In which I apologize to Steam...

When steam first came on the scene oh so many years ago, I was derisive. It was buggy, memory chugging, and bandwidth intensive. It was overly intrusive to my privacy. And the concept was icky to me because I rejected all sorts of online activation requirements. Who wants to go through that much hassle just to play video games? Sure, I knew they'd get away with it because the rabid Counter-Strike hordes they already had hooked on their product. But I wasn't one of the unhealthy CS addicts. Well, not to any Steam games at least. My 8 year obsession with Unreal Tournament was a healthy obsession. I promise. (Curse you Epic for ruining a perfectly good game!)

Some of those are still issues for me. But I can honestly say I've changed my mind.

They've fixed most of the early bugs. It still takes up a chunk of memory, but my PC has a lot more memory to go around now (it's cheap!). It still takes up a small chunk of bandwidth, but likewise, my bandwidth has increased.

Then, of course, there was the online activation deal. As a former software stealing pirate, this was unacceptable. That is... until I saw the alternative. Game companies like EA put out games like Spore and Bioshock that have recently begun implementing far worse restrictions than anything Steam sought to do. Limited installs, online activation and Cthulhu only knows what else. None of which actually prevents piracy (encouraged it somewhat actually), but which certainly gave legitimate users enough problems to make them consider the less legal route.

So I took a step back, and re-evaluated my options. I've moved away from piracy just because I can afford games now, and I really want the developers I support to continue making good games. Then Left 4 Dead came out. I had to have it. Colleagues at work were going to be playing. I must have it, and it only comes on Steam. Fine, fine. I'll gave it a shot.

It worked beautifully. One click download and install. Game up and runs. No major memory leaks, not harsh bandwidth spikes. Easy friends lists to make online gaming easy. Former UT friends, co-workers, and SDMB players all easy to track and locate for a f4riendly game whenever I have the time. A little privacy concern, but even then, I feel OK with it. Since then, I've downloaded a number of other games from them and enjoyed all of them. Portal (a classic I missed due to my aversion to Steam), Dawn of War 2, Grid Defense (one of the best tower defense style games I've played), and Empire: Total War. All good games that were distributed flawlessly through the product I had formerly forswore. And updated automatically to ensure I have the most recent patches and hotfixes.

So, I apologize Steam. Maybe I was right about your initial flaws. But you've grown out of the awkward phase. Still a few hiccups here and there, but I formerly apologize. You're a quality product. And one worthy of a place on my computer.