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[Corto]

To an enormous majority of cases the more apt question should be: PC gaming WITHOUT Facebook... is this possible?

 

[duckroll]

dude, steam is just a store. sometimes they have the best prices, sometimes they don't.

It's a lot more than just a store. It's a fully featured community system, it's DRM, and it's mandatory for several really high profile PC games.

 

[A.CHAP]

Though I have no idea why you wouldn't use Steam. .

Maybe he dosnt want an annoying middle man getting between him and his games?

 

[brain_stew]

Maybe he dosnt want an incredibly helpful middle man that adds a lot of awesome features getting between him and his games?

Fixed.

 

[Kos Luftar]

Starcraft 2?

 

[Hot Coldman]

Fixed.

but dude it's destroying the free pc community and making us all conform and waaaaaaaaaaaaaah

 

[bloodydrake]

You can play PC games without Steam, sure. You cannot be a true PC gamer without Steam.

well said.

 

[erpg]

Maybe he dosnt want an annoying middle man getting between him and his games?

Nothing pisses me off more than getting a game at 80% off, downloading it in half an hour, and then automatically getting updates instantly applied to my games. Honestly, when Steam downloaded the free Mongolian DLC for Civ 5 on Monday, I flipped out and almost knocked over my bookshelf.

 

[dionysus]

You can play PC games without Steam, sure. You cannot be a true PC gamer without Steam.

Let's not start drawing arbitrary distinctions in the PC community too! Leave that to the hardcore vs. casual arguments you find in Wii threads. I hug my farmville playing breathren along with my Victoria 2 enthusiasts!

 

[faceless007]

Most of these games require you to install Steam even if you buy them from a store. The choice is yours if you can live without those games.

 

[water_wendi]

It's a lot more than just a store. It's a fully featured community system, it's DRM, and it's mandatory for several really high profile PC games.

Steam is about as necessary as having the dvd in the drive 100% of the time. It is necessary for any multiplayer games though, i will give you that.

 

[itxaka]

Steam running in the background (ie. with no open windows) only takes 10-20 megabytes on my Win 7 64 bit system. I guess I have a different definition of "bloated as fuck" since that seems pretty reasonable to me.

Way to ignore the rest of my post. The thing need to be much faster to launch, and stop locking out when alt+tab or shift+tab. It have happened to me hundreds of times to shift+tab to talk to someone and get everything fucked up, the client was dead and I couldn't launch anything else, or kill it. Also, the awesome download manager that jumps from 10Mb to 3Gb downloaded, and it seems that your game is ok but is missing all the files because steam just fucked it up.

It also takes 10-20 Mb on my PC. I can live with that. I can't live with the bugs and lock ups that it introduces on the games. As I said, Steam is awesome. I have been buying on it from years and will keep doing it.

 

[Brazil]

If you like Minecraft and Blizzard games, sure it's possible.

 

[Tim-E]

Ask Joseph Merrick.

 

[faceless007]

Steam does take an annoyingly long time to start up and then another annoyingly long time "Preparing to launch" your game, I'll give you that.

 

[WanderingWind]

That's weird. On both my systems, Steam boots right up. I've never encountered this "problem" before.

 

[Drkirby]

For Steamworks games, does the game get added to your steam libary to be digaitally redownloaded, or do you have to keep the disc/box/package? I never bought one, and I would assume the former, but you never know.

 

[ACH1LL3US]

Most of these games require you to install Steam even if you buy them from a store. The choice is yours if you can live without those games.

Ok, so any game not on this list will NOT require Steam to play? Just making sure I understand this correctly

 

[Massa]

Steam does take an annoyingly long time to start up and then another annoyingly long time "Preparing to launch" your game, I'll give you that.

I have the opposite problem, often Steam launches before my Wireless connection and so it fails to login. :lol

 

[erpg]

For Steamworks games, does the game get added to your steam libary to be digaitally redownloaded, or do you have to keep the disc/box/package? I never bought one, and I would assume the former, but you never know.

Steamworks games are retail games that use Steam. Only difference is you add a key. Then, it's on your account, and thats all there is to it.

Ok, so any game not on this list will NOT require Steam to play? Just making sure I understand this correctly

If you buy a game from Steam, it requires Steam to play.

