Last week in talking about constant internet connection requirements, I mentioned Steam, a digital distribution service from Valve, one of the most respected, beloved and successful studios.

Steam is a service where you can buy digital copies of games and manage them under a single utility. You can download your purchases to any other machine you own with Steam installed, it will update and patch your games automatically, it will resolve several troubleshooting issues for you, and you can even maintain a friends list making it very easy to jump into multiplayer games with people you know.

The service also requires an internet connection to function properly, and is a form of digital rights management and not only restricts but prohibits the resale of games that you’ve purchased.

I initially was never a fan of Steam because I didn’t like my games all being tied into a single service and didn’t like being held hostage to an intermittent internet connection, but more recently I have come to accept the service. It gets my seal of approval just because it provides enough extra value to justify what it takes away from me. It did this by offering me older titles that I can no longer get working on my modern machine fully patched and running fine, by offering me newer titles for prices that are less than a pint and by introducing me to the world of crashing other friend’s multiplayer games and all of us as a result grabbing impromptu unplanned entertainment.

However, Steam is not without its drawbacks and in my view can only operate in a vacuum. There are several other companies that are trying to do the same thing and this could make for an awkward gaming landscape in the years to come.

Already there are two notable competitors to Steam that spring to mind. First is Games For Windows Live, which to me always sounds like an awful gaming focussed reality TV show that no gamer in their right mind would ever watch, and secondly Impulse, the Stardock created distribution platform that was recently sold on to Gamestop. EA are also about to throw their hat into the ring with Origin, and there are also several other browser based services that offer similar services.

Impulse actually doesn’t seem too bad. It’s fairly inoffensive, and I mostly have only used it to patch Sins of a Solar Empire. They have a few decent deals every now and then, but the service made me realise the major flaw of launching a rival to Steam. As I have a lot of things on Steam already and a friends list on Steam, and I know how it works, I’m less likely to invest in filling up another digital library on a platform I’m less happy and familiar with. I was also about to write that Impulse also throws more marketing statements at me, but I realise this is not quite true, they’re just more noticeable with regular HTML heavy emails landing in my inbox as opposed to the seamless recommendations and nudges that Steam gives you. Probably the smartest thing that Steam ever did was tell you what games your friends have just started playing. Every time one of those messages comes up, if you don’t own the game, you’re brain automatically says “I wonder what that’s like and if it’s cheap?” because they have recognised that gamers tend to want to play a game even more if they have seen a friend is playing it. Steam therefore gets away with spamming its users without them really noticing.

Games For Windows Live (GFWL) on the other hand is something I detest. As of writing this they have actually combined GFWL into the Xbox Live marketplace, which cynical journalists have suggested might be a method of confusing gamers into buying PC games by accident, which would be an interesting way to try and encourage PC sales. Not only is GFWL quirky and not without its bugs, instead of trying to offer direct competition all of the time, sometimes it will just run alongside Steam, requiring you to log into Steam and then into GFWL, which is infuriating and enough to drive anyone to piracy, as pirated cracked versions of games that require this double login would not have to go through this ridiculous rigmarole. It wouldn’t be too much of a hassle if both platforms integrated seamlessly into the game, but with GFWL especially, it requires a login that for me never succeeds on the first time despite me being almost certain that I’m not forgetting my password and operates in some kind of console-like overlay that just feels awkward to use. Steam is by no means perfect, but GFWL seems to be a definitive example on how not to do digital distribution. I am actively discouraged by any game that has the Games For Windows Live logo across the top of the box because I know the installation is not going to be smooth.

With reliance on Steam, some games do get odd ideas about their installation. I have bought a game in the past which activated on Steam and then started to download on Steam, despite the fact that I had bought an actual physical copy of the game. There seemed to be no actual way of installing from the disc, leading me to believe that there was possibly no data on there and it was instead a novelty coaster and to this day I have no idea if that was an example of me being thick, or digital distribution gone mad.

I think to launch one of these platforms you need to bundle it with a game that everybody wants. Valve managed to stealth Steam in with the highly anticipated Half Life 2, which is something very few gamers haven’t played, and the only way to install and play it was to activate through this piece of software that would sit on your computer called Steam. At this point in time, it was nowhere near the distribution hub that it is today. I remember the first couple of titles being released on it and thinking they had also been made by Valve, causing me great confusion when they just didn’t feel like things that Valve would make. It was only by the time that Darwinia was released that I had worked out what Steam actually was and by then I already had an account and was used to it sitting in my system tray.

This is why I think that EA’s Origin that they’re launching soon will probably take off and become Steam’s major rival. Origin will be required to play Battlefield 3 which is causing just about every game journalist out there to go weak at the knees all over the internet. The game looks stunning, it has come from a brilliant pedigree of developers and since the original Infinity Ward team has been perplexingly chased off by Activision, their main rival Modern Warfare 3 is being treated with a certain amount of caution if not distain. Fans of the Call of Duty series will definitely pick it up and will definitely be a success, but Battlefield 3 is looking to steal first place this time, and if this happens, then EA will have an automatic install base for their Steam rival. You could say that gamers might rebel and boycott the game because it needs Origin, but that very rarely happens. You get a few idealists and a few people that can stick to their guns, but most people cave the second they see everyone else playing what they want to play.

The final thing that worries me about Steam, as much as I have grown to love it, is the question that a lot of gamers don’t like asking. What happens when a digital distribution platform goes out of business? What will happen when the Steam servers get shut down? It’s unrealistic to think that they’ll be around forever. Many electronics and technology giants of the past have faded into dust or bombed out spectacularly. As an example, Sega used to produce consoles and good Sonic the Hedgehog games, IBM strode the world of PC hardware by becoming the industry standard, and Atari were the pioneers of the home gaming console world, and those are just a few examples in a sea of highly successful development studios going bankrupt, being bought out or just dissolving over time.

At the same time, it’s hard not to be drawn in to Steam. I worry that one day I won’t be able to use half the things I’ve bought on the system, but thinking about it, most of the games I played when I was younger are unplayable either through a compatibility or changing standards of gameplay over time issue, so maybe there is no real difference, just a more blunt statement that you can’t even try to get these games working again.

For anyone wanting to reacquaint themselves with an old PC gaming love, I would heartily recommend Steam. Not only might you find some old nostalgia-infused titles for a decent price, but you can pick up free demos of new games that might catch your eye. It can feel like a bit of an alien service at first, but it might be getting used to, because I can see it become a more and more popular way for people doing business in a digital environment.