[jac_no_k]

Steam's pragmatic approach to DRM is okay with me. They make the whole flow from finding the game, purchasing, and launching easy and straight forward. It's one of the rare instances the Management is a two way street. I don't need to keep physical copies of the games or track the serial numbers. I can move from computer to computer and the games that are enabled for my account are available. I'm really impressed that they don't charge extra for games that run on OS X, that was originally purchased for Windows.

What does irk me still is the third party publishers on Steam that use region lockouts. Steam's DRM does make it easy for publishers to not allow games like Modern Warfare 2 to be sold in Japan. I understand it was licensed to a publisher local in Japan and that is why Steam can not distribute. But this crosses the line of my tolerance. Same with other media such as music and videos. I wish publishers would set a global price, based on one of the major currencies, and just let us purchase and use in any region.

[w1ntermute]

You might be interested to know that they unofficially tolerate players having someone in another country (usually the US) buy the game and gift it to them, as long as the middleman isn't making money off of it (only equal reimbursement). If you're interested in getting the US version of Modern Warfare 2 (or any other game) via Steam, contact this guy: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/cklqm/steam_day_7_ma...

Obviously this isn't a justification for their actions, but it is an available workaround.

[benologist]

I bought $170 worth of games today through a friend in the US. :)

The only thing I don't like is PC games are stupidly complicated with add ons, expansions, packs, chapters, bla bla bla. I don't have time to keep up with gaming to know what I need, what order I should do it in etc.

[w1ntermute]

That's why Valve's TF2 updates, combined with Steam, are great (they had one today, coincidentally). You can get new features without lifting a finger :)