If you buy those games anywhere, they require Steam to play.

 

[KJTB]

Sure it's possible (Blizzard games come to mind), don't see why you wouldn't want steam at this point though.

 

[The Technomancer]

For Steamworks games, does the game get added to your steam libary to be digaitally redownloaded, or do you have to keep the disc/box/package? I never bought one, and I would assume the former, but you never know.

Only retail-to-Steam I've ever done was the Orange Box, and yeah, it worked like the former.

 

[chase]

lol

I guess I'm the only one who remembers what a clusterfuck steam was when it launched. Now it's an indispensable tool. Ok.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

I have the opposite problem, often Steam launches before my Wireless connection and so it fails to login. :lol

Yes, I noticed this problem once I switched from ethernet to wireless for my desktop. I'd go back, but the setup for accommodating the ethernet cord was less than ideal aesthetically, and I'm too lazy to have someone wire the house for ethernet, so wireless it is.

 

[water_wendi]

lol

I guess I'm the only one who remembers what a clusterfuck steam was when it launched. Now it's an indispensable tool. Ok.

You arent the only one.

 

[erpg]

lol

I guess I'm the only one who remembers what a clusterfuck steam was when it launched. Now it's an indispensable tool. Ok.

What's your point?

Durr hey lol, cellphones used to be huge and clunky but now they're essential. What's up with that?

 

[Stumpokapow]

lol

I guess I'm the only one who remembers what a clusterfuck steam was when it launched. Now it's an indispensable tool. Ok.

Everyone remembers what a clusterfuck it was back then.

Back then, when it had no offline mode (and then a terribly broken one). Back then, when retail activations failed across the board and tons of people had routing and connectivity issues. Back then, when it wasn't localized. Back then, when it didn't sell games. Back then, when it didn't have multiplayer lobbies. Back then, when it didn't have achievements. Back then, when it was only Valve. Back then, when there was no community, messenger, or friends list. Back then, when it was PC only. Back then, when the UI was ghastly and olive green. Back then, when there were no cloud saves. Back then, when there were no weekly deals or holiday sales. Back then, when patches were annoying. Back then, when download servers were slow and constantly full.

Now it's an indispensable tool.

Way to ignore the rest of my post. The thing need to be much faster to launch, and stop locking out when alt+tab or shift+tab. It have happened to me hundreds of times to shift+tab to talk to someone and get everything fucked up, the client was dead and I couldn't launch anything else, or kill it. Also, the awesome download manager that jumps from 10Mb to 3Gb downloaded, and it seems that your game is ok but is missing all the files because steam just fucked it up.

Never had those problems, but if you are, that sucks bigtime and I hope they fix them soon.

 

[Recon]

Steam is just the store/client for a huge number of games. But there are still tons of games that you can buy from other sources, or run off of DVDs. The only time you need Steam is if you bought it off Steam or its a Steamworks game. And the only one that I can think of the latter applying to is Civ V.

If you are playing Steam games though, you can play them offline.

Civ 5, Modernwarfare2, Fallout:New Vegas, Mafia 2...Those are all steamworks!

 

[Brazil]

lol

I guess I'm the only one who remembers what a clusterfuck steam was when it launched. Now it's an indispensable tool. Ok.

:lol

 

[StuBurns]

Based on the amount of Steam users, it is very possible.

 

[sflufan]

Ok, so any game not on this list will NOT require Steam to play? Just making sure I understand this correctly

Jesus Christ - don't be a luddite and just install Steam...you'll thank us for it later!

 

[Stumpokapow]

dude, steam is just a store. sometimes they have the best prices, sometimes they don't.

Which is one reason that Valve tries their best to get companies to allow cross-activation of CD Keys. I got Metro 2033 from THQ for $12.50, much cheaper than it was on Steam. Then I activated it on Steam, downloaded there, ta-da! The same would be true of any retail Steamworks game and any retail game with a cross-activation plan set up with Valve.

 

[brain_stew]

Ok, so any game not on this list will NOT require Steam to play? Just making sure I understand this correctly

Any retail game, sure but then there's a bunch of awesome DD exclusive titles that also use/require Steamworks as well, and the list is only growing. Valve are pretty lax at updating that list as well, so don't expect it to be comprehensive.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I rarely ever use steam.

