I have complex random password, I have verified my email adress (so nobody can change my Steam password without access to my email) and I have very good security setup in my PC. I never give my password to anyone

I am confident in security of my account and I agree with Valves policy that user is responsible for accounts security.

If someone's careless enough to have their Steam account stolen, they've got more problems than losing access to their games. This can only happen if you either don't know how to secure your account or computer, don't check for malware, don't recognise a phishing email or are duped in another way. We live in an age where identity theft is common and most of us know enough to never fall into such a trap. It's a lot easier for someone to steal your credit card details and that's much more drastic this, but you don't give up your credit card just because it's vulnerable. Or online banking. Or email. You just know how to protect yourself. There's no sense in giving up modern conveniences just because you need to be more careful with them.

Apply the parent/grandparent situation:

If non-tech-savvy users are likely to get hijacked, then the system needs to accommodate them. Most credit cards have fraud protection (if your card is stolen or cardmember account hacked, you are not liable for any charges incurred, if you report the issue within 60 days or so). Valve's customer policies are inferior to those of the major banks? Ouch.

Or consider this situation: If someone steals my car and then hits a pedestrian, should I be charged with manslaughter? But I locked it and it had an alarm system!

Also, anyone can be hacked. You can be the most paranoid user in the universe, and there remains a possibility that your information will be stolen. From the perspective of IT security professionals, you must assume that security breaches will occur, and plan responses accordingly. The, "my security policies make me invulnerable, so puh!" approach is inappropriate.

Blaming the victim is more convenient though, yes? All victims of crime are at fault for the ills wrought against them.

All new Steam accounts have to verify their email, so even if someone is able to obtain their Steam username and password, without access to their email they cant change password - so when user figure out what happened all he need to do is to change password.

User is responsible for thir account security - those who are too stupid/lazy to secure it well take chance that they will suffer consequences.

This is just an argument on principle. Most game players are tech savvy, regardless of age. Using Steam is cheaper for game companies and they aren't going to go out of their way to accommodate a tiny portion of potential customers. The security policies will improve over time, but you're losing sight of perspective if you think Steam needs to be as secure as a bank. In the end it comes down to capitalism. Enough people are happy with it and from the game companies' point of view, the extra cost to accommodate those who aren't is not worth it.

FWIW, while I prefer to buy the boxed game ot have the manual and something solid to hold on to, I would much rather have the game ask for Steam to be running, rather than the old way of having to put the cd in before playing.

I'm not sure that I buy that Valve's policies are that much worse then major banks. Both will resolve the issue and give you your account back if it's stolen. Valve does have the downside of possible multiplayer server loss which doesn't effect most games and which is an necesarry side effect of the rampant cheating they have to deal with (and no I don't think going by connectin logs would work, they can be spoofed).

With that being said if their defences were less then major banks that would be quite understandable. Losing my multilplayer access is not the same as losing my life savings.

I realize that you are on a crusade against Steam and you may have some good points. But I feel like you just going by a knee jerk reaction to criticize every single thing about them whether it's logical or not.

Ah, the eventual descent into ad hominem. Because I, by pointing out obvious and troubling flaws, must be on an illogical crusade (in your terms).

Pardon me.

All I said is that your going a little overboard on attacking Steam for every little thing. I mean you did even lash out at them for thinking their users might cheat when cheating is one of the biggest problems in games like modern warfare. It's ok not to like them, and like I said you do make some reasonable points. But just because you don't like them doesn't mean that every single thing they do is wrong.

I could buy Elemental only thanks to stardock plateform, because there is no box in Europe. It's quite similar

Anyway, the need to be online to play sucks, above all for a game that rich in single player... I hoped I could play it at university during breaks, but obviously I won't I'll play elemental instead

You do realize that there are games that are sold ONLY on Impulse right? Have you ever wondered why you can't find GalCiv2 on Steam or Gamersgate? Good luck trying to find Elemental outside of Impulse.

Personally I don't like these practices and I think in the big picture they aren't good for the gaming industry.

But believing that there is some big bad guy out there out to get everyone is a bit naive. They are all big bad guys.

How exactly is anything he said ad hominem? He criticized your argument as being partisan and exaggerated but did not mention or imply anything negative about you as a person. That's pretty much the dead opposite of an ad hominem attack.

You're pointing out flaws that are largely unnoticed and/or unconcerning to the majority of Steam users. No one is really debating their existence, though I would seriously debate the obviousness and practical troublesomeness of several. More importantly is the question of if a majority of consumers decide that those flaws are more than made up for by advantages the system brings. I think sales numbers overwhelmingly prove the answer to that.

Besides you're missing the point of the thread. Whether Steam is great or not doesn't matter, it's just a distribution platform that you can choose to use or not use. Clearly you choose not to use it, clearly many more people choose to. Steamworks is great it's a free set of tools that allows developers to not be forced to reinvent several wheels and instead concentrate on making their game. Forcing Steam and Steamworks together is not so great. It's a perfectly reasonable and smart business decision on the part of Valve but it irrevocably ties their distribution platform to games. Now people are deciding to use Steam not based on its worth as a distribution platform but as a function of which games use Steamworks. That disincentives them to make improvements to Steam and creates a higher barrier for entry into the digital distribution market for potential competitors that could bring improvements. It's good for Valve but can be bad in the long run for digital distribution and since PC gaming will soon be digital distribution that too.

Not that it's totally clear cut, monopolies do tend to cause stagnation but they also offer stability and standardization. I'd much rather have a Steam monopoly than have each major publisher with their own distribution platform. A fragmented landscape of distributors that can be picked off one by one. Which is still a real possibility if Activision or EA decide to buy one of the current runners up and withhold content from all other platforms. The only thing that's stopping them is the fact that Steam brings in huge amounts of money right now this quarter and pulling their catalog or refusing future titles hurts their short term profits which is all their shareholders care about. So yeah, a dominant Steam is worse than multiple independent distributors but it's a good sight better than vertically integrated and mutually exclusive publisher owned distributors.

So do I complain about Steamworks/Steam integration because it helps kill off independent distributors or do I celebrate it because it makes Valve strong enough to ensure there is at least one independent too big to be knocked off by a publisher? Honestly, not sure.

@kaiapo On the other hand, considering that those were developed by Stardock there should be no reason to assume that they would be on another site. Similarly, you won't find any of the half-life games ending up outside of steam. When a DRM system offered up for free locks down a third party game to a single DD system, that is anticompetitive behavior.

It also requires Windows so I'm not buying it because of that.

I would rather support the only AAA PC exclusive that I have seen in a long time.

They're both anti-competitive behavior. You just happen to agree with one and not the other.

Before I get to the substance of your words, let us first examine vocabulary. You use the term "partisan" to describe me (you infer that another user criticized my argument as being partisan, but he never used that word), but in order for me to be a partisan I must belong to a particular faction or otherwise support a specific faction. That is not the case.

As for your claims that he was not engaging in ad hominem, you should consider rereading his statements. To claim that someone is on a "crusade" is to not argue a point but to discredit an opponent. A valid, logically-sound response to my argument could resemble, "I disagree with your points for the following reasons." An ad hominem attack, however, reads like, "I disagree with you because you're crazy."