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Friday, December 11, 2009

Two things Steam needs to do

Steam is a cool community/online gaming middleman/distribution platform for the PC. It allows you to download games to as many PCs as you want, but you have to be logged in to play them. It completely erases the need for installation discs. As someone with a couple boxes of computer discs, it's a great boon.

Two things Steam should do though, to make their service that much better:

1) Backup game saves and sync them between all of a user's computers.

2) Remove the damn age-verification screens in their app if I'm logged in.

Number one has been discussed by them before, I've heard that it's in the works for a while but I haven't seen it in action yet. Maybe it's in effect for Valve games only, which I haven't played in a while so I wouldn't know. It's not that big of a deal to me now, I primarily game on my desktop. In 2010 though I want to buy an amazing custom gaming laptop. Whether I'll be able to, who knows, but I want to. My gaming will be equally divided between desktop and laptop (though eventually I may phase out my desktop entirely). I don't want to juggle save files on a USB drive. Maybe I can work something out with Dropbox, who knows. It would be so much better though, if Steam did it for me.

Number two is something that is getting more and more annoying as the days go by. It seems like every time I browse Steam I have to enter in a birthday (I would say 'my' birthday but come on, I quickly enter in any birthday over eighteen to continue as quickly as possible). What's worse is it doesn't work. I was younger than eighteen once, I remember how quickly I would click through that stuff. What's worst of all is that they already have my information. Most of my Steam-browsing is in their app, where I'm logged in. If I'm logged in, they know I'm eighteen, so couldn't we skip all that crap? It's just an annoyance, but the nuisance is growing as every other gaming site seems to be going in the same direction.

Why don't we just make a separate, dumber internet for kids and leave the current, semi-awesome internet for adults only, so we can avoid this crap? I'm serious. Making something accessible to and safe for kids is a damned sure way to ruin it. Not to mention any twelve-year-old is smart enough to enter in a birthday over eighteen.

That's my say anyway,

David

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