And for those people who are complaining about the Steam Prices being too expensive, you have to acknowledge some things.
-First off, Steam is an American based Company. Meaning its running on the dollar. If I was to buy warhammer II now its going cost me $50 not €50. Gotta convert that. If you still going to say Steam is more expensive than Play.com look at the value of the Pound to the dollar over the past 3 quarters. It has devalued by %27. If it ever goes back to where it was last summer games sold on the pound will be at least 1.3 times the price on play.com or any retailer using the pound compared to Steam
-Second, Steam is A BUSINESS. And more importantly not the only one. They may have better prices for most games because they scored great deals with producers but its not always the case. Some producers might choose to go with a different distributor and its up to them.

As a 4-year steam user and a big PC gaming scene fan, I have to rate them an A+. Even though they didn't start with a mind raveling concept, they took it to a new level providing excellent service. I plan on using steam for years to come and hope they will continue with the great service.

Sorry, but Steam IS DRM. It is also terrible and there are quite a few problems with it. I will never, nor have ever, support/ed Steam.

What I really liked was that they gave small independent devs a nice opportunity to publish their games. (For example Audiosurf; priced at about $9. Steam took a small fee of 10% for hosting it, the rest went to the dev.)

Now with the new prices I've stopped using it altogether.
For Norwegians like myself the prices went up from 6 NOK(=$1) to 10 NOK(=1€).

I'm not using Steam again until they revert back to $ only, or lower the € prices accordingly!

But they include multiplayer AND single player games. Because I support the companies I like. Companies who consistently produce great games. I just can't stand people who pirate games THEY DO LIKE and CAN AFFORD.

No money, no games, no games to pirate, easy as that.

It's pretty much well known that pirates spend more on media than none pirates, because you know, most of us pirates are gamers, we want to play every game we can, but most of us just can't afford to buy them all – especially if they are a play once, throw away game – what on consoles would be a rental, but on PCs thanks to DRM and serials is a buy/pirate option.

Fear 2 for example, it's a finish in a weekend game, never play again (except for the minority who enjoy the online play of it).
DoW2 is the same if you're not into the multiplayer – 1 weekend worth of game.

On a console, you'd rent that – especially if you use something like lovefilm (subscription based rental).

If you dont have internet connection or dial-up then you arent going to bother with this site either.
Having started with dialup internet, i used to spend the same ammount of money per month as i do now, ISP cap -> considering changing ISP.

And viruses, mmm, no chance you got them from steam, get a better anti-spy, firewall, anti-virus software.

Everything I get from here and other sites I scan. Never have any problems.

Gets two thumbs up from me.

Man, the download was sooooo slow in comparison to my usual Usenet speed. The whole download averaged ~800 KB/s – more than 3 times slower (at least for me) than getting pirated copies off usenet. Took few hours to download, would have been quicker just to go and buy the damn thing in a shop.

I know that GTAIV is an exception due to its enormous size, but I wasn't impressed at all…