The only two groups I can really understand hating steam are the retailers (Steam is kicking the bejeezuz out of most physical stores), and the pirates (but they have no say :P ). I've been using Steam for years (first game was DoD Source). The only problems I've had - the recent Black Ops stuff-up, and me running out of money. Personally I'm glad that I don't need to keep discs/keys. Just as well when I had to reinstall Modern Warfare 2 (corrupted HDD, then found my DVD was broken). I'm surprised people are having their auto-updates turning back on (never happened to me), although auto-updates are somewhat useful - particularly for the not-so-tech-savvy people, does it for them. Also, after reinstalling Windows, I don't have to waste time reinstalling all my games (I keep Steam on a seperate HDD) - run steam, reinstalls itself, run game (registers the game to the registry etc), play. You can probably guess my opinion on all this is, why aren't all games just put through steam (or impulse, etc)? Physical media irritates me :P As a side note that just occurred to me - Steam In-game is useful to use for the web browser, particularly when it comes to the Beth.Soft. games (alt-tab crash goodness). EDIT: oh, ginnyfizz, it probably isn't Steam stopping Arcania from running - it is a poorly coded game, lags like crap even on a good rig. Engine issues annoyed me that much I quit playing after 3 hours. Probably find it is just killing itself with its buggyness.