Digital game downloads on PC...What are your thoughts?

Armymanis

As a gamer, I love having the hard copies of my games. What do you guy's think about digital downloads for PC games? If your hard drive died how would you get all your games and programs back if you backed up your entire hard drive?

Need your opinions on what you think about digital games as far as downloading them goes.

Devilsbane

Save the installer on a backup. Or maybe they will allow a re-download?

I used to have a plan to make iso's out of all my games so that I would never have to bother with CD's. This is a more practical solution to that.

I have Office as a digital download. Made a back up of the installer and never had a problem.

demonfurbie

ya should check out Welcome to Steam

its a cloud based store (has sales too) and if your system crashes you can redownload at any time

Mishra

I use steam simply because of the sales they give.

When you catch the sales, it can be up to 75% off store price.

Dakinggamer87

Mishra wrote: »

I use steam simply because of the sales they give.

When you catch the sales, it can be up to 75% off store price.

Agreed!! Steam is amazing and easy to use when you need to recover your purchased digital titles.

Everyone

I forgot my Steam password, and no longer have the e-mail account I signed up with. To make things worse, I moved, so I no longer have the physical address that is on the account either. So I haven't been able to get into my account for years now. Luckily I only had a couple games on the account, so not that much $$$ into it.

I don't have time to play games anymore, so I haven't bothered getting a new account.

CenturionMario

While I prefer physical copies, digital download will be the future (not just for games, but movies, and (already happening) music). Physical copies cost companies quite a bit of money, and good companies are always going to be about cost-effectiveness.

I imagine that brick and mortar stores like Gamestop are going to start to drop significantly once this starts happening. People are already preferring to get their things online (Amazon's game distribution has been increasing dramatically).

tpatt100

I think physical will be the norm for quite a while. Broadband with decent enough speeds for a reasonable cost is not the norm for everyone. I don't want to pay 50-100 bucks a month for super fast internet and prefer the 19 dollars a month I pay for 6mb DSL. Its still quicker for me to run to Best Buy buy the box, install and patch the game.

SteveLord

I've had Steam since it was beta...and even have a coveted 4 digit ID to prove it. I do nearly all of my purchases with Steam. Battlefield 3 has already been preordered from Newegg and set to deliver to my office.

One plus to Steam is being able to install it + your games on multiple computers, no fuss. The summer and Christmas sales are so darn good. I usually endup buying games on the cheap and sometimes not even playing them till months later.

Mishra

tpatt100 wrote: »

I think physical will be the norm for quite a while. Broadband with decent enough speeds for a reasonable cost is not the norm for everyone. I don't want to pay 50-100 bucks a month for super fast internet and prefer the 19 dollars a month I pay for 6mb DSL. Its still quicker for me to run to Best Buy buy the box, install and patch the game.

I wish I could pay 20 a month for 6mb.

rsutton

I used to play WoW and probably reinstalled 4-5 times over the years. Nothing worse than re-installing from old physical media and going through hours of updates/restarts/updates. When I finally switched to the digital WoW media I was very happy when having to re-install and was able to get the latest patched version.

zaxbysauce

tpatt100 wrote: »

I think physical will be the norm for quite a while. Broadband with decent enough speeds for a reasonable cost is not the norm for everyone. I don't want to pay 50-100 bucks a month for super fast internet and prefer the 19 dollars a month I pay for 6mb DSL. Its still quicker for me to run to Best Buy buy the box, install and patch the game.

Digital download is already the norm for PC games, as the dominance of Steam clearly shows. You are drastically overstating the time required to download games. On a 6 meg connection you are talking about 3-4 hours max to download your average game on steam (assuming a size of 8 gigs or so). That time is total time, the game comes down installed and patched to the newest version available. The only reason this method is not as popular on consoles is because of limited install space (which is becoming less of a problem). Game publishers realize the extra overhead caused by physical media and brick and mortar stores is unecessary, and they are moving away from it as quickly as large ponderous corrorations can. Digital is the future, either ride the wave or drown.

As a side note, I pay 30 bucks a month for 18 meg (and we actually get closer to 50) and I am in a fairly small city in Alabama.

SteveLord

Steam also carries some oldies. And if you need even more, here's a plug for GOG.com $9.99 or less for most games. DRM free and will work with XP/Vista/7. Once you buy, you just download the installer.

VAHokie56

Steam is the way to go... I still play Counter strike and old Lucas arts games like jediknight 2 on there if I have some free time.

whatthehell

Steam and it's crazy sales are the best! Don't know if anyone saw the Summer sales about 2 months ago, but some pretty great deals!

zaxbysauce

whatthehell wrote: »

Steam and it's crazy sales are the best! Don't know if anyone saw the Summer sales about 2 months ago, but some pretty great deals!

Every Steam sale is crazy, but Summer and Christmas are straight up insane. I usually get 20+ games every time. I think my current total is 150 or so just on Steam.