Today I start to learn to program, it has been my aspiration to learn for quite some many years and today I start. I plan for this project to be the fuel behind learning to program because I have never really been pushed, I’ve started then shortly after gave up. I will try to post my progressions everyday if I can but keep in mind that I go to school and that comes first.
Steam (for those of you dont already use it) is a client like the xbox or PS3 markets, it sells games and installs them for you. I love Steam and use it all the time (It’s downloading a game for me right now) the problem is that its dominating too much of the computer gaming market. If you ask a gamer “what do you use to buy and download your games?” he’ll probably say “Steam” and then you asked him if he knew any other gaming markets he’d most likely respond:”I didn’t know that there were other ones”. In 2009 Steam shared 70% of the digital distribution of video games. This means that Steam controls 70% of all games distributed via digital copy. Steam is preventing other companies such as: Direct2Drive, GamersGate, and Amazon Game Downloads to make money. I look at it from this perspective, if we dont help these companies and Steam becomes even more powerful one thing that might happen is that Steam will have no competition and those deals that you know and love will be gone because they dont need to entice buyers anymore. You may be thinking “why should I hassle with these small companies? They have nothing to offer me that Steam doesn’t already have” If you did then you are mistaken, all of these services have their own attributes. Direct2Drive is all about making downloading and playing games easy. I did notice that they carry mainly larger titles and offered moderately good deals on popular games. GamersGate is a service that is pretty standard when it comes to getting games (gives you a code and you have the game forever) but it differentiates itself in that it mainly focuses on indie titles (this is why its my favorite of all). The third and best all around is surprisingly Amazons market. It has basically every game that you can think of and when Steam isn’t offering a deal on a game, it normally is. I know that you may be hesitant about switching over completely to another client but you dont have to, simply check them from time to time for deals that Steam doesn’t have and save money, plus it will force Steam to be more competitive with its deals and prevent it from being closed.