I really don't appreciate the insulting attitude that those of us who dislike Valve are somehow these unreasonable clods who make ridiculous accusations and blow everything out of proportion. Again, you may have no problems with the way they do business and with the -- in my estimation -- entirely negative approach they've taken to game distribution (you must remember that I have ideological problems with Steam to begin with, regardless of who makes it, because I believe that digital distribution is a fundamentally bad thing that offers consumers little real, tangible benefit other than accommodating their laziness, need for instant gratification, and the ease of finding some older games because of how bad retail has gotten), but just because you don't have a problem with something doesn't mean it isn't an impasse for others.
A lot of you will go on and on about how much you hate DRM, and yet Steam is, technically speaking, the worst and most intrusive DRM that has ever existed. I've had more problems with Steam than I ever had with anything else that wanted me to phone home on install, or had activation limits, or installed itself without my knowledge. Over two systems now it has given me nothing but problems, and these are clean, efficient systems that have no problems with anything else. Forced updates, a company that holds the keys to all your products, an app that you absolutely must use in order to play any game tied to the service regardless of the fact that a single problem with the app can render all of those games useless (which is just as fucking bad as Microsoft forcing you to use Vista for DX10 -- pointless and nonsensical unless you're the owner of the company, the only party to receive any benefit from such a setup), an offline mode that still works inconsistently after fucking years of development on the app, and an app that continually fucks itself up, fucks up installs tied to it, and can be compromised without a user actually doing anything stupid to compromise it... you don't think that's worth being pissed about? The naïveté is astounding. But I don't go around calling you a pack of morons for using Steam, do I? But fine, whatever. None of the world seems to have any qualms giving up more and more power to government, either, so... enjoy the Orwellian nightmare, I guess. But keep me the fuck out of it and don't make me out to be some hypersensitive idiot just because I would rather not give up my rights as a consumer in exchange for absolutely nothing. Impulse may also be digital distribution, which I obviously don't really care for, but there's no stopping the direction we're headed now. I may as well find a service I'm comfortable with since many devs release games in download-only formats at this point, and I'm comfortable with Impulse in comparison to Steam. It isn't perfect, and I'd rather I wasn't forced to use that option at all, but at least it works properly and I trust the people who run it.
And who ever overlooked Epic's bullshit? Nobody gave them a free pass. There was constant bitching about it on here a while ago, and as I recall, a bunch of people called us oversensitive whiners then, too, and wanted us to knock it off with the Bleszinski mockery. But still, I have less reason to be pissed at Epic. I don't like the direction they've headed, no, and they have certainly fallen from grace in my book, but they did at least give us a couple patches and a shitload of free stuff for UT3. It doesn't excuse bad behavior, but it came across as something of an apology for the way they'd treated the game, at least. That's admirable, and the content wasn't throwaway junk or a bunch of essentially meaningless tweaks like Valve constantly gives to TF2, which, speaking as a player of the original mod, I think they've run into the ground and ruined. Whether that's the fault of the original designers they've hired or their new overlords I don't know, and it is certainly personal preference and nothing more, but what, I'm not allowed to have preferences now? I'm not allowed to dislike a game for any reason just because it's popular? That's basically what I've been told when I express my opinion that TF2 is a spammy nightmare of a game that shipped without even a quarter of the content I would have expected from it. And, oddly enough, I was told the same thing about L4D when it came out. Oh, trust Valve! They love us, they give us free updates, and there will be tons more campaigns and stuff. A year later and there has been basically nothing, and now a new game they expect us to buy thrown on top of that, the details of which we've already been discussing.
So yeah, I don't give anybody a free pass, but I have a lot of reasons for not liking Valve. I don't expect anyone else to follow my line of thought just because, but it's still the way I feel about it. Play all the Valve games you want, subscribe to all the services you want, throw all the money you want at their new full-priced sequels that should have been added content for your old game if you want, give up all the control of products you used to own if that's what you want to do, but don't act like I have no legitimate reasons for feeling the way I do about the matter. I understand that ideology means very little to most of the people who post here. Not all, but most. Fine, that's the way it is with 90% of the younger people of the world, it's hardly unusual. That's why we live in an era of cheap labor, cheap design, and everything being made out of plastic. You're welcome to call it progress and tell me that I'm old and I need to get with the program, but that isn't going to change my mind on the matter.
EDIT - And D, if you quote and respond to this post line by line, I'm going to strap dynamite to my chest and give you a big hug of exploding death. We've made our points, there's no need for further clutter.
