Originally Posted by asheskitty I feel that a genre themed is better, personally a random grab bag of steam games is unlikely to appeal to me sufficiently to buy it. A themed bundle that appeals to to me is much more likely to make a sale. Also, I already own the better known titles in the list, e.g. Sacred, Flatout, JA2, etc, (which have largely been sales and bundles) so I cannot be tempted to simply buy it to get X & Y. Well said!

Yeah, nothing against Steam, and I definitely think a Steam bundle will sell, but a bunch of random Steam games are not as appealing to me as a themed game pack or several of them especially since adventure games seem to have a hard time making over to steam for some reason.

I think the best market Amazon can exploit is DRM-free games. Particularly old games that are not on Steam. It probably going to compete with GoG (who I like but feel they need to discount their game more) but I would buy a old game that DRM-free rather than a one with Steam DRM (or worst multiple DRM, like GTA4 which had Steam, GFWL & Rockstar Social Club)

It was sort of asked recently, but is there an ETA on when the Kalypso Bundle is going to run?

Originally Posted by juanjava After reading The "text wall", I suddenly want to play The Legend of Kyrandia... AGAIN. *searching for pen and paper for the dark maze*. Edit: don't tell me you get through the dark maze without drawing it!

Man, I was just on GOG the other day looking to see if they had Legend of Kyrandia. And, of course I got through the dark maze without drawing it!! (j/k )

+1 to Probably Drunk guy. Although I disagree with the "can't be arsed" argument because Steam makes it simple to add non-Steam stuff to your library. Eff those other clients, though.

ARGH!!! I HATE NON-STEAM GAMES!!!! I MEAN SERIOUSLY IT'S SO HARD TO KEEP TRACK OF ALL MY GAMES, I CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO MAKE SHORTCUTS ON MY DESKTOP, POSSIBLY IN A FOLDER TO SAVE SPACE!!!!!!!!
I ALSO WILL NEVER USE THE **STEAM** FEATURE UNDER the Games tab Games>Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library NEVER I SAY!!!!! I CANNOT TAKE THE 5 SECONDS TO CLICK ON THAT BUTTON, SELECT THE GAME FROM THE NICE LIST THAT STEAM GENERATES AND POOF HAVE IT IN MY STEAM LIBRARY!!!!!!!! YES IT EVEN SHOWS ALL GAMES ACROSS ALL YOUR DRIVES, EVEN SHOWS OTHER APPLICATIONS!!! WHAT A FREAKING INCONVENIENCE!!!!! ARGGHH!!!!!!!

Seriously though, all you Steamheads that say "omgz I wont buy non-steam game cause I can't keep track of where they are!!" are ridiculous, since Steam gives you an EASY option to add ANY GAME OR APPLICATION to your STEAM LIBRARY in SECONDS!! I have ALL my ORIGIN games in my STEAM LIBRARY, I also launch itunes from my steam library, launch all my DRM FREE games from my steam library. Like I said it finds ALL .exe's from ALL drives so it literally takes SECONDS to set up and use! If you are crying because you don't have enough space for your games, then quit spending money on games and get a 1TB drive for $60-$100 and have enough space for games for the next 5 years!

I see a lot of excuses being thrown about, either there is a ton of ignorance about how easy and seamlessly these tools work, or there is just an abundance of laziness. If it's the first case then rejoice! There is an easy way to have your cake and eat it through your steam library as well! If it's the second case, then whatever, you can watch me eat my cake I guess.. oh and p.s. our steam library > your steam library, sucker!

Originally Posted by Lint21 Nothing is "wrong" with Amazon. They are a fine retailer, offering a great selection of products at competitive prices with excellent service. This is why they are starting to dominate the retail sector, taking huge chunks of traditional stores business (Best Buy, etc.) and even scaring progressive online services like Netflix. I shop at Amazon all the time, more than enough to justify my Prime membership. It's simply that many of us use Steam as our primary "platform" for PC gaming and prefer not to keep track of games in other ways. I was a PC gamer for years - cut my teeth in the 386 days with Sierra and Lucasarts adventures and joystick flight sims and shooters. I kept playing on PC until around when Half Life 2 was released in 2004. Shortly thereafter, consoles began to offer a superior platform. One place to keep track of your achievements, friends, and digital purchases. I stopped playing PC games largely because it was more complicated and difficult to get games to work and to keep track of the install files, patches, etc. Consoles handles all of that for me. They also gave me a nice digital library that I could quickly load any game from. The PC attempts at doing this were clunky at best and never received mass adoption. As an adult with a job, family, and community commitments, I don't have the time or patience to do anything other than what consoles allowed me to do, which was just play a game. I think a lot of people drifted away from PC gaming when I did, and for many of the same reasons. When I returned to PC gaming a couple of years ago, it was due ONLY to Steam having matured as a platform. It auto-patches my games, almost every game on it works on my PC, has friends list and chat, etc., etc. Not to mention the insane prices on the Steam store and from places like Amazon for Steamworks titles. PC gaming was on the verge of dying due to the easier, more accessible experience of console gaming. It is back now in a big way, and I think that Valve and their Steam platform are owed most of the credit. They have taken a fragmented market and consolidated it, giving PC gamers a place to centralize. Oh, and they've done it right, with consumer-friendly policies and reducing piracy along the way. I believe PC *is* the superior platform - it always was from a technical perspective, and now it has the central platform to back it up. I personally support Steam not just for the fact that it's easier for me, but because I believe it is responsible for the current health of PC gaming. This is why I despise EA's Origin, UBISoft's UPLay, and other similar blatant attempts to cut into the market-share that Steam has built up. Those competing services will only serve to fragment the market again, not to mention make the PC gaming experience a difficult and frustrating one (which client is this in? what patches do I need?). This isn't about "competition being good". Amazon likely would never have opened a DVG store if not for the progress that Steam has made in establishing PC gaming as viable again. This is why all of those comments about "Amazon is crushing Steam in the Winter sale this year rahrah!" are so silly. While Amazon may not like Steam as a fellow digital store with low prices, they need them as a platform. And though you "don't get" that all of a game collection should be on Steam, I frankly cannot be bothered any more to manage digital content for something as frivolous as video games in more than one location per platform. tldr; I like Steam cuz everything is in one place. Also, Valve rules, EA drools. And I'm old.

By "Amazon is crushing Steam" I think they meant price-wise.

Steam will always be the bigger DD service, unless Amazon ups their game and comes out with a bangin' client with all of the features that Steam currently has. We all know that won't happen any time soon though, since Steam has taken quite a while to develop and get where it is now.

EDIT: I think there's too much praise for the "Add a non-Steam game" feature. The point isn't the screenshots, social features, and overlay; it's the auto-updates and ease of manageability (install/uninstall) that makes Steam the ideal platform. However, the "Add a non-Steam game" feature adds nothing, IMHO.

However, while I agree that Steam is great, I couldn't care less about where my games are, unless GOG has the game, in which case I'll automatically go with GOG for the extras/goodies they throw in, as well as wanting to support the good they're doing.

I'm a computer science major, a student, so I have time to dick around and waste countless hours on making a spreadsheet to keep track of all of my games and implement tons of useless shit that I have there just to satisfy my curiosity; I actually really enjoy doing it too, which helps immensely.

The point is, although there is a vast majority of people who only game on the PC with Steam, I believe the main purpose of PC gaming is customizability, period. You get to mod whatever the you want, patch your game with nude patches, make in-game graphics look incredibly realistic, or whatever the hell else your mind can cook up. You get to do what you want with whatever you want, given that you have and want to take the time to do so.

I get that there are a lot of people who don't care enough to/don't have the time to dedicate to manage games across multiple DD's, but PC gaming never died, or even got anywhere close to it for that matter, it just dwindled down to those who had the time/wanted to take the time to game on the PC. I'll always be a PC gamer, maybe that's just me, and while I agree that Steam has done an incredible job getting the majority back on the wagon, the minority of us were always there, and will always be there.

Why the did I even write this? I have no idea, but I felt like doing it.

Also, this isn't a flame, and I don't mean for it to be; don't let the Shaq-fu's fool you. <3

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Originally Posted by omgoblins ARGH!!! I HATE NON-STEAM GAMES!!!! I MEAN SERIOUSLY IT'S SO HARD TO KEEP TRACK OF ALL MY GAMES, I CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO MAKE SHORTCUTS ON MY DESKTOP, POSSIBLY IN A FOLDER TO SAVE SPACE!!!!!!!! I ALSO WILL NEVER USE THE **STEAM** FEATURE UNDER the Games tab Games>Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library NEVER I SAY!!!!! I CANNOT TAKE THE 5 SECONDS TO CLICK ON THAT BUTTON, SELECT THE GAME FROM THE NICE LIST THAT STEAM GENERATES AND POOF HAVE IT IN MY STEAM LIBRARY!!!!!!!! YES IT EVEN SHOWS ALL GAMES ACROSS ALL YOUR DRIVES, EVEN SHOWS OTHER APPLICATIONS!!! WHAT A FREAKING INCONVENIENCE!!!!! ARGGHH!!!!!!! Seriously though, all you Steamheads that say "omgz I wont buy non-steam game cause I can't keep track of where they are!!" are ridiculous, since Steam gives you an EASY option to add ANY GAME OR APPLICATION to your STEAM LIBRARY in SECONDS!! I have ALL my ORIGIN games in my STEAM LIBRARY, I also launch itunes from my steam library, launch all my DRM FREE games from my steam library. Like I said it finds ALL .exe's from ALL drives so it literally takes SECONDS to set up and use! If you are crying because you don't have enough space for your games, then quit spending money on games and get a 1TB drive for $60-$100 and have enough space for games for the next 5 years! I see a lot of excuses being thrown about, either there is a ton of ignorance about how easy and seamlessly these tools work, or there is just an abundance of laziness. If it's the first case then rejoice! There is an easy way to have your cake and eat it through your steam library as well! If it's the second case, then whatever, you can watch me eat my cake I guess.. oh and p.s. our steam library > your steam library, sucker!

i dont keep all my games installed...im lazy...i'd rather use a download servive like origin or steam...im lazy....most people are lazy...make things easier and you sell more...its a pretty simple concept..

its not that i dont agree with you, im just too lazy to be bothered with creating folders adding things and the like....

pass the ice cream.

Originally Posted by dfg +1 to Probably Drunk guy. Although I disagree with the "can't be arsed" argument because Steam makes it simple to add non-Steam stuff to your library. Eff those other clients, though.

I know right? I literally launch 99% of my games through Steam, Origin games... DRM Free Games... Music applications like itunes.. I could launch any .exe through steam and it takes seconds to set up, no browsing through multiple drives because steam does it for you and lays it out easy as pie right in from of your face!

People just WANT to be Steam Fanboys.. I have no idea why! I love the Steam client, even though it's DRM, but I would say 80+% of my game purchases are through Amazon now, whether it's a steam key or NOT, I will still most likely add it to my steam library or you know.. make a shortcut to my desktop games folder, lmao!

+1 to you and common sense, good sir.

Adding a non-Steam game or application does not keep the game patched to the current version and ready to play when you want to play it. That's a huge convenience feature that plenty of people, myself included, are willing to accept Steam DRM for.

Originally Posted by Lint21 Nothing is "wrong" with Amazon. They are a fine retailer, offering a great selection of products at competitive prices with excellent service. This is why they are starting to dominate the retail sector, taking huge chunks of traditional stores business (Best Buy, etc.) and even scaring progressive online services like Netflix. I shop at Amazon all the time, more than enough to justify my Prime membership. It's simply that many of us use Steam as our primary "platform" for PC gaming and prefer not to keep track of games in other ways. I was a PC gamer for years - cut my teeth in the 386 days with Sierra and Lucasarts adventures and joystick flight sims and shooters. I kept playing on PC until around when Half Life 2 was released in 2004. Shortly thereafter, consoles began to offer a superior platform. One place to keep track of your achievements, friends, and digital purchases. I stopped playing PC games largely because it was more complicated and difficult to get games to work and to keep track of the install files, patches, etc. Consoles handles all of that for me. They also gave me a nice digital library that I could quickly load any game from. The PC attempts at doing this were clunky at best and never received mass adoption. As an adult with a job, family, and community commitments, I don't have the time or patience to do anything other than what consoles allowed me to do, which was just play a game. I think a lot of people drifted away from PC gaming when I did, and for many of the same reasons. When I returned to PC gaming a couple of years ago, it was due ONLY to Steam having matured as a platform. It auto-patches my games, almost every game on it works on my PC, has friends list and chat, etc., etc. Not to mention the insane prices on the Steam store and from places like Amazon for Steamworks titles. PC gaming was on the verge of dying due to the easier, more accessible experience of console gaming. It is back now in a big way, and I think that Valve and their Steam platform are owed most of the credit. They have taken a fragmented market and consolidated it, giving PC gamers a place to centralize. Oh, and they've done it right, with consumer-friendly policies and reducing piracy along the way. I believe PC *is* the superior platform - it always was from a technical perspective, and now it has the central platform to back it up. I personally support Steam not just for the fact that it's easier for me, but because I believe it is responsible for the current health of PC gaming. This is why I despise EA's Origin, UBISoft's UPLay, and other similar blatant attempts to cut into the market-share that Steam has built up. Those competing services will only serve to fragment the market again, not to mention make the PC gaming experience a difficult and frustrating one (which client is this in? what patches do I need?).

A problem w/ Steam can be modding games; especially older games - which is obvious w/ games like Vampire: Bloodlines. See their V:BL forums there.

If you are running Win Vista or Win 7 or above, you're going to have to use Wesp's patch or Tess's True Patch, which actually replaces your EXE and fixes things there internally - which is really something Steam isn't normally too fond off. You have to turn off Steam Community Features and auto-update, just to get this OLDER game going right. Do the modding and don't turn-off some of those Steam features - Steam will patch you backwards to the last Official Troika-version (1.2, I think it was) of the game - and it was still broken here and there in that state.

I don't have to deal w/ the above-said garbage. I bought the game on disc (Non-Steam version) long ago - and can avoid any Steam-specific weirdness that can happen w/ owning the Steam version of the game.

Also, if you're going to mod the life out of a Steam game - think like Skyrim and Dead Island - you really should back-up the latest clean official version of your ENTIRE game before you mod-up. Why? Just in case you mod the game and somehow they (the developers) officially update the game and it breaks your game; or just in case you somehow break something trying to mod it up. If you don't - you're going to have to re-download the entire game in a clean state.

Most of UPlay's recent games (since Rainbow Six: Vegas), the game checks for updates when you boot the game up. Driver: San Francisco and AC: Revelations does this.

Originally Posted by Drabelincoln i dont keep all my games installed...im lazy...i'd rather use a download servive like origin or steam...im lazy....most people are lazy...make things easier and you sell more...its a pretty simple concept.. its not that i dont agree with you, im just too lazy to be bothered with creating folders adding things and the like.... pass the ice cream.

If your games aren't installed then you obviously don't care about.. using them.. I keep all my games installed in a 1TB hard drive, it's no bother. I bought it for $60, it works great..
It's WAY more work to re-download and re-install games.

To clarify, I have my Steam client on a 256 GB SSD, so I couldn't fit all my games on it. Games I don't want "installed" I just grab the folder contents from my steam folder and throw them onto my 1 TB drive, if I ever want to play them I copy them right back to my steam games folder, literally takes minutes for even large games, much less time than re-downloading.

For non-steam games, I just install them to my 1TB and leave them there, it's not like I will run out of space relatively soon.

There's lazy and there's illogical. If you are too lazy to "be bothered with creating folders adding things and the like" you aren't too lazy to uninstall, redownload and reinstall to play a game, which could take a sizable amount of time instead of minutes to drag one folder from one drive to another? I guess I value my time more.. but then again I'm not too lazy to do basic things like that and if I was I would be missing out on ton's of great things that you can do with PC games, like modding. If someone is too lazy to do something like that maybe they should just play on a console- that's really easy.. well they are probably too lazy to get up and put in a new game, so maybe not.

You're attacking a straw man. Many people when they are talking about wanting Steam (or Origin, or Desura) for ease of use are referring to installation, uninstalls, and things like patching, and are not really that focused on things like having the Steam Overlay (though that's nice). Especially when it comes to something like Strategy First or 1c packs in which you're probably going to get a decent chunk of hard drive space used, and then quickly probably uninstall a lot that you downloaded because it is probably terrible.

Originally Posted by Severose By "Amazon is crushing Steam" I think they meant price-wise. Steam will always be the bigger DD service, unless Amazon ups their game and comes out with a bangin' client with all of the features that Steam currently has. We all know that won't happen any time soon though, since Steam has taken quite a while to develop and get where it is now.

Plus, why would Amazon bother making their own client when they know people can buy their games from Amazon, and just put them into Steam's client? Whether its steam code or not, lol.

Originally Posted by voken I think the best market Amazon can exploit is DRM-free games. Particularly old games that are not on Steam. It probably going to compete with GoG (who I like but feel they need to discount their game more) but I would buy a old game that DRM-free rather than a one with Steam DRM (or worst multiple DRM, like GTA4 which had Steam, GFWL & Rockstar Social Club)

About old games being re-released over Amazon DVG, GOG, and other places - they are often already UPDATED likely to their newest version! It's also easier to mod games when you don't have Steam or any other DRM in your way - especially if you need to replace a EXE file.

Plus - who the heck wants DRM wrapped around an old game? There's no need for DRM to be wrapped around games that are old, cheap, and likely need to be tinkered w/ in some fashion to get running on modern systems.

One of my biggest pet peeves is dev's and pub's that use multiple DRM's on Steam-version. NO NEED FOR THIS. The problem is Steam is forcing their DRM on every game (for the most part). I understand the dev's and pub's want to be lazy & save money especially if their game on console uses XBL b/c porting it to G4WL is easy, fast, and painless - but honestly, G4WL is garbage and needs to be abandoned by dev's and pub's releasing games on the PC, since Microsoft doesn't want to properly support & update it. When Microsoft finally decides to change their mind and actually support G4WL, then maybe I'll feel different about G4WL.

Originally Posted by Genocidal Adding a non-Steam game or application does not keep the game patched to the current version and ready to play when you want to play it. That's a huge convenience feature that plenty of people, myself included, are willing to accept Steam DRM for.

Nor does it help you if you have just upgraded to a new PC or HD or reformatted and have to go 'Okay I got that game from Amazon, and this one from Gamersgate, and wait, did I get it from Greenmangaming? I got something from there. And I swear I got something from GetGamesGo, and Gamestop, and what about direct2drive gamefly, oh and there were those games I got straight from the developer again..etc etc etc'.

DRM free works fine if you have a few games and/or stick to one store. The whole thing falls apart if you have a crap ton of games which bundles like this encourage, not that I am complaining here!

The more games you have the more it becomes convenient to have them tied to as few accounts as possible with a client that organizes and updates the for you.

If you just want to buy a few games and only get the ones you really want and know you will play right away and are happy with DRM free OR if you are super duper organized and on top of things and have files documenting where everything is that is fine. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no need to be defensive or offensive about it. NO ONE IS BASHING YOU.

At the same time if others among us have a lot of games and don't want to be fussed organizing, updating, figuring out where we got them all when we need to re-download them etc etc THAT IS A VALID CHOICE AS WELL.

It's a preference. Neither is wrong and it would be nice if we could respect each other's preferences even if we don't agree with them.

Originally Posted by Genocidal Adding a non-Steam game or application does not keep the game patched to the current version and ready to play when you want to play it. That's a huge convenience feature that plenty of people, myself included, are willing to accept Steam DRM for.

I have literally never had a problem with this.. ever. If a game ever needs to be updated, the actual game should tell you when you play it, usually you just say "update now" it does it, then boom you can go back to playing and launching it through steam. Most game patches don't take very long to download, so it's not like it's a considerable problem especially since most games get patched to a final version within what, maybe a year? online games are different, but most games I downloaded from Amazon were either up to date and needed no more patches since I bought them or had to be patched after I downloaded them and haven't since.

I can't actually think of any game I have added to steam library that was drm free that I ever needed to patch.. maybe Witcher 2.. maybe it would if I went to play it again, but I don't think I ever had to patch it during the time frame I actually played it. Either way, I still think thats a real STRETCH of an argument.

Originally Posted by voken I think the best market Amazon can exploit is DRM-free games. Particularly old games that are not on Steam. It probably going to compete with GoG (who I like but feel they need to discount their game more) but I would buy a old game that DRM-free rather than a one with Steam DRM (or worst multiple DRM, like GTA4 which had Steam, GFWL & Rockstar Social Club)

There are A LOT of games uncovered on many digital systems. The Wheel of Time, Revenant, Tresspaser, Heavy Gear 1 & 2, Dark Vengeance, Blade Runner, Gunman Chronicles, Drakan, Urban Chaos... and the list can go on and on and on...

I just recently bought Abomination: The Nemesis Project from a sale at GamersGate. I had it on retail but the CD got scratched... also, I don't want to carry CDs/DVDs. I didn't knew they were selling that game until it was listed on sale. Insta-buy

Originally Posted by MysterD A problem w/ Steam can be modding games; especially older games - which is obvious w/ games like Vampire: Bloodlines. See their V:BL forums there. If you are running Win Vista or Win 7 or above, you're going to have to use Wesp's patch or Tess's True Patch, which actually replaces your EXE and fixes things there internally - which is really something Steam isn't normally too fond off. You have to turn off Steam Community Features and auto-update, just to get this OLDER game going right. Do the modding and don't turn-off some of those Steam features - Steam will patch you backwards to the last Official Troika-version (1.2, I think it was) of the game - and it was still broken here and there in that state. I don't have to deal w/ the above-said garbage. I bought the game on disc (Non-Steam version) long ago - and can avoid any Steam-specific weirdness that can happen w/ owning the Steam version of the game. Also, if you're going to mod the life out of a Steam game - think like Skyrim and Dead Island - you really should back-up the latest clean official version of your ENTIRE game before you mod-up. Why? Just in case you mod the game and somehow they (the developers) officially update the game and it breaks your game; or just in case you somehow break something trying to mod it up. If you don't - you're going to have to re-download the entire game in a clean state. Most of UPlay's recent games (since Rainbow Six: Vegas), the game checks for updates when you boot the game up. Driver: San Francisco and AC: Revelations does this.

Very good points, which is why I have VTM:B DRM-free(ish) through GameFly, as well as Fallout 3 GOTY (although I have that on Steam as well).

It's funny though how we're too "lazy" to deal with adding non-Steam games while we spend hours and hours on finding deals on games... lol.

The Vampire point is grossly inflated. The game itself already requires most people to do a lot of steps to get it to run well already. The step described by MysterD takes like 2 seconds, which is pretty small in the world of getting that janky bug ridden mess to run well.

Fallout 3 makes no sense either. That's a GFWL game, and the Steam DRM has no affect on it. There's a reason why it's much easier to mod Fallout New Vegas and not lose access to save files over Fallout 3. Mod a game 10 hours in that has script changes in New Vegas, you're fine. Do the same to 3, which GFWL detects as a cheat program, and your save files are no longer accessible.