It seems that you can't really be a PC gamer until you have Steam running on your computer, and it would appear that Dell and Valve are in agreement on this. It's been revealed that the immensely popular digital distribution service will now come installed on Alienware gaming PCs and laptops as standard. That's kind of a big deal!
Alienware is not the most widespread brand of PC in the world, but this is a move that has huge potential. It will give Valve an automatic marketshare, for one thing, and there is little doubt that Dell is the only company that Valve has been talking to. If the publisher plays its cards right, Steam could become just almost as integral to newly purchased PCs as Internet Explorer.
It makes sense, too. If you game on a PC, you're going to need Steam eventually. This just makes it so much easier.
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Contest:
8:00 AM on 11.25.2009
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you install steam and get an allienware pc
Really? No....Really?
Dude, does the shop next door have a website or something...?
They make a lot of crazy discounts
Steam's pricing is pretty ass normally, but they do a lot of limited time discounts. 90% of my purchases from them were from sales, and if you use Steam for buying L4D2 for $50 you're doing it wrong.
In other news, FUCK Games for Windows LIVE.
Do your trolling somewhere else.
@ran24
You are right in a way. Steam cycles games on sale every week. Just wait for LFD2 to go on sale, or Black Friday.
GFW: "I must say Steam, good move and checkmate."
GFW and Steam shake hands. Then Fallout 3 for Steam gets the DLC.
@klops
WTF? are you retarded or something?
steam is causing me to buy more games then I can play with their weekend-deals :-) I bought UT3 for 10 euros a while back even though I have it on PS3 as well, it was just such a great deal I couldn't let it go... I also scored the whole DOW series for like 30 euros when the DOW2-beta was announced, I'm really a fan of steam now :-)
I'm confused. Are you talking about Steam? Because in the real world, where I live, Steam isn't spyware.
I beliebe Steam always follows the publishers set prices and in some Euro countries those prices are very high for whatever reason. Not really Steam's fault.
Maybe its not Valves/Steams fault, but its more expensive and you got nothing but digital data. Dont know if theres a "download only special tax" from publishers. But its not really a smart move, if you want to go all digital distribution.
They do that even in the US, GTA4 is still $50 on Steam because that is the official price, despite retailers discounting it to as low as $20 for a while now.
Steam/Valve are definitely not to blame for the prices. They simply provide a service for publishers and the publishers choose the price. Shops on the other hand, buy the merchandise and from there can sell it at whatever price they wish.
It can modify other system files and spy, and install programs. So it's not JUST spyware, it's a Trojan. Much worse.
PS. if you want to install Peer Guardian you will see Steam sending info to steam servers - when you aren't playing games, and sometimes when you have not started Steam.
Call it what you like.
It's called a friends list, it constantly updates your friends list. And from what I know it preloads files to save time when you launch it. Your insane.