Yes I'm a noob to computers,to gaming on the PC, to IPODS...well you get the picture. What exactly is steam? Is it just a place to buy/download games? Is it any different than just buying a game and downloading it yourself? I ask this because I will be purchasing Black Ops and saw people were pre ordering on Amazon,Game stop,Newegg and steam. What exactly does steam offer that these others don't? Sorry for my noobness!!!  Unfortunately I'm not a noob in age!!!! Thanks!!

Steam will in fact be required for the new call of duty black ops game... even if you buy it from the store. But steam is basically a program that runs in the background and you can chat with friends that you've added, you can buy games and download them from steam, you have your own steam profile, etc... It's actually quite useful.

Continuing Immolation's thoughts, Steam essentially saves your installation media on THEIR servers.  If you machine eats your install CD before frying the HD (yeah, I know but wait for it) then you can just stand up your new machine, log in to Steam, and install the games again.

I have BC2 and medal of Honor through steam and am quite happy with it.  I thought early on that Steam may have been my problem with BC2 but I have since learned it's just a combination of the game's handling of latency and the servers I was playing on.

get Steam.  Enjoy it.

I like how Steam automatically updates and patches my games for me.  Easily joining friends in game through Steam is cool as well. I think we all at one time may have been leery of Steam but turns out it's a nice thing to have.

The only bad thing about steam is having to wait for the game to come out. It tends to release there games later in the day. Just ask Immolation about his wait time for MOH lol

Thx for the help guys. One more question. Is steam something I should create an account with now or just wait till game comes out?

not sure that matters.  You can if you want but there isn't a real benefit.  I do know that they offer some pretty good deals on games and sometimes Steam accounts have access to betas and demos that might be harder to find in the "real world" if you will.

It's whatever you want to do man.

Steam has amazing sales compared to just about everywhere else.

Another great thing you can do with Steam.  You can backup your entire steam games folder to another hard drive.  Then if you need to reinstall windows or get a new computer or something you can just drag that folder back in to the Steam folder and it installs all your games.  No need to redownload anything.

tet thats almost true with steam i still checks that the files are correct after a re-install i believe atleast

There is nothing like a hard copy of a game! I like that "vs" steam.

no offense but "hard copy " is one doy going to be a thing of the past and its only a psycological thing .... with steam so long as your accout is valid (ie not banned ) you library shows all your games and their current state on your machine.... not installed/installed/ready to play.
Until bfbc2 came out and i got it on steam my account had been inactive for years, was for to install the old half-life series and replay them.

not implying anything here but a warning... you get caught hacking by V.A.C. and ALL of your games are gone as it bans your acc. Thats 1 small benefit to help keep hackers down, if they have others games they would be put at risk.

When Steam first came out I was not a fan but it is growing on me. I have pre ordered COD BO and plan to now use it for all my games.

GOA.Luke*BK*

I am glad that you all posted this.  I have heard Luke talk about it in TS3 but only knew of Steam with HalfLife2.  Time to get reacquainted.  Downloading now .  .  .

Good input here everyone!  Just wanted to add that buy a game (hardcopy) or download a game that requires a steam account to play, you won't be able to sell that game.  I recently experienced this when I needed to unload my vast pc game collection (to get new games of course!), one of which was Left for Dead (hard copy) that the buyer couldn't activate.  There's is no way to transfer ownership of a Steam game.  This may not be applicable to most, but was for me in this case.

just a heads up on the resell issue, there are rumours that they are planning on allowing this but only though steam and the money will be credit to you account rather than actually given any money

but this is still only a rumour