You bronacho's realize that on your Menu Bar, you have a neat little drop-down called settings.

In this you can configure Steam to not automatically update said game, prevent pop ups from anything (friends coming online, friend message, game messages, achievements, etc) and various other emotional dilemma's you can take care of. You can even disable in-game community (pressing shift+tab). Also get to play with a neat option called "Run Steam in Offline Mode". The only time it requires you to go online after that is when your installing a new game that needs to register with Steam.

Steam is probably one of the best and well maintained digital distribution clients I've ever seen. The only grip I have would be like someone else posted is that when you install a game you don't exactly get to choose where it goes other then 'common' wherever you put your Steam folder at. There is a workaround but sort of a pain in the ass.

I H8 Steam

1 It Instals All Software to Its Directory Structure I get No Choice apart from where to install The Steam Client

2 My Internet is Mobile Broadband so any Update Takes 1Hr or so & i only have 15GB a month & you cant store the update file for later use if you need to reinstall the game

3 I Have no intrest in steams stinking achivements or sales

4 been forced to have software that is of no use to the user running just so i can play a offline game is very anoying

OK, two more things:

Steam was hacked!

Correction, Steam FORUMS were hacked. Steam accounts themselves are still secure.

You don't buy the game, you buy a license!

I have never ever heard of someone who lost a Steam game or account because of this loophole in the agreement. Compared with horror stories from EA and Activision denying customer's access to multiplayer games and I'd say they have a good track record.

All EULAs are horrible things, there's no way around that. But Steam's far less likely to stab you in the back than other companies.

No, Steam was hacked as well. This was confirmed via Gabe Newell (the CEO of Valve) in an email.


Also, Steam isn't a company. Steam is a program that was created and is operated by Valve Software.

I'd like to note that if you ever have payment issues with 1 game in your account, they will lock out your entire account and deny access to everything. If the payment issue cannot be resolved, you lose every single game you have on steam.