It sounds to me like you're just trying to ridicule the arguments they've made. Their concerns are legitimate to them. Just because you don't care, doesn't mean they don't.

I'll never understand the desire some people have to defend a product. All products have bad parts, and some have good parts. Steam certainly isn't perfect, and neither is impulse. I don't think I've seen a perfect product in my life. Steam is merely very good.

Agree, but Steam fans will never see this. After all, everyone else's opinion is just something to ridicule right and therefore not legitmate. Hah. 

Can't see the forest for all of the trees.  The people talking about fanboyism are acting exactly the same on opposite sides.

Why don't we make this fair?  Because all you anti steam fanboys have done so far is list Steams negatives.

Steam:

Positives:

1.  HUGE selection of games

2.  Large number of gamers to game with

3.  Free xbox live

4.  Don't need discs anymore

5.  Good steam tools

6.  Team fortress 2 updates and free games like Alien Swarm

Negatives:

1.  Third party DLC

2.  Using chargeback would result in account being disabled

3.  Offline mode sucks

4.  Automatic updates (For some games like plants versus zombies, automatically removing the mj zombie sucked)

5.  Customer support

6.  If Valve died, all of your games are gone (No matter what people say)

Impulse:

Positives:

1.  Games install on hard drive like regular games, can be played without impulse application

2.  Good customer support

3.  Nice amount of non gaming applications

4.  Stardock games

5.  IMPULSETV

Negatives:

1.  Bad selection of games

2.  Games still install on HDD with drm

3.  Forum sucks

4.  Impulse is a carbon copy of Steam;  Most steam like features suck

5.  Stardock will still act like a non disk if they go out of business.  If your hard drive wipes you lose everything, unlike a dvd

It seems to me each program has their own good and bad features.

Now, am I suddenly a steam fanboy, or would anyone like to argue in a method that isn't anti steam fanboyish?

I am the first to admit that I do not like Steam over Impulse but that is because I do not like having to run steam (even in offline mode) for the games I do not play online.. However, I do use steam for the games I can't get from the Gamestop I work at or Impulse.. 

That said the only other thing I do not like about steam is the steam only releases... for that matter I do not like any release that has only one source of distribution..

I like owning the Disk over download...

I like Impulse over Steam.

I like Steam for when I do need it..

carry on....

I wasn't attempting to turn this into a flame war against Steam, but if you need a list of reasons as to the problems with Steam, I'd be happy to supply real, legitimate ones.

I agree that some of things used against Steam (including the ones you listed) are pretty hokey, though I personally hate auto-patching. Before you give me the schpeel about how you can disable that, if you have an older version of the game and want to reinstall after a newer version has hit, you MUST update to the newest version. In games that sometimes lose performance with patches (I'm looking at you, GTAIV), this can sometimes between the difference between a game with reasonable fps and making it broke in terms of performance.

That's just one of the smaller faults, I realize, but there are more.

All digital distributors have their pros and cons- fair enough. The problem is, a lot of Steam's cons are self-inflicted. They could easily be improved, yet Valve never does (and it's part of the reason why I think they're gunning for a monopoly). When people criticize Impulse, the reasons are usually not controlled by Stardock, if they even provide reasons. Does it suck that Impulse still is lacking certain publishers or not getting their latest and greatest? Yeah, that does suck. But I doubt it's Brad taking a phone call from Rockstar and saying, "No thanks- we don't think selling GTAIV would be a good thing for our service."

My personal goal in this matter is to make sure that we always have a service available to us that balances the rights of consumers with the rights of producers. If that means making suggestions to Valve and they alter their ways, I have no issue with that. If that means I have to support their competitors who do it right/better, then I'll just do that.

I'm sorry, but your pros and cons aren't particularly well thought out.

