id Software Joins Steam

[Maldraugedhen]

...Bearing with them, along with the Doom and Quake series, the Commander Keen games.

Some of us can die happy now.

[Setra]

Really?

I'd say that's good but I've always kind of disliked steam. Even if I do like the games on it.

[TheBoneSplitter]

:smallfurious:

Why Steam, and why ID Software? This news isn't good... I dislike Steam and their services. I'd rather play Half-Life on my computer without having to go through a crappy, tedious interface...

Meh, so long as I have their old games which don't require the services, I'm happy. Viva La Old School Doom!

[Bryn]

Personally, I've never had any trouble with Steam - it's useful for keeping games organised and up to date, and I also like buying things over the internet :smallwink: In addition, it's good for mods.

That said, Doom 3 and Quake 4, for all their graphical splendour, have generally got bad reviews from what I've seen, so I probably won't buy them. But good news all the same (I think)! :smallbiggrin:

[TheBoneSplitter]

That said, Doom 3 and Quake 4, for all their graphical splendour, have generally got bad reviews from what I've seen, so I probably won't buy them. But good news all the same (I think)! :smallbiggrin:

I've played through both of those games, and they were somewhat good through my experience... even though if you haven't got a reasonably solid computer over a gig of RAM and a non-budget graphics card, you will experience quite a bit of slowdown. The gameplay is FAR different from the older games since the level designs for both games are pretty much simple in contrast to how much the older games can withstand (if you've played ANY external wads for any aforementioned old game, you'll know exactly what I mean as far as what details can come from wad authors who take their time... Knee Deep in ZDoom being a HUGE example of this).

[Kranden]

(gouges out his eyes)

[The Prince of Cats]

Why Steam, and why ID Software? This news isn't good... I dislike Steam and their services. I'd rather play Half-Life on my computer without having to go through a crappy, tedious interface...

Well, as one of those people who works in the industry, I can say 'why steam'... It is the best compromise between stopping piracy and letting the players play. I am old enough to remember the days when you would have to type in letter X of word Y on the first line of page Z every time you docked your Cobra Mk. III at Lave Station.

Piracy is a big issue, Steam helps (it is not perfect) to solve that issue. As a trade-off for your having to use steam, you (I assume) get patches and anti-cheating code for the multiplayer games.

A much better reason is this; if Steam can help kill off 90% of the piracy, the Steam-based games should get much cheaper. Profits go up, costs go down...

[The Evil Thing]

I am old enough to remember the days when you would have to type in letter X of word Y on the first line of page Z every time you docked your Cobra Mk. III at Lave Station.
Aaaaahh... Happy days. I still think Railroad Tycoon's copy protection was the best. You either had to have a copy of the manual or be a total nerd (by this forum's standards) to run it.

[The Prince of Cats]

There is one step worse... there was once a copyright-protection system called Lenslok (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenslok)...

If you don't know, you are probably lucky...