A Couple Steam Questions

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Okay, well like many people on this forum, I downloaded Steam and picked up Portal. I've been checking out Steam and decided I want to buy their "Steam Play Indie Pack" for the great deal. However, I am a bit hesitant because I think I might be better off buying these games from their websites and not off Steam.

Questions:

I've heard that there's no way to open a game bought off steam without opening Steam first. Is that true even with games like "World of Goo" that can be purchased elsewhere? Can I get a confirmation on that?

I keep a folder with aliases of all my games. I want to be able to include Steam games. I found out making an alias of Portal in my (User/Applications) folder works, and when clicked it will open Steam which begins to start up Portal. Will this work with every game I get?

-By the way, I've never noticed an Applications folder in my User folder before and Portal's the only game in it. Did Steam make that folder?

Is there any downside to having Steam run in the background? Portal runs perfectly smooth, but might other games lag because of that?

Will I be able to play games offline? I tried turning off Wi-Fi and opening Steam. It was able to log into my account and I could still access my Library. When opening Portal a message came up saying it won't be able to access the internet, but once I clicked OK, the game started and had all of my saved data. What worries me is that when I go on forums I see people saying they can't play their Steam games offline or they're having problems. Mine seemed to run fine, is there anything I'm missing?

Thanks in advance for anybody that took the time to read some of this. I'd appreciate any response.

Edit: I forgot one little thing. I'm in Europe at the moment and the prices show up in Euros. Is there any way I can change it to USD?
 
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1. Its possible to buy games on CD or DVD that will work with Steam, so you do not always need to 'download' them. If you do want to download games, you need the Steam client and an account.
2. Yes, Steam apps does create a number of folders:
~\Library\Application Support\Steam and ~\Documents\Steam Content and others
3. No Steam should be using very little resources when running. The only time when you do notice it is when downloading updates when it starts up.
4.Yes, you can run Steam offline as long as you have a valid Steam account.
 
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Wow, thanks a bunch! Cleared up all my answers. Unfortunately when I went to buy the games I found out that you have to contact support if your using a credit card issued in another country. I hope they get back to me before the sale ends. Anybody know how long Steam Support takes to answer?
 

bobtomay

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Haven't tried it yet and probably won't for another week or two. I know they're allowing the client to be installed and play the same games on either your Mac or Win machine. What about installing on two Macs so that both my wife and I can play the same game simultaneously.

Say I installed Zuma - would we both be able to log into Steam and play at the same time or would I have go to offline mode for that to happen?
 
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Haven't tried it yet and probably won't for another week or two. I know they're allowing the client to be installed and play the same games on either your Mac or Win machine. What about installing on two Macs so that both my wife and I can play the same game simultaneously.

Say I installed Zuma - would we both be able to log into Steam and play at the same time or would I have go to offline mode for that to happen?
I'm not sure, but you should download it and pick up Portal for free anyway. Then you can test it out. If you don't like it or you can't play simultaneously on two computers just uninstall it. However, I'll warn you that Portal took over an hour to download on my super fast 4GB RAM, 2.26 GHz MacBook Pro even when Steam was the only application running. (So I recommend not trying it out while you're in the middle of working on your computer :) )

PS - I still have an unanswered question above for any new readers.
 

bobtomay

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Yeah, I've already downloaded and installed the client and Portal on my MBP and on the Win HTPC. I'll find out sooner or later, just wondering if anyone had done it yet. Would think it'll work the same as it has on Windows in the past as far as multiple machines and a single account.

The advantage I see in purchasing content from Steam that is also available through the developers or in CD/DVD form, is that you are permanently registered for said product and don't have to worry about losing the disc(s) or key for playing the games. Only have a single login to remember.
 
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I'm not sure, but you should download it and pick up Portal for free anyway. Then you can test it out. If you don't like it or you can't play simultaneously on two computers just uninstall it. However, I'll warn you that Portal took over an hour to download on my super fast 4GB RAM, 2.26 GHz MacBook Pro even when Steam was the only application running. (So I recommend not trying it out while you're in the middle of working on your computer :) )

PS - I still have an unanswered question above for any new readers.

Hey, newsflash.


It doesn't matter at all how "super fast" your MacBook is when it comes to downloading. Not one bit. It depends on your internet line.
 
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Hey, newsflash.


It doesn't matter at all how "super fast" your MacBook is when it comes to downloading. Not one bit. It depends on your internet line.
I would think that it has something to do with it. My 7-year old mac takes more than 10x as long to download a file from the same wifi network. And loading webpages is usually 10x longer also.
 

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