle fanboy

 

Ah ye good old steam.


We have a Jedi Council Forums group on the community. For anyone who hasnt joined.



I am not liking all this CS talk, tut tut guys, play some decent games like Team Fortress 2.

 

yeah, I think theoretically I own CS:S (came along with HL2, right?) but I never bothered to install it

 

Spy as engineer.

 

I take 2 seconds to drag/drop and right click and delete.

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I admit it is a very slick set of spyware, but spyware nonetheless.

 

Cool, I just joined.

 

I didn't get the orange box, I bought HL2 ages ago, hence no team fortress 2 or portal

 

How much is Valve paying you for this advertisement?

You already have an application that keeps your games organized and lets you bring them all up. It's called your operating system's desktop.

Those prices don't reflect the fact that Steam makes your rights to use the content you legally purchased dependent on Valve's good graces and continued existence. Because of this, ONLY if the games were free should anyone consider it a good deal. They can force you to upgrade or pay an extra fee if they wished.

That feature's fair enough; but not necessary, thus disproving your original thesis that PC gamers need Steam.

The world does not need another MySpace-type community. One of them is already too many.

Anyone who doesn't play Valve games should avoid Steam. It's spyware. It's another application to run. It's unnecessary. You have the audacity to suggest that "ALL PC GAMERS NEED STEAM" when the fact is that saying such a thing indicates that either you have a narrow perspective about what a PC gamer is or you're being paid by Valve.

 

Don't feed the troll.

 

I could use some more Steam friends for some of the achievements...

 

*IGNORING*

Anyone else playing the Day of Defeat beta? They're adding some qualities from TF2 (kill cam and achievments) to it. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of TF2, but it's not they're doing anything else to it either.

 

Yeah iv been trying to play it, alas im one of those stuck with the it crashing bug lol.

I can play generally if i restart my computer and dont run anything before it.


I love DoD, I really dont know why I dont play it more than I do.

 

Achievements are the worst thing to ever happen to TF2 IMO. When the Gold Rush patch was released every team had 5 medics that were only interested in Bonesawing the other teams medics. I haven't played in weeks because of it. I've heard it's died down a bit so I may be venturing back soon though.

 

Oh, I don't really go out of my way to try to get them. Plus, I play medic a lot anyways.

 

The day Goldrush and Medic achievement pack were released... Also known as

THE NIGHT OF A THOUSAND MEDICS

It has died down a lot since then though, everyone is back to their building sentry's, sapping sentry's, and spy checking everyone within a 5km radius

 

Ah you were probably playing on servers with a load of noobs on them.



On the servers I play on, theres a hell of alot of regulars, so it wasnt too bad.


But yeah it has defo died down now.

 

Yeah, on the sever I play on there are a lot of regulars and there's usually a good mix. Though, we sometimes fool around and have a huge medic chain (these people already have all the achievements so they weren't going for anything).