How does buying things over steam work?

[Rocketman9mm]

Ok, so you buy HL2 over steam. You have it and play it for a while and have a monumental hard drive failure and lose steam and the content. Do you just reinstall steam and log into your account that says you paid for the game and it redownloads automatically? this has been one concern of mine regarding steam. While I don't plan on getting the game over steam, it might make me more at ease about doing so in the future.

 

[GorgeousOrifice]

Ok, so you buy HL2 over steam. You have it and play it for a while and have a monumental hard drive failure and lose steam and the content. Do you just reinstall steam and log into your account that says you paid for the game and it redownloads automatically?

Pretty much, yep.

Since it takes forever to download the content, it's a good idea to back it up after it's done downloading. Steam downloads games in GCF files, which are in your Steam/SteamApps/your@email directory. Just burn those on CD or whatever, and if your hard drive crashes, reinstall Steam and copy the GCFs back over, log in, and you're golden.

 

[poseyjmac]

forever on a 56k. not on a decent broadband connection

 

[Ateoto]

It took me a little under an hour to download CS:CZ and the Deleted Scenes.

 

[Epsi]

And due to the magic of Steam, the game can actually launch, and you can start playing before the game is 100% done downloading!

Oh, what's also really cool, is say you go round to a friend's house, or something. You go to the Steam website, grab the 600k Steam client, install it and log in, then you can start downloading, and play, any of the games you own. You can use your Steam account from any computer.

 

[SubKamran]

And due to the magic of Steam, the game can actually launch, and you can start playing before the game is 100% done downloading!

Oh, what's also really cool, is say you go round to a friend's house, or something. You go to the Steam website, grab the 600k Steam client, install it and log in, then you can start downloading, and play, any of the games you own. You can use your Steam account from any computer.

Yah, I love that...I do that at my friend's house.

 

[Sedako]

I'm still waiting for the "i send u an envelope with money in it" choice of payment.