Steam is the most popular electronic platform for distributing games. It was created by Valve (Team Fortress, Half-life, Counter Strike) and has expanded to sell thousands of games by hundreds of different publishers, including indie developers. Steam is based off downloading a core, then purchasing and downloading games separately that can only be used while logged into Steam with an account that has bought the game. The Steam core has a built in voice chat, instant messenger, server browser, clan/group system, a store browser, an in-game overlay, and a store browser.
Instant Messenger/Voice chat
The built in instant messenger works fine. It messages people whether they are in game or not, but it will not leave offline messages. The voice chat, on the other hand, is quiet,low quality, and call-based instead of room based, minus clan/group chat rooms (though you can have group conversations and IM conversations). I really dislike it. Even worse, it’s built in to a lot of games, so, though you can set it t push to talk as well as mute yourself, I dislike being obligated into voice when I play with a clan that uses another voice chat software
Game Selection and Sales
The selection on Steam is amazing. All top games (minus those by Blizzard) are on Steam, and usually have sales if you preorder them. Indie games are everywhere and are under constant sales (for example, I just bought a $10 game for $2 because of a sale), and are of very high quality. During Christmas there was a huge sale, most games had a sale on them at least once Christmas week. Steam offers 4 packs of some games that let you and 3 friends save a ton of money, permitting one person buys the game and sends out the other copies. There are also packs of games sold on Steam occasionally that usually save you at least 25%, usually more like 75%.
Almost every month Steam lets all gamers try a game for free for a weekend, and during that time it’s usually on sale. The last few games that had this were Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
There are also many free demos of games, trials of MMOs, free mods, and a few free to play games available.
Community
The community on Steam, though better than Xbox, is worse and more apt to cursing random people out than in most PC communities. The modders and game developers on Steam keep it alive and kicking though, with helpful forum posts and game mods compatible with Steam games. The indie devs actually reply to most support mosts you make!
There are built in achievements if the developer so wishes to include them, as well as leaderboards. Competitions are very easy to come by and usually the best of the best are on Steam.
Overlay
The overlay built into Steam is activated using shift+tab, one of the oddest combinations ever. I accidentally hit the combination every so often when checking stats while running/walking in game. Yes, I bet I can change it, but I shouldn’t have to.
The overlay itself has almost every function steam has out of game (voice chat, instant messenger, store, server browser, friends list and statuses). It’s handy, until it randomly pops up and annoys you. Oh well.
Overall Quality
Overall, Steam is the best for buying new games because of their cheap prices, but there are better options out there for instant messengers and voice chat. It’s handy to see who is playing what games and having the ability to invite them to play, but Steam is bulky and likes to glitch up every so often, especially when it’s updating or downloading games. It’s a shame Steam has such a monopoly on electronic distribution, but maybe I’ll find more luck with Impulse or the future Xfire.
You can get Steam at http://store.steampowered.com/
I agree with everything you have said about Steam. They have great prices, great games, and a pretty good community. Language is going to be a problem with anything involving the internet and teens. However, there is one thing about Steam that you forgot to mention. This would be their customer support. I have recently been experiencing multiple problems with everything about customer support. First, in order to get in contact with their support, you have to create a whole other account. This is not only frustrating when your already experiencing a problem, but just wastes time. Secondly, they rarely respond to anything that I say to them. This is not only me, but I have heard many people complaining about this. How can you call it customer service when they don’t service the customers? When I finally received an email back from them, it was not even a response from a person. It was just an automated response that was generated by a computer based on a few keywords within my email to them. This especially angered me because the email that was sent to me did not even address the problem that I was having. Another problem that I have with Steam is the fact that you cannot play a game that you bought from the STORE without an internet connection. The whole point of buying a game from the store is in case you do not have internet where you are. This is not only for the multiplayer games, but the single player games that should not even need an internet connection for. These are just a few of the many problems that i have with the whole Steam system.
Just a few things to think about.