What is Steam

[Glo]

Hey sorry for being newbie and asking this question
well i was playing HL and some mods untill about a year and a half ago.
now i remember there was that WON thing before the recent updates for HL.
can anyone please explain me what Steam is and whats different from the WON thing?

 

[]SK[]

WON will be gone and replaced with Steam

www.steampowered.com

WHAT IS STEAM?

Steam is Valve's new way of getting games into your hands ASAP. Games like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Counter-Strike Condition Zero are all being made available through Steam.

Steam games are automatically kept up-to-date with the latest content and revisions. Steam also includes an instant-message client which even works while you're in-game.

At its core, Steam is a distributed file system and shared set of technology components that can be implemented into any software application.

With Steam, developers are given integrated tools for direct-content publishing, flexible billing, ensured-version control, anti-cheating, anti-piracy, and more.

Check out the full feature list, and install Steam today!

 

[The Dark Elf]

Steam pretty much brings it all together, you can DL and even if you want, buy software across it (just Valve software for now but more later if it works out) you can easily setup MP games across it (like WON) setup a list of friends (MSN style) chat and play. It automatically downloads updates and patches in the background so your always uptodate and not waiting in lines on fileplanet for the newest patch. It also supposedly has things like the bink vids appear on it first before other places get them.

If you choose to pay through steam, you pay around $10 a month and get everything, all Valve games, updates, patches, extra's and so on available to you. Unless you stop paying.

 

[Glo]

Thanks i can see what it is now
but is it that good? i mean no cheating and piracing?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Thanks i can see what it is now
but is it that good? i mean no cheating and piracing?

Well its unlikely to stamp out piracy and cheating completely (though that would be insanely cool if it could) But it supposedly will make it much harder to cheat and pirate stuff. currently people are finding it a problem to play their cracked HL1 copies on Steam, which is great fun to see happen heh. So hopefully it'll become even more of a problem for the pirates. And hopefully cheating will become a rare occurance, but I don't know what thats like right now, I think wallhacks and aimbots are still around

 

[Glo]

That sounds great. I can remember cheaters and pirates back in the old days. I really hope those things stop permanently.
Thanks for sheding light on this.

 

[The Dark Elf]

That sounds great. I can remember cheaters and pirates back in the old days. I really hope those things stop permanently.
Thanks for sheding light on this.

yeah its people like that which put me off, I'd rather play against bots now, they don't cheat heh

and no problem

 

[vacs]

Cheating will be an issue forever. Even Steam or precisely Steam can do nothing against it.