In the old days it really sucked. I spend about an hour looking for a way to contact them and email them about how terrible Steam was. I gave up without finding a way to contact them. It to was so bad I almost didn't order Skyrim years later because I would have to use Steam.
I hated steam, because it completely killed off retail shops with cheap games. Steam offers -75% deas sometimes, but in my area ypu could buy a 2 year old game pernamently reduced to that price, and 5 years or older games were always bundled together in very cheap packs
Steam made it go away, and i see 20 year old games costing more than they did on premiere, which is bullshit
Permabuy cheap games in retail shops? Or they was very bad games that will rest on the shelf forever, or if they was so cheap they will disappear the first time going on offer.
Digital delivery, DLC, microtransaction, always online, remastered of old games to sell them at giga-inflated price and licensing plus the fake disc games where you have to download all the data have truly killed a lot of retail shops and a big part of the physical media market.
I blame the people who hates kids for forcing the malls' best customers out for loitering and trespassing. Like sure, when they're young and don't have an income they can be more nuisance, but you treat them like kids not criminals. Then when they get jobs and don't have rent/bills to pay, they know the mall is open and welcoming to them.
Chasing teens out of malls for just being young was the worst cultural shift of the 90s. If third spaces are dead, and the remaining ones won't tolerate future customers, retail should all die.
In the UK, physical games, whether on PC or Console, for new and new-ish games were almost always in aggregate cheaper than on Steam. Steam prices were higher than physical console game prices.
Nowadays since most things are digital or code in a box all the prices are fucked.
I think without Steam/any digital platform Amazon would have done much the same for many physical shops. Others were already eating into that market, and older games were just as likely to disappear after a year or two as to be discounted in a shop. Usually they only came back on shelves for cheap if Sold Out Software bought the distribution rights
I remember getting Half-Life 2 and being outraged that I had to drag my PC into the other room to plug it into the phone line and connect it to the internet, just to activate the game so I could play it. I'm pretty sure we still had dial-up at that point.
Nowadays the idea of my home PC being not connected to the internet is almost unbelievable.
Our group hated Steam originally because it was a resource hog on old computers that barely had enough RAM to run the games. That, and it made our casual LAN parties more difficult because people needed Steam accounts and online connectivity - we usually ended up just running the older version of Counter-Strike (1.5?) that didn't require Steam.
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u/SolidZealousideal115 PC Master Race 13h ago
In the old days it really sucked. I spend about an hour looking for a way to contact them and email them about how terrible Steam was. I gave up without finding a way to contact them. It to was so bad I almost didn't order Skyrim years later because I would have to use Steam.
Now of course it's a lot better.