Speaking as a gaming customer I have to say, no, hell no, absolutely no. I neither want nor need Steam's "features", which mostly includes a buggy client taking up system resources and doing a horrible job of taking over functions that most games handle natively these days. Steam gives me nothing I want, and plenty -- like even more advertising -- that I don't.

Honestly, Steam pretty much is a Trojan, that the gaming community in general finds this, and Valve's near-monopoly, acceptable is more then a bit disheartening.Posted at 9:36AM on Nov 27th 2009 by Myria

I don't think Steam is a terrible service, but SteamWorks is certainly not a feature I want in all my games despite what Holtman claims.

It's not good for consumer to be "locked in" to using a single service. I think this is more clearly a case of reducing their competition, than "customers wanting the features".

I personally hope this does not start a trend as Holman suggests.Posted at 10:09AM on Nov 27th 2009 by Spallit

i would hate steam if it weren't incredibly convienent - i would hate the ads if the sales weren't so good - and i would hate steamworks if it didnt keep alot of games thriving years after release

most of the people against valve and steam are oldschool pc elitists that really need to get with the times. steam is incredibly streamlined and accessible and most people dont like it simply because of this and call it the "xbox live" of pc gaming. i dont see this as a bad thing, people need to stop being so stubborn and realize that pc gaming being more accessible is better for all of usPosted at 12:34PM on Nov 27th 2009 by andrae

I for one, love when a game uses Steamworks. I like the more unified in game messaging, achievements, etc.

I don't miss the old days. Having every game use a different system for communicating, creating profiles on different gaming services, having multiple programs running in the background for different functions (ie. punk buster, 3rd party voip, xfire).Posted at 12:42PM on Nov 27th 2009 by Gemski

I don't think the hate should be pointed at Steamworks, as it does do what it does fairly well in most cases, except for Matchmaking purpose but that was never going to be right for PC anyways. However, I think the issue most other services have is that Steamworks requires Steam to be installed, and that is a legitimate point. No one in their right mind would want their customers to install the programs of a competitor, and if Steamworks does not require Steam then this issue probably wouldn't occur.

I do not like the fact that I have to run the Steam client first to run many of the games from Steam. That does make it like the "XBox Live" of PC gaming, especially when the user has to logged in first. Even GfWL is better than Steam in this regard (at least it doesn't need a seperate cilent). I don't dislike the Steam cilent for its functionalities, but the reason I have Steam is only because of the cheaper prices.Posted at 2:16PM on Nov 27th 2009 by Unknown

I agree with Valve.
Steamworks are great. I mean... what good are achievements in a game if you can't compare them with your friends? I'd love to see this in more games regardless of where I buy them.

Actually... the best would be to give players a choice if they want to add a game (no matter where and how I bought it) to Steam (get steamworks, updates) or not (keeping it a classic install and force users to use the DVD to play.)

Or another option... Valve could release Steam Lite (which would include the chat and achievements but no store) for games sold from d2d, impulse, etc..Posted at 6:25AM on Nov 28th 2009 by ahac