Steam, what is it?

[MrGaribaldi]

As some of you may have noted here, I have a couple of questions about Steam.

And before you ask, yes I have gone over the Steam site, but it hardly answers anything.

What is it?
If I download a game with it, can I play it without loading Steam?
I'm using GameSpy 3d to find games and would like to do the same with HL2 and any other game I'd buy through Steam.

If I download HL2 from Steam, will I be able to install it on another machine without Steam on it?
(Will I get an ISO like you do if you buy Savage over the net, or?)

When you enter your cd-key into steam, will you be able to play with that key on another system where you have the game installed, but don't have steam installed?
(Will the cd-key be bound to the Steam Id, so as to make it useless for any other machine?)
This also begs the question, since you only get a "buy-key" and not a cd-key this leads me to think that you'll only be able to use any game downloaded through Steam.


One of the reasons I'm so curious about Steam is that I don't want to start using a system which might fail and leave me with several unusable games.
And I don't want to be stuck to using only valve's system if I want to use Gamespy 3D, or another system.

So all replies appreciated.

 

[Masque]

Mr. G, the only question I can actually answer without sounding like a complete arse is the one about using Steam-only. I've got Steam loaded and currently have HL2 pre-loaded per Steam and Counter-Strike:Source beta loaded. I use All-Seeing Eye for my server picks and once those games are loaded on your machine, ASE sees them as say.....Counter Strike Steam, Half-Life Steam, Day Of Defeat Steam and so on. You CAN launch from an outside server monitor...at least this one.

As it's tied to your account, I'd "assume" you could load it on another machine using that account but you might be limited to playing it from one machine only (via internet) but possibly both machines on an internal network. Once again, that's simple conjecture.

Maybe someone else can fill in the blanks.

 

[DigitAlex]

The all seeing Eye has nothing to do with Steam.
If you just install games and the Eye, it still sees them perfectly

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Thank you, that answeres some of it

I've also found out that you can download a game on one computer and use it on another, but only as long as the game does have Steam installed (you will only get a steam file, which is unreadable without Steam installed).

Hopefully there are more people who can shed some light on this issue.

But at least I know that if I do go the way of Steam, I'll still be able to use other game finding apps
(Searching GS3D to see if they support steam games)