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Originally posted by: Djunknown
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My other idea was to get via Steam. But I have questions about it. What are you allowed to do with any title bought via Steam? Can you make back up copies? Do you have to run Steam even for single player? How long does it take to download?
To answer your question about steam...It's the best thing to happen to computer games sense computers.
Steam is the only way I'd buy a Valve game as it has a ton of things going for it.
1. You don't have to go to the store to get your game.
2. Your game work on any computer you log into with your steam account. I've downloaded a game, played it for an hour, gone to a friends house, signed in, downloaded it again, and played let my friend play it for a few hours.
3. Games also work offline (provided you sign in at
least once). This won't work for TF2 (except the developer's commentary) but for half life and portal it would work fine.
4. You never need a CD key again. You'll never need a CD again. If you computer gets sucked into a BLACK FREAKING HOLE you can just resume your game (from the beginning) on your new computer. I've transferred the Steam directory from my computer to a completely different computer, just copy and past, and it worked perfectly.
On topic, TF2 is the best thing to happen to Team Fortress sense computers.
Edit: I forgot to answer your questions...You can do a lot with it. You can make backup copies (but you don't need to). You need to use steam but you don't have to be online when playing single player games, it's not an issue really. It can be a bit of a wait, but a lot of the games share components, for example Portal, TF2 and HL2:ep2 all use the same engine, so you only download that once. The actual time it takes depends on your internet connection and day. If you download it the first day it comes out, it will be a slightly slower download than normal, any other day and you will most certainly be the bottleneck. You can pre-order now, and download all the files ahead of time, when the game comes out it will unlock all the files, and you can play the TF2 beta right now.