>> More to the point, Steam does genuinely *useful* stuff.
>>
>> In all, it works rather nicely.
>>
> Only drawbacks with it tend to be: No extra/modded content for games,
> unless you download the non-steam exe some place, and no trainers.

I don't know about that... For games actually developed by Valve, they 
*give* you the damned modding tools for free! And, for example, every 
new update for Team Fortress 2 includes a stackload of custom maps that 
various people outside Valve have developed. Connect to just about any 
TF2 or CSS server and it starts downloading custom maps that the server 
admins have put up on their server... there's a *stackload* of custom 
content! And usually you don't even need to *do* anything to access it.

You may have heard a bunch of guys are actually porting the original 
HalfLife game to the new Source engine. (The project was originally 
called Black Mesa: Source. I'm not sure what they call it now or whether 
it's still extant.) A while back I played Dystopia, a whole game 
developed using the Source engine and given away for free. OK, it wasn't 
/that great/, but it's there. A bit later I played Insurgency, another 
independent game. Quite impressive technically, but a tad too realistic 
for my taste. (I.e., you spawn, walk two feet, and instantly die because 
a sniper 2 miles away shot you. Which is how a real war zone actually 
is... but then, real war zones aren't fun.)

Now, for games that are distributed on Steam but aren't actually 
developed by Valve... I can't really comment. I haven't looked at any. 
But the stuff from Valve themselves has terrific support.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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