Actually what I heard was people saying "OMG it's going to be like system shock 2" and the developers saying "No, it's going to be different, but borrowing some elements"

And when it came out, it was a standard FPS game borrowing some elements from System Shock 2 like the audio logs and....psionics/plasmids, that's about what it really borrowed.

I put up with Securom, but still dislike the activation bit. I caved and bought Bioshock around the time they announced they'd removed the limit on activations.

I too hate various stupid forms of DRM but what is surprising to me is that so many people hate Steam. I even barely consider it DRM, for me it's pretty much just a client that I have to start, similarly to how I have to boot up Windows to play anything. Many people say that offline mode doesn't work for them, I personally had never problems with offline mode. Whenever I want to use it, it works. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones, I don't know, but yeah, I like using Steam.
On that note, I hate Ubisoft for what they did, I so wanted to play Settlers 7 but not with that DRM. Not ever.

I'm the same. Steam was a pain when it first came out, and I believe people when they say they still have problems with it. But for me all it does it make life easier.

Well, what you've got to remember with Steam/Steamworks is that it's a subscription service, so you don't own a damned thing. Not to drag up this endlessly unending debate again, but what people like myself dislike about Steam is the fact that Valve can remove your ability to (legally) play your games for no reason whatsoever. And you've got to bear in mind that people HAVE lost their Steam accounts, and £100s if not £1000s worth of games.

Basically, it's giving any third party that level of control over our games that (I think) most Steam haters... well, hate.

You know, there is absolutely no difference between Steam and the Ubifuck DRM (except for the game pause). You still get crippled experience or kicked out if your connection to Steam drops. ;)

Plus, you don't actually buy any licenses, you just subscribe to games available during Steam's lifetime.
Rant all you want, mate, no offense taken. ;) I'm sorry that you had problems.

Some say the game was a little buggy on release. Well, maybe, I didn't experience any bugs, but if people have, then it has been buggy, no doubt. As with any Blizzard game, it may seem buggy on release, but they'll sort out the problems.

Hey, Warcraft 3 received another patch (fixes and balances) like a week ago. :)

But the game is really taking shape now, lots of improvements have been made, many fixes have been added, new leagues have been added. Battle.Net also responds faster in-game (was having a little lag sometimes)... and so on.

The only thing I was having problems with, were the graphical glitches after alt-tabbing, but those seem to have been fixed too.

Patch 1.3 is supposed to be coming out soon, it will be the biggest patch so far. You might wanna give it another go once it gets released. Its being tested on the PTR server right now.

Coolio. And thanks. I'm always genuinely glad that others have problem-free experiences. Makes me feel a little special in a sick and twisted way :-)

Funnily enough, the only bug I've ever come across is that sometimes the textures don't load properly, meaning during one of the Zertul missions, the lush jungles of Aiur looked like the snowy wastes of Braxis :-)

But you are right. Blizzard, if nothing else, has a good record of patching games for years to come.

Oh, I'm still playing it. I bought it, so god dammit I'm gonna play it :-) Just so long as 1.3 FINALLY offers a functional, unlimited offline mode, I'll be happy. And if that fix makes it into all future Blizzard games (or at least, 'offline' is the default mode), then I may crack and drop them some more money.

Here's hoping, I guess :-)

I don't know where you heard that, but I just tested it on my steam account and that wasn't the case. I just tried pulling out my internet connection mid-game with a bunch of games. It doesn't make any difference. You can also start games after pulling out the connection even when in 'online' mode.

He's right though, Steam DRM is basically the same as the current Ubi DRM (and may vary slightly between games). The parts of Steam everyone likes (e.g. the market, social features, etc.) really have nothing to do with the DRM.

It's great Steam works for you, but it is a bad experience for a good portion of folks and Valve doesn't care. If you have a problem, you solve it. If you're banned, you're guilty until you manage to prove yourself innocent, and if their system doesn't happen to rack up a few thousand more bans in error at the same time, good luck with that.

You have no right of resale, you can't swap games with your buddy when you're done, you can't do a chargeback for a broken game they won't refund because they'll ban your entire account... I could go on, but you get the picture.

I realize Steam has worked for you, but please realize it doesn't work for a lot of folks, it's broken either literally or metaphorically for us. Also, it very much is worse than any console DRM we PC gamers used to mock, endlessly.

Yes... i think this is one of many reasons.
This is very well said.... if steam pulls the plug... how are you going to play your games? The modding community (aka know as pirates even if they own the game) will have to help people play a game that you paid money for.

I appreciate some folks still have problems with steam. I appreciate people have reasons for not liking steam. I wasn't arguing with either of these points.

I was merely countering the claim that if your connection to steam drops then you get kicked out of the game. I just spent 15 minutes scrabbling around on the floor, unplugging cables to test this and it isn't true. Of course, you lose access to the store/community pages, but it doesn't actually affect single-player games.

agreed

The main problem that I've had with Steam is its Steam update. Steam was updating for me and then paused, for ever. I waited then re-started and waited some more. The update would get to about 38,42% and then pause. It did this for something like a week, support gave me nothing. I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall Steam which caused me to loose much of my saved games. SO....VERY....ANGRY!!!

Needless to say I hardly, if ever, use Steam anymore.

Wooah, you lose savegames when you reinstall Steam? Wtf is that about?

If I could explain it better I would. I spent days on Google trying to find an answer after being hung out by Steam support. When I tried to reinstall L4D I got a message stating that it was unavailable at this time. Which was crap. I had to re log in multiple times just to be able to redownload a few of my games. It sucked.

It only happened once and that was enough.

I actually love my XBox 360, but one of the places MS got it really wrong is the no copy saves. This seems to be up to the developer, but purist dipshits like Molyneux will always opt for it. This means when you buy a new XBox you can't copy the save and move it, you must use a Move command, this deletes the original. The 360 encrypts USB devices, and it screws up a lot, voiding everything on the device. I lost a ton of saves, including Viva Pinata: TIP (this game can easily take 400 hours, and I was almost done) and Fable II (right after I'd picked up the DLC on a massive discount).

I know what that feels like, sorry to hear that.