Well, it'd be kinda stupid to use steam ONLY for spiral knights, BUT pretty much every big game needs it nowadays,

Automatic logins means you don't need to bother typing your password every time you start the game up.

That is not steam exclusive.

Game can download updates in the background, patching up before you even think about starting it. (Thanks for finally adding that, OOO!

I thought that it was only updatable via the standalone patcher. Did they fix that by adding the newest patches to steam's database?

Gwen's right; I only got Steam for my friends. I honestly HATE Steam. I got the "Pillar of Community" badge on Steam, which was saaavvvyyyy!!! Out of my 3 or 4 games that I have on Steam, I mostly and only just play SK.

P.S. GWEN, ADD ME ON SK; we go way back, ever since Bebopx and Men of Sex/The Risen. I've changed; I'm no longer that annoying moron back from two years ago. I'm almost 21, ACEEEPT MY LOVEE

"I thought that it was only updatable via the standalone patcher. Did they fix that by adding the newest patches to steam's database?"

It appears they have! I haven't had to look at standalone patching since sometime before winter.

Dont forget, you dont have to log in to trade either if you have steam. You can trade with others with steam directly instead of logging in, switching servers and all that fancy stuff :P

Here's a glorious video on what you miss out on.

Steam is a platform for gaming. If you buy and play games on your computer, you should have steam. Here is why:

1. Steam can save you huge amounts of money (catch the right sales and you can literally save 75% on many games)
2. Almost all of my games are in one place.
3. I can chat with friends, no matter what game they are in, or even when they are not in a game.
4. I gifted OCH for $1.25...
5. Screenshot handling is fantastic, and allows you to VERY easily upload pics to your steam profile
6. You can't play Half-Life 2 without it
7. Humble Bundles come with steam codes
8. Most games update automatically
9. Contrary to popular belief, Spiral Knights does not lag any more than the standalone version
10. It's free
11. Did I mention access to several thousand games?
12. I can install steam on ANY, capable, internet connected pc, and play all of my games
13. My friends can come over, log into steam and play on any of my computers with their own games

All jokes aside, there are lots of reasons to use steam. I hated it when it first came out, but now, I would prefer to buy all of my software from steam.

The only reason I'd ever consider Steam is for the OCH Expansion, which is impossible to get as F2P without Steam.

But having to go through a meta-gaming client with thousands of games that I am not interested in and will never play, I don't want the extra needless program on my computer just to run Spiral Knights.

That, and I procrastinate against OOO's 'great idea' to try to force everyone to use Steam (I love you OOO but it's just silly) by failing to update their own game's functionality since 'anyone can use steam'.

~Sev

I only use Steam to play Spiral Knights and IM to friends in SK.

+You don't have to type your password every single time (Zeddy already said)
+You can buy OCH with CE/Crown/TF2 items etc (Zeddy already said). I've been able to be pure F2P because there is this steam trade/gift system.
+Friends list. You can see who are on SK without launching SK client. And you can ask a favour to your friends in SK to tell something to someone...bid something...and so on. (Batabii already said)
+You can see your achievements you have, and you can easily know when you unlocked. Also you can compare with other people using Steam.
+You can buy Steam games using CE/Crown/Items.
+Automatic updates.
+Screenshots manager. You won't see your SK screenshots flooded on your desktop.
+You can stalk people. I mean you can see what other people have in their inventory/arsenal.

-Slower loading. I had 2 SK windows opened. One is SK official account, and one is Steam account. They are both on the same computer, same window size, same graphic settings. Obviously, they went down the elevator at the same time. However the SK official account's client finished loading faster, while the Steam account was on 60%. (Not only once, mostly SK official account finishes loading faster)
-When there is a problem on Steam server or something, you can't connect to SK.
-Uses a lot of CPU and RAM. You need at least 4GB RAM to run SK and Steam at the same time (for me).
-Steam suddenly disconnects you. For no reason (apparently)
-It takes longer to reconnect when you disconnect due to your network outage or something. You firstly have to wait your Steam to connect to Steam server, then try to log in SK while you just have to type the password again to connect to the official SK account one.

I basically dislike Steam, but I cannot transfer Steam account to official SK account sadly.

@Eclaium

I only use Steam to play Spiral Knights and IM to friends in SK.

+You don't have to type your password every single time (Zeddy already said)
+You can buy OCH with CE/Crown/TF2 items etc (Zeddy already said). I've been able to be pure F2P because there is this steam trade/gift system.
+Friends list. You can see who are on SK without launching SK client. And you can ask a favour to your friends in SK to tell something to someone...bid something...and so on. (Batabii already said)
+You can see your achievements you have, and you can easily know when you unlocked. Also you can compare with other people using Steam.
+You can buy Steam games using CE/Crown/Items.
+Automatic updates.
+Screenshots manager. You won't see your SK screenshots flooded on your desktop.
+You can stalk people. I mean you can see what other people have in their inventory/arsenal.

