From Bottleneck.org
Steamy Windows
After completing Assassin's Creed the other day, I found myself without any new games to play, and with no opportunity to get out to the shops to buy anything in the near future.
So I decided it was time to have a look at services that allow you to buy and download games online. I'd heard a lot of good things from people who use Steam, so I thought I'd take a look at that, and at Microsoft's offering, Games on Demand at Games for Windows Live!.
I've always been quite wary of this sort of service in the past, being worried about issues of backing up my game installation files, of needing to be online every time I launch the game, and of limited numbers of re-installs, so it was with some trepidation that I started to look at these sites.
A lot of reading seemed to reveal that, for both Steam and Games on Demand, there isn't much to worry about.
- Both have a mechanism for copying your game installation files elsewhere, though Steam certainly seems to make this easier
- It is necessary to go online to first activate the games after installation, but that's true of much physical media these days as well. After that, you can play the games offline.
- There is normally no limit the number of installations you can make, and mechanisms are provided for resetting activation counts where there is a limit. The limit is that you can only run one copy (online) of the game at any given time. This seems fair to me, as a genuine user who isn't seeking to abuse the licence.
The only remaining concern is that reinstallations might be impossible if, in the future, the game provider goes out of business, or stops supporting the game. These both feel unlikely, and sufficiently remote that I probably wouldn't really mind by then.
Despite all of that, I was still nervous. Then I spotted Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas in the Games for Windows Live! store at only £2.49. Now I've played this game through before, but on the Playstation 2, and it was sufficiently long ago that I wouldn't mind playing again. I consider it one of the better games in the series (see my review of GTA : IV), and at that price it seemed worth the money both to play it again and to test out the usability of the download service.
All in all, it went well. The transaction was processed without any fuss, the game downloaded (slowly!) and was installed and activated online without any problems at all. I would like to double-check that I can reinstall the game from a backup in future, which I'll do after I've finished playing it through, but all in all, I'll probably use the service again.
The only issue is, with a 10GB per month cap on my broadband account, downloading around 4.5GB of computer game really gives it a knock! It may be time to look for a better deal.