Nobody said anything about installing games from a physical medium. This may be new to you, but there's this cool invention they call a "web browser" that can connect to servers on the internet to fetch virtual objects they call "files" and store them on your own computer.
And here's the cool part: These "files" can be the same things that would be read from a DVD while installing games! Now isn't that a totally mind-blowing invention?
LOL, OWNT!
I do have to agree with the steam negative side in a way for this game, specially because its going to be the most modded game at that time. If the game is going to follow the same directory paths as the previous versions it will make modding much easier as it has been. Having to go through a long list of subfolders inside the Valve or Steam folder is a joke, it makes very difficult for a modder or tweaker to do things fast and proper. I'm pretty sure that there's people that feel this way about Steam's subfolder issues and is the biggest reason why I never bother buying UT3 as well.
Here's an example comparing the difference between the game's folder address that I think it would be so you can see what I mean:
C:\Games\Unreal Tournament 4
C:\Program Files (x86)\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\common\Unreal Tournament 4
Now, imagine yourself having to constantly install a lot of mods manually. And imagine yourself closing the window by accident and having to get to that folder again.
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One of the biggest issue with steam is their constant updating, sometimes it happens up to 3 times a week. Every time an update happens it takes a lot of disk space that you might limitedly have reserved. Sometimes, I end up having to uninstall a game or other files in order to compensate for the space the steam's update took which I kept as the minimum amount of space for memory used in most games. This issue gets to a point that it pisses you off too much that you have to permanently uninstall something that you really need.
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And yet, the worse issue with steam is the annoying Launcher crashes. I have several games running from steam and each one of them give me constant crashes and errors due to their Launchers failing or not loading properly. In most cases, I would launch my favorite steam game and it will keep crashing because of steam not executing some driver(s) properly. This problem gets so bad that I have to restart the PC so that it works, but there's times that I would have to restart the PC again until the crashing stops. Heck, an estimated average for my steam games to crash before they get to launch properly is around 70%, and when they do launch and the game is running, there's an estimated average of about 30% that it will crash while I'm playing. lol ...yeah, it is that bad.
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The only thing I like about steam is their discounts and advertising which makes it a little easier from going to a store and be disappointed for not finding the game you wanted to buy. Plus, the easy way to add friends to a list who you can chat with while playing or not. But that's about it, it gets to a time when you get really tired of its malfunctioning which makes you wonder what it would've been getting the game by other means.
I just hope that Epic realizes the ups and downs of the steam network and give their customers the choice of having the game installed with steam integrated or without it. I think that that would be a fair deal for us since we are the ones spending the money for something that we expect as a consumer.