 

[duckroll]

lol

I guess I'm the only one who remembers what a clusterfuck steam was when it launched. Now it's an indispensable tool. Ok.

I was there in the very early days of Steam. It was such a buggy piece of shit that I refused to install it to even try when it first launched. I finally installed it when I got Orange Box, because it was mandatory. The activation was slow, the program was useless, it was a huge hassle just to install a single game.

It has also been 6 years since then. That's a fucking long time in software years.

 

[out0v0rder]

your name is blackvette94, which means you are old as fuck.

don't even try to use steam, it's going to make your pentiumII w/MMX and 128mb ram explode.

just keep on playing simcity.

 

[Shambles]

Anytime steam has a game I like on sale for 5$ I use it. Otherwise it's disc or other non-shitty DRM methods that I get my games from.

 

[Zenith]

is it possible to still play pc games without Steam?

I don't know much about Steam,

you don't say.

 

[brotkasten]

Is it possible? Yes, it is. But who would wanna do that? I mean, I'm posting from the build-in webkit browser that shows up in the overlay, while running Mirror's Edge. This is awesome! :lol

A more practial example instead of just browsing GAF:
Read or watch a walkthrough without alt-tab'ing out of the game.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Any retail game, sure but then there's a bunch of awesome DD exclusive titles that also use/require Steamworks as well, and the list is only growing. Valve are pretty lax at updating that list as well, so don't expect it to be comprehensive.

There are also presumably some indie games that don't per se "need Steam", but are simply only being sold on Steam

 

[Baha]

Gaming on PC without steam isn't impossible but it's hard when you have games tied to it and then your friends list.

 

[Cheech]

Is it possible? Yes, it is. But who would wanna do that? I mean, I'm posting from the build-in webkit browser that shows up in the overlay, while running Mirror's Edge. This is awesome! :lol

I'll admit that I use Steam's browser all the time. Whether it's to look up some random piece of Civ info, or a hint for a puzzle, it is great. Much better than when I'm playing on a console and have to rely on my Blackberry's crappy browser. :lol

 

[Blizzard]

Yes it will. It has had a lot of leaking bugs in the past and it still sucks. I can run crysis with no problems almost at max but when steam starts it just freezes, hangs and takes 40 seconds to appear. Not mentioning, hung ups, not launching, or plain blocking your pc.

I don't have problems with Steam not launching, and I've seen maybe one or two hangups/crashes from Steam in the last couple of months. Those may have been due to TF2 bugs, anyway.

Steam does take like 40 seconds to launch when I boot my computer, though, and it takes forever to scan all the GCF files, but presumably if I defragmented my disk or had a better disk or my disk wasn't about to die or I used a magic GCF defragmenter utility that time could be reduced.

Other than that, Steam seems to reasonably let go of most of its noticeable resources if I just close the main game window, so it doesn't cause me problems even in Vista. My biggest gripe aside from the hard disk thing is that the icons aren't cached, so every time I launch it and try to scroll through the game list it's laggy while it grinds the hard disk to find the icons. :lol That's a minor complaint though.

I love the idea of games being DRM-free, but I feel like very very few games are going to be released without DRM and without a CD/DVDROM requirement, and unfortunately if a game is like that, then it's even easier for people to pirate.

*edit*

Way to ignore the rest of my post. The thing need to be much faster to launch, and stop locking out when alt+tab or shift+tab. It have happened to me hundreds of times to shift+tab to talk to someone and get everything fucked up, the client was dead and I couldn't launch anything else, or kill it. Also, the awesome download manager that jumps from 10Mb to 3Gb downloaded, and it seems that your game is ok but is missing all the files because steam just fucked it up.

It also takes 10-20 Mb on my PC. I can live with that. I can't live with the bugs and lock ups that it introduces on the games. As I said, Steam is awesome. I have been buying on it from years and will keep doing it.

I don't know that I've ever had that happen with shift-tabbing, not being able to launch stuff, missing files, etc. There may be a couple of games that don't work with the overlay, but you can disable that on a per-game basis. Maybe I've been lucky not to play those particular games. It sounds very odd to me that you would get hangups sice you apparently have a ton of memory. Your problems would really sound like your OS running low on memory or disk space to me, otherwise.

