Steam has become a very popular gaming service over the past two years, with over 20 million user accounts. It’s undoubtedly a unique service, with its very complete digital download store featuring the games of virtually every game publisher on the planet.
But some of these 20 million people are a tad more addicted to the service than they might like to admit. People with a wealth of purchased games beyond sanity and fanboys who defend the platform beyond reason. Perhaps you are amongst these fanatical Steam fans, or some of your friends might be. You’ll want to check the following list of Steam addiction/fanboyism symptoms just in case.
Valve has done well with their system and implemented a multitude of useful innovations in terms of online services. Ranging from Steam Cloud to achievements and matchmaking.
However, the system also has its drawbacks, such as the notoriously high price for games and the even higher price in most of Europe. It also effectively makes second-hand sales of games non-existant with it’s own form of DRM: online authentication.
Whatever your take is on the service, it’s obviously here to stay. And as it grows more people will grow to become zealous promoters of the Steam cause and fanboys of the first order. If you wish to recognise the symptoms of Steam addiction, in yourself or in others, then the following is a must-read list.
Ten Ways to Tell if You’ve Been Steamed
- You check Steam for good deals not just every weekend, but every other day. You never know when they might have another week-long deal like they did with Ubisoft last week …
- Money doesn’t matter to you. Any ordinary retail game you want that appears on Steam, you’ll purchase on Steam. Who cares that you pay twice as much as someone who gets the game (plus extras) in an old-fashioned retail outlet?
- You do whatever it takes to earn every achievement in each Steam game you own. It’s like Pokémon: gotta earn them all! And hey – who knows, Valve might bundle them into a Steamer score or something one day.
- Valve can do no wrong. Registration with their service and online authentication on first-time play isn’t DRM, it’s a service to the players! You do get to join a community and earn achievements after all!
- You purposely ignore any game you own that isn’t registered on your Steam account. They don’t matter, that perfect 10 Steam Rating does.
- Any game with Steam achievements is worth having in your book. No matter how much the game sucks, it’s all about the achievements anyway.
- You have Steam installed on your PC at work, because you feel no computer is ever really complete without it.
- Steampowered.com is your Home Page.
- You agree with the following: who cares that the pricing for nearly every game on Steam is higher in Europe? Valve should ask three times the retail price for all the awesome services they provide. Never mind those British and their ridiculously low Steam prices, they always wanted to be different anyway.
- On friday all you can think about is the next weekend deal on Steam. You don’t bother going out, because you’ll have a new game to play that night anyway. And if it’s already in your monstrous Steam collection, then you’ll just play through it again. There might be a couple of achievements you’ve missed.
Have any additions to the above? Do you like it, or think it’s an outrageous list of utter fail? Whatever your take is, please do share it in the comments!
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