So, my bro gets left 4 dead for christmas last year. we both try it out, and it's a fun game. however, what i DIDN'T realize is that when my brother installed the game, he had to sign up on Steam. a few months later, i find out that Steam is like the Xbox Live or PSN of PCs (haha i suppose i'm that uncultured =P). i thought "okay, no big deal, that's cool with me."

Lo and behold, a few days ago i bought a brand new laptop, beautiful: quad-core processor, one of the best video cards on the market, huge 17" screen, never gets that hot, etc. it's ideal for playing games, so i decide i'll buy empire total war cuz i heard it was pretty pimp. i find out that Steam is required to play empire, but i figure "whatever, it's just for DLC and multiplayer." so we go on vacation where there isn't a good internet connection, and i figure that's okay because empire can be played single-player anyway, and there's no use worrying about the multiplayer. i try to install my game, thinking it will install like any other game. i install the Steam component, which took forever with the shitty connection, install the game, which only takes a handful of minutes, and figure "okay, now my game should work. i did everything it needed me to." WRONG. i find out that not only do i have to bear witness to the fucking Steam network, which doesn't work with a crappy network anyway, but i also have to keep my game UP-TO-DATE to even play it OFFLINE. okay. so i try to update, and it starts downloading at fucking KB/s. typing this message, the dl is sitting at 4% and at a rate of 18.0 KB/s. i don't want to fucking dl the update now cuz it's impossible, but on the other side i am REQUIRED to keep it up-to-date to play. wtf? what an inconvenience.

I dunno if anyone else has had similar problems with Steam, but my brother did with his left 4 dead. he stopped playing for a while, and then when he decided he wanted to play it again, he forgot that he NEEDED to log into steam in order to play. unfortunately, he forgot his password. so, he tried out a few passwords he thought were correct, but Steam ended up locking his account after he tried typing in a password "too many times." he didn't even remember his recovery question, and Steam wouldn't allow the info to be emailed to him. it was definitely stupid on my bro's part not to write down the info, but on the same token, who HASN'T forgotten their login info from time to time? essentially, he was banned from using his own game. he tried uninstalling it and reinstalling, but when he got to the screen asking for the product key, it already said that he did that in the past and "there was no need to enter it again." he even tried creating a NEW account for the game, but it wouldn't allow him to play left 4 dead cuz it wasn't on the new account. so, in the end, he couldn't play his own copy of the game. again, wtf?

I ended up doing a little research, going to different web sites and forums, and found out that Steam is essentially forcing people to use a "clean" network to stop pirating. A few people liked where the idea was going, but said that it was preventing people from doing typical things, such as lending a game to a friend (which is explicitly denied in the TERMS OF AGREEMENT; this is so fucking lame cuz now you can't sell a game once you buy it, lend it to a friend, give to someone as a gift, etc. all cuz you can't give people your old/current Steam account cuz it's fucking denied, and if you get caught you get banned), or creating multiple copies on different hard drives (what if you wanted to transfer the game directly via a jump drive? you can dl your game through Steam onto any PC, but then you have to worry about Steam itself on the computer). There are other problems with it too, such as people getting randomly banned cuz of glitch errors in the Valve Anti-Cheating system, people getting screwed out of their game cuz the server went down out of nowhere when they were entering the product key, and the fact that Steam is supposed to prevent cheating and viruses, but people can still get away with phishing someone's account and getting it irreversibly banned if the phisher cheats. while there are many good things i'm sure that come along with Steam, it just seems like there's too many pains in the ass to even get the benefits of crap-free multiplayer and an easy way to transfer and purchase new games, as well as the fact that there are the other everyday scenarios that occur that Steam just seems to throw out the window (like my internet connection right now, and my bro's password dilemma).

My question is, why the fuck is this thing so anal? I saw an article that blamed Steam for causing people to pirate games even more, and for the problems i can understand why. It's so stupid. I, and I'm sure many other people, just want to play the fucking game out of the box, worry about DLC and multiplayer later, and not have to worry about subscribing to some nazi-oriented online system, when things such as TCP/IP connection, LAN, and, more recently, third-party online networks such as Age of Empires 3 and ESO, worked just fine. and if we must subscribe to the PC equivalent of PSN or Xbox Live, why can't they make as convenient as those networks and offer benefits such as anti-hacking, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, etc? and shouldn't it let you play the goddamn game even if it's not up-to-date, updating it later once it's possible or up to the discretion of the user (who would be screwed out of further benefits at his/her own will)?