For the pros of Steam, 2 has nothing to do with Steam. If you're playing Modern Warfare, that has nothing to do with Steam unless you bought it through Steam. Having Steam doesn't increase the number of people you can game with at all. Number 3 just makes no sense. Number 5 is only relevant if you're a developer (and within a few days, Impulse will have a similar offering). Number 6 is also irrelevant- if you count TF2 updates as a plus, then what are the GalCiv2 updates or the upcoming Elemental updates? It's good when companies do that, but it's nothing to do with Steam or Impulse- you could not be on either of these and still do this. And yeah, Alien Swarm is a free game, but there are dozens of other free games out there...I doubt anyone is going to become a Steam customer because they offered a free game once.

I also noticed you said that Steam allows you to play games without the DVD and listed it as a plus, but failed to do so for Impulse. What game do you buy on Impulse that requires you to pop in a disc at the same time? Also, some Steam 3rd party games feature extra DRM that is installed on your computer, just like Impulse. Criticizing Impulse for that and not Steam makes your list look extremely slanted.

And I'd love to hear your idea how Impulse is a carbon copy of Steam. Because they both sell games? Impulse is mostly a store/downloader/updater. That's all you'd really use the client for. Steam wants to be integrated with every game.

As I just stated in my other post, most of the criticisms with Impulse, while fair, aren't exactly under the control of Stardock. The only one from your list is the forums, which I agree are wonky but pretty irrelevant to Impulse. Unless my memory is poor, the two accounts aren't linked. Again, it's fair to criticize this, but while Stardock may share some of the blame, publishers are also to blame as well. It's not like Stardock can grab the code for Borderlands and throw it up on Impulse without 2K's consent.

1) You're right and I should've been more clear on the matter. I did mean that if you archived the version of the game that you want to play on with Impulse, you will be able to use that version without being forced to update (Steam will force it). I do realize you couldn't install the 1.0 of a game and then want to play the 1.3 version when 1.7 is the newest. You would've had to restore the 1.3 version.

I'd like to see it, sure, but it's not one of my higher priorities at the moment.

2) I do hope Reactor does well and takes off with publishers. Not so much because I can buy those games on Impulse but because I could buy them anywhere and not have it tied to Impulse. And yeah, it will make Steam better, which is why I encourage people not just to accept Steam/Impulse/whatever for just what it is. They all could be improved.

However, one thing I think that should be high in priority for Stardock is to make sure Reactor chatting can work with a program like Raptr. One fair criticism of GFWL is that once you close your game, you can't talk with anyone. I think integrating it with another chat program would serve Reactor's interests best.

I still think it's funny, though. Just last night on a another forum, I saw another PC gamer that refuses to buy Elemental because it's not on Steam and he doesn't want to "have to manage 4 accounts." Amazing- PC gamers, who spend time researching parts, building their own rigs, customizing and tweaking it, all of which can be enjoyable but are time consuming, speak as if signing up for multiple accounts is a colossal pain in the ***. Just incredible.

Most likely they spent three times as much for some Alienware junk system they think kicks butt and couldn't tell you the difference between a CPU and a video card. 

As a totally random aside, Alienware is not the Alienware it used to be. They've come down in price to be comparable with other companies now, and they're pretty good dollar-per-pound. 

I got tired of building systems (it's tedious and boring once you're to the point you've built a few hundred of them, and look at the market guys, you're not saving any money anymore unless you're going straight to the very-top-end, which is wasted money anyhow), did my research when my old computer burned up, and frankly Alienware was closest to the system I wanted at the price I wanted.

It's been an excellent system. So, yeah, 5 years ago, I understand all the AW hate, nowadays? Some of their lines are right on the pricepoint you would be, and pretty solid. Also I swear this thing's case is made of lead, it's like a bajillion pounds.

7. Achievements

That's a major point of me having bought Worms Reloaded. I want people to see how good I am at the game and I like to compare achievements with people.

Using impulse, you can create "archives" which are copies of your install. Then you can burn them or store however you want. Obviously, this will only help you play singleplayer (as multiplayer requires impulse auth).

Steam has something called "backup local gamefiles", but I have never used that so I am not sure how it functions.