I basically dislike Steam, but I cannot transfer Steam account to official SK account sadly.

yes we noticed you hate it just because of the biased bad points you are giving -_-

-Slower loading. I had 2 SK windows opened. One is SK official account, and one is Steam account. They are both on the same computer, same window size, same graphic settings. Obviously, they went down the elevator at the same time. However the SK official account's client finished loading faster, while the Steam account was on 60%. (Not only once, mostly SK official account finishes loading faster)

total BS, 99% of the time when playing i'm one of the first to connect/get off the elevator (yes even my alt on the SK client is still loading)

-When there is a problem on Steam server or something, you can't connect to SK.

yeah the 2 times in a year that steam servers have some problems -_- (wich they openly apolagise for... and as if the SK servers never go down huh?)

-Uses a lot of CPU and RAM. You need at least 4GB RAM to run SK and Steam at the same time (for me).

i think you need a new pc... or check your background apps... i can run my steam knight, my second steam in a VM machine AND my SK client all that and still doesn't use all my ram... so this is just BS. this clearly shows it's your PC has a lot of junk on it...

-Steam suddenly disconnects you. For no reason (apparently)

sure you didn't hit the disconect button or you didn't lose your connection??? how do you know it's steam that disconnects you? i had my SK client kick me on more occasions the short time i used it then on steam.

-It takes longer to reconnect when you disconnect due to your network outage or something. You firstly have to wait your Steam to connect to Steam server, then try to log in SK while you just have to type the password again to connect to the official SK account one.

and this isn't realy much of a downside... or are you so freaked out for having to wait a few seconds more? my steam loads within second, then also does SK... i'll be playing within 2 minuits. again could also be your own rig being filled with malware -_-

as for the pro's and cons... it's steam, do what everybody does! create a steam knight and see for yourself. asking it here on the forum you'll get these biased answers as i replied above. if you are planning on playing more games, steam is the way to go. the haters are people that crawled from under their rock when steam just seen the light of dawn... you can now even make real money with the comunity market... that allone should show it's a stable piece of software.

So you spend your precious time just to disagree with EVERY SINGLE POINTS that I've made.
Are you a Steam believer or something? You made a new religion?

I made 8 positive points about steam and 5 negative points about steam yeah? How is that biassed? If you say I'm biased, ain't I biased to the positive way?

I'm sorry but the disagreement you made for my first negative point totally does not make sense.
I'm one of the first people to finish loading in 4 men party with different people. It depends on your network and the spec of your computer. It is totally stupid to compare with other people. I compared with my main account on Steam and alt on SK official account, ON THE SAME COMPUTER. Your disagreement sounds like you compared with other people in your party. Yes, I know you wrote "yes even my alt on the SK client is still loading" in small brackets. But still, I CANNOT understand how you can write 99% BS. Also what is that language? I have written some kind of a pot with disagreements too but I've never used a swear word such as bull**** that you used.
Seriously, how can you say that NINETY NINE PERCENT? Here is a person with such result, the real person. Would I get benefit from ranting how bad Steam is? Nope, I do not get money, or the Steam team won't even improve those points because I wrote on SK forums not Steam forums.

-

Secondly, I'm sorry again but I ALWAYS run task manager on my Mac's tool bar. And my computer is Macbook Air, so tell Apple to improve their CPU and RAM they are using.
What I meant by this point is that if you are using SK official account/client, you don't have to spend your computer's CPU and RAM for Steam. But if you are using Steam account, you always have to run your steam client AND SK client which takes up a lot of RAM and CPU.
The way you disagree me is extremely rude. 2nd time to use a swear word that is filtered in-game, bull****. Also you're saying that I have "junks" on my computer. I wouldn't use that word to describe what you wanted to say. You're just offending me with those "bad" words, and showing off how your computer is perfect.

-

About that reconnecting point? If the reader thinks that the point I made there is not really a downside, then the reader will not even think about it anyways. Again you're showing off that your internet connection is perfect and you have NO problems at all.

-

Yep I'm sure I did NOT hit disconnect button or anything. This happened several times. One time, in FSC Depth 25 blocks room duo with Theirillusion (detailed information so that you wont say this story is made up or anything), my SK screen frozen suddenly. And I disconnected. Everything else's connection is okay but steam. And at the bottom of the steam window, it says "you're disconnected (I don't know how it looks like in English steam)" I can connect to forums, i can connect to google, I can connect to facebook. so that's steam's fault yeah?

-

Okay, let's assume that the steam server had problems only twice. But i did not finish my sentence at "if steam server have problems", I said "or something" which includes many other things for example TF2 update, which is a very popular game that can make the server busy when there is a major update. Does it matter if they apologise or not? Does it affect to the downside? Does it cancel out the downside point? Answer is nope. It does not matter.
Also SK server going down is the COMMON PROBLEM for Steam users AND SK official account users. So what is the point of putting that down to a thread about Steam advantages/disadvantages? There is no point at all.

-

I feel that YOU ARE *THE* PERSON WHO IS BIASED. You've never put any downside about steam, and you just disagreed about all my NEGATIVE POINTