Steamy love for PC Gaming

Recently a lot of console love has been going round in the game section. With the releases of the PS4 and Xbox One, the reactionary Wii U article, I just felt that one big part of gaming, namely PC gaming was being a bit left out. Th erefore I wanted to bring it back into the spotlight by describing my love for one of the big champions of PC’s gaming, Steam.For all you unlucky ones who don’t know what steam is, imagine an amazon just for games. However instead of actual physical goods, you only get the software. Th erefore once you buy the game you can immediately download it. Furthermore once you buy a game it stays in your inventory forever, meaning that you can never misplace it.Now before I gush on about this absolutely wonderful service, I’ll run through all the negatives so you guys don’t think I tried to deceive you. Firstly, the thing that caused so much pain to the Xbox One, DRM, which means that you cannot exchange games with friends and/or sell them on, is impossible with steam games. However to be perfectly honest, this was almost always so on PC and therefore something that most PC gamers are used to. Th is will be only a concern for you console gamers out there. Secondly if anything goes wrong, there is no helpline telephone number. Th is means if somehow you are locked out of your account, play your game etc. you are pretty much screwed. You have to email Valve (the developers of steam) and wait for a reply (which can take anywhere between a few hours to several days), which may or may not be helpful. Th e last and absolutely worst thing is the steam sales. Coming around every other month, the off er great games at incredible prices. Th ese sales also come at a time when I think I am doing quite well in terms of fi nances, boom the sale comes along and after having bought about 5 games I am broke yet again. However these steam sales are also one of the best things about this online store. Th is way you can get some of the best games ever at super low prices. In fact for the last sale (which ended on tuesday) I managed to get the Skyrim legendary edition for 10 pounds!! If I walked into a store this would be possible in the same capacity. In store, the number of games that you can buy is limited by the demand and actual physical size of the building, while steam is limited only by its server size. Th erefore most games that you can think of will be available, that would have been physically unavailable for years. Another positive thing that steam does is its support of multiple operating systems. Regardless if you play on Windows, Mac OS or Linux steam is available on your platform as well as off ering games for you. Apart from Blizzard no major game studio or distributor really does this to such an extent. Th e last thing I want to mention, is related to my carelessness. In my past when games still were on CD’s and you needed a game key to install it, I would frequently either lose the CD, little booklet with the game key, case which would have the game key or any combination of these three. Th is would mean that if I would want to reinstall the game, I would have to go on a massive treasure hunt to fi nd the missing piece, with failure meaning I would have to re-buy the game if I wanted it really play it. With steams system, once you have bought a game it is in your inventory indefi nitely and you can download it as many times as you want. Th is has just made my life so much easier, and means that for each individual game I do not need to put in a new game CD. Th ere are so many more great things about steam, e.g. achievement systems, bundles, auto-updates of games and integration with demos. Steam is one of the best things that has happened to gaming for a while, I mean its one the biggest success stories of the gaming industry at the current time. Steam is a great service to be part for even if you are not the biggest gamer, and furthermore its free! For all the things you get, why would you not sign up???