I remember I was first introduced to Steam when HL2 came out. God did I ever hate it. It was the most annoying intrusive thing ever. At that time, still on dial-up in an area where that was the only option, I hated the idea of always needing verify an internet connection to play a game I paid for.

Years later I love Steam very much. I can play my games offline (with a little foresight) and I can happily have any of them pretty much ready to go in a short amount of time without actually having to keep them on my hard drive. I might just get in the mood to play something on my extensive list, I tell Steam to download it and in a fairly short amount of time, I'm playing it. I don't have to go to the attic, get the box, find the activation codes and do all of that crap.

As a result, I've actually bought second copies of many of my games just to have the convenience of Steam.

For games that have cloud saving, it's fantastic to be able to start up on another computer and pick up where you left off. I did this a lot with Torchlight moving between my desktop and laptop.

I also love Steam's sales which are nearly constantly happening. I picked up Limbo today for $2.50 and got my wife a copy of Duke Nukem Forever for $6 the other day.

I also love sending (and receiving) gifts through Steam as well as getting special deal when I can buy games in bulk at a reduced rate and send them to friends.

I like that Gabe Newell views Valve as a service company rather than a product company. I'm aware that Steam is DRM, but it's certainly DRM done right.

I used to be the kind of person that lamented the loss of the box. I loved having my beautiful collection of boxes on a shelf and I still enjoy it with my console games, but Steam has finally made me embrace digital distribution which is the inevitable future.

I love Netflix, but I'd much rather have a service that was like Steam for movies and TV shows. I'd love to be able to buy digital copies of my stuff and view them anywhere. I know Apple sort of does this and so does Amazon, but I can't say I trust either of them yet (especially Apple).

I also like the chat and voice chat functions within Steam. They've been great for friends and even for just playing a game with my wife in the other room.



As for the cons I can think of for Steam, the biggest one is that it might all end one day and my games will be gone. Theoretically, if that happens, they will unlock all of the games from their service to the people that bought them, but we can't really know. There is a certain piece of mind that comes with having a physical copy of a game and you give that up for convenience with a service like Steam and have faith that your investment won't be all for naught one day.