As for alt-tabbing, that's not a Steam problem as far as I know. Some games work really well with alt-tabbing. With Source engine games, alt-tabbing from fullscreen is a crapshoot...it may take a long time, or you may get a crash. With Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, I think alt-tabbing guaranteed you couldn't get back into the game so you'd have to kill it.

 

[J-Rod]

I have a lot of games outside of steam. Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, FF XI&XIV, Fallout 3, Starcraft II, Sims 3, Spore, Heroes of Newerth, and more I don't remember.

 

[ACH1LL3US]

your name is blackvette94, which means you are old as fuck.

don't even try to use steam, it's going to make your pentiumII w/MMX and 128mb ram explode.

just keep on playing simcity.

How does my name imply I am old? That WAS my old car, I joined GAF many years ago.

I also have a high end pc so I don't think running Steam will be ANY issue.. just curious if others do or not.

Thanks for the insults though, I appreciate

 

[itxaka]

I don't have problems with Steam not launching, and I've seen maybe one or two hangups/crashes from Steam in the last couple of months. Those may have been due to TF2 bugs, anyway.

Steam does take like 40 seconds to launch when I boot my computer, though, and it takes forever to scan all the GCF files, but presumably if I defragmented my disk or had a better disk or my disk wasn't about to die or I used a magic GCF defragmenter utility that time could be reduced.

Other than that, Steam seems to reasonably let go of most of its noticeable resources if I just close the main game window, so it doesn't cause me problems even in Vista. My biggest gripe aside from the hard disk thing is that the icons aren't cached, so every time I launch it and try to scroll through the game list it's laggy while it grinds the hard disk to find the icons. :lol That's a minor complaint though.

I love the idea of games being DRM-free, but I feel like very very few games are going to be released without DRM and without a CD/DVDROM requirement, and unfortunately if a game is like that, then it's even easier for people to pirate.

*edit*

I don't know that I've ever had that happen with shift-tabbing, not being able to launch stuff, missing files, etc. There may be a couple of games that don't work with the overlay, but you can disable that on a per-game basis. Maybe I've been lucky not to play those particular games. It sounds very odd to me that you would get hangups sice you apparently have a ton of memory. Your problems would really sound like your OS running low on memory or disk space to me, otherwise.

As for alt-tabbing, that's not a Steam problem as far as I know. Some games work really well with alt-tabbing. With Source engine games, alt-tabbing from fullscreen is a crapshoot...it may take a long time, or you may get a crash. With Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, I think alt-tabbing guaranteed you couldn't get back into the game so you'd have to kill it.

Not alt-tab but shift-tab. Alt-tab is almost guaranteed to kill some games :lol

What I tried to mean is that they should have a 2 way approach to steam. I love the steam overlay, I love been able to talk to my friends during any game, but what I don't love is the bugs that cames with it.

They should have a mini-steam client that has nothing but a game list and steam DRM (maybe online? nah) check so I would be able to launch my games and play them with no problems (except the own games problem) becasue sometimes when I want to play a smaller game (the Dig for example) is a chore to launch steam, wait for it to connect, wait for the initial hang to pass, the pop-up to appear, the automatic downloading, and the launching of the game, only to play for 10 minutes :lol

your name is blackvette94, which means you are old as fuck.

don't even try to use steam, it's going to make your pentiumII w/MMX and 128mb ram explode.

just keep on playing simcity.

original simcity(amiga version!) > you

 

[WEGGLES]

I think the effort required to never use steam would far out weigh any negatives of using steam.

It's not a matter of if you could not use steam, but more.... why?

I know some games are more expensive on Steam in some areas, but buy those at a B&M store then. To outright avoid using steam in any way shape or form would take a lot of work and yield little to no benefits.

 

[brain_stew]

There are also presumably some indie games that don't per se "need Steam", but are simply only being sold on Steam

Or offer a much better experience when tied to Steam like Torchlight with its cross platform play, cloud saves and achievements. You can play the game without Steamworks support, though I don't know why you'd want to.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

Of course it is, I hate Steam and use it only when I absolutely have to, yet I play most PC games without a problem.

 

[RotBot]

If you're super-anal about not wanting to use Steam in Steamworks games, most of them have cracks to bypass Steam and the DVD tray. They're liable to be buggy and behind on patches, though.