Evo from Halflife2.net recently wrote an article entitled "A New Steam Age?" that focuses on the highs and lows of Steam so far.
The question is: What is your current view of Steam and everything it entails (pricing, game selection, etc.)?
Steam is home to over 20 million users and plays host to over 500 different applications. In recent years it has become much more than simply a digital distribution platform. Initiatives such as Steamworks and Steam Cloud are taking Steam and adapting it to what PC gamers need in the current PC gaming climate. It is not just PC gamers that Steam is targeted towards; the numerous features present in Steamworks have made Steam an ever more enticing platform for developers to become attached to. Steamworks has enabled developers to include achievements in their games and use Steam to organise multiplayer games.(...)
Admittedly Valve have made some blunders with Steam, they introduced a payment system where people in some European countries can pay for games on Steam using the Euro. However, rather than changing the exchange rates as they did with Pound Sterling, they made 1€=1$. This is a move which has alienated many people in the affected countries who have to pay over the odds for their games. On the whole however Valve have a digital distribution system that has become a market leader.
There was a lot of the article that I omitted. Feel free to check out the full article courtesy of Evo and Halflife2.net.Admittedly Valve have made some blunders with Steam, they introduced a payment system where people in some European countries can pay for games on Steam using the Euro. However, rather than changing the exchange rates as they did with Pound Sterling, they made 1€=1$. This is a move which has alienated many people in the affected countries who have to pay over the odds for their games. On the whole however Valve have a digital distribution system that has become a market leader.
The question is: What is your current view of Steam and everything it entails (pricing, game selection, etc.)?