> Besides that, e.g. Steam is extremely convenient; installs are rapid and safe, saves are synced across different machines, mods are often well integrated with Steam Workshop, etc.

For me Steam is a huge annoiance: every time I want to play a game it keep bugging me with that the client needs an update or with chat windows. It is slow and sluggish compared to the steam store website. And worst of all, some games don't play when you're offline, even though they are just single player games.

Maybe it's because I'm just a casual player nowadays so features like friends lists that keep popping up are not useful for me and the frequent updates never change anything because I'm not using any of the features they update. But Steam is not the solution for everyone.

There's two ways you can get rid of the friends list chat windows...

1. Create a shortcut for Steam that includes the "-nofriendsui" parameter in it's target.

2. Stop having friends.

Steam is indeed very convenient (though occasionally annoying: like a sibling comment said, I don't need its "social" features and its popups annoy me). Note that before Steam, GOG, etc, when games were sold on discs, piracy was really more convenient. Nowadays the issue is contested, though DRM remains annoying as hell.

I do place Steam in a different category, and I own many of their games.

> Besides that, e.g. Steam is extremely convenient;

For me, Steam is basically spyware that I don't want on my laptop. It's actually a barrier to me playing games because when I (rarely) consider purchasing something then see it's in Steam, my usual reaction is not too bother. It's my computer, I don't want a 3rd party "store" managing my installs. I feel the same way about the windows store fwiw.

> installs are rapid and safe

Just like normal computer programs then?

> saves are synced across different machines

Possibly useful but not really important to me.

> mods are often well integrated with Steam Workshop, etc.

Didn't know about this one, interesting. But I've never found it hard to install mods for games in the past, without Steam.

Overall it's something I never needed and now that it's being pushed on me, I don't want it.

Steam Workshop is also part of Valve's "walled garden" strategy. Say that you bought a game off GOG and looking for some specific mods. If they aren't on Nexus, Moddb or some other website but only on Steam Workshop (where too many are), you won't be able to get access to them. So you either enter Steam's garden where they will try everything to make sure you won't leave...or you are out of luck.

I hear you, and the privacy arguments are valid. Just to add, however:

>> installs are rapid and safe > Just like normal computer programs then?

No, not really. Compared with piracy, their servers are generally much faster than torrenting (with the exception of insanely popular items on torrents). The installs are usually one-click affairs, not needing to click through 5 pages of "next", and telling it to not try to install on the tiny C:\ drive SSD which doesn't have enough space. Installed games are listed in one place, and tend to uninstall instantly, which is not the case with most normal installers. Their installer manager can also do verification of game file integrity, which is surprisingly often a solution to people's crash problems. In terms of safety, viruses are a non-issue, unlike torrented games.

I do get the privacy arguments, and tend to agree with those. A good alternative would be GoG, which has a decent catalog of games, and offers both offline, DRM-free installers (I believe this is still the case), or a Steam-style download manager for those that want the convenience. I'm unsure, but looking at the company behind it, I would argue they are "slightly less evil", and would probably make even their downloader more privacy-friendly.

But really, I think this is all really just a case of whether our needs match that of the average bloke on the street. On HN, we tend to be very privacy-conscious, but I think it's important that basically _nobody_ outside of this niche gives one thought to how Steam is invading their privacy, or how DRM might be bad, unless they have a direct bad experience (e.g. not being able to launch a game offline). It's like the whole NoJS argument for websites - 99.99% of the world doesn't care, and unless your target audience is extremely skewed in this direction, they will not care about it.

> their servers are generally much faster than torrenting

That seems unlikely, at least for "much" faster. I torrent movies occasionally and even fairly unpopular ones often max out my download speed. Unless you're downloading something obscure, bittorrent is really fast.

It's quite possible that our experiences differ. For me, Steam is the one that regularly maxes out my line (at around 300 mbits/sec), while with torrents, I normally get around 1/10th of that. It may well be my VPN provider, though it does seem to depend on popularity, choice of exit endpoint, etc.

Steam's CDN(Limelight) provides the fastest download speed in my experience (like 600Mbps, limited by my connection). Maybe very popular torrent is also faster but not to be guarantee to be.

In a game like rimworld where it can be typical to run with 30 or 50 mods at a time and swap out different ones, you need a system and steam workshop is that system.

But it's not the only system. Factorio, like Rimworld, has a huge mod scene and has it built into the game instead. Which has the advantage of working outside of Steam on a DRM-free (or not-steam) copy, which like another reply says, just makes Steam Workshop another form of lock-in on Steam.

Except the forced updates can easily break mods and managing your mods with the steam workshop is garbage. Even the terminology is bad, subscribed doesn't mean download and install to me.

Workshop isn't perfect but it's a good enough solution for most games. Especially simulator games where the authors knew how to make a sim but have no idea how to handle mods (for example)

I think you can stick to a specific version if you want with rimworld, many mods are updated fairly fast although and even if they haven't been updated tend to work anyway.