Exfat or ntfs for mac and pc. Interoperability of the file system is important. I think this is the second biggest difference after 'compatibility with other OSes'. ExFAT is also natively, read/write supported by OS X Snow Leopard in 10.6.5 and later (although not mentioned in the release notes).
Valve is a wonderfully open company?in many cases, direct questions sent to the publisher will be answered by a member of the creative team within hours. One gamer recently e-mailed Valve and asked why he saw EA's logo on a commercial for Left 4 Dead: he bought the game via Steam but didn't want to support EA after the Spore DRM debacle.
He got a reply from a managing director at the company, Gabe Newell, that was to the point: EA only handles distribution for the physical product, and Valve thinks most DRM is 'just dumb.' Related Stories * Prep the zombie axe: Left 4 Dead up for pre-purchase * Valve to release Steam Cloud this week * Left 4 Dead: welcome to the zombie-killin' social * Valve eats brains of Turtle Rock, makers of Left 4 Dead 'Left 4 Dead is developed entirely by Valve. Steam revenue for our games is not shared with third parties. Around the world we have a number of distribution partners to handle retail distribution of our games (i.e. Make discs and boxes). EA is one of those partners,' Newell wrote.
Steam just downloads it through the steam client which has a lot more security DRM stands for digital rights management. Since its more secure they can trust you aren't pirating it, so they can sell it for less.
In other words, if you buy Left 4 Dead through Steam, EA doesn't see any of your money. This should be good news for gamers who want to slaughter some zombies but don't want to break their EA boycott. Newell doesn't have kind words for the use of digital rights managements. 'As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't),' he wrote. 'We really really discourage other developers and publishers from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches.' While Steam is a step in the right direction, giving gamers the ability to play games on multiple systems without having to worry about losing discs or CD keys, some gamers have reported issues getting their games to work in offline mode, and worry about Valve shutting down the servers at some point in the future.
Piracy is a complex issue with no easy answer, but what's clear is that gamers are less and less willing to put up with intrusive DRM technology in their games, but there doesn't seem to be much of a movement to lessen its use among game publishers. What the industry has to understand is that gamers have the upper hand, as they can simply go to the torrents for a free version of each game that includes no DRM.
Until publishers do more to welcome their legitimate customers as friends instead of treating them as potential pirates, piracy will continue to eat at profits and morale. Actually I was going by the title only, as I know Gabe is a bit of a blowhard when it comes to DRM and Piracy. But after actually reading the article, my statement stands, as Steam directly contradicts all the benefits he lists as positives for his form of DRM, Steam. From the article: • Newell doesn't have kind words for the use of digital rights managements. Except for his own 'As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. Media player for mac apple tv free. The goal should be to create greater value for customers the resale value of your game decreases to zero as soon as you enter the CD key in Steam, is that creating value? Through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to) because downloading over the span of hours is easier than installing off DVD in 5 minutes?, not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't) again, the resale value is zero if you buy off Steam, so the value of the product has clearly decreased he wrote.
'We really really discourage other developers and publishers from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches. Steam is so great, its the only form of DRM and distribution that gives you less, charges you just as much, but somehow makes you think you get more' The greater irony is that 'dumb' forms of DRM that do the same thing as Steam (CD authentication, online activation) is widely criticized even when they're less intrusive and less restrictive in general. Originally posted by: chizow But after actually reading the article, my statement stands, as Steam directly contradicts all the benefits he lists as positives for his form of DRM, Steam. From the article: • Newell doesn't have kind words for the use of digital rights managements. Except for his own 'As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers the resale value of your game decreases to zero as soon as you enter the CD key in Steam, is that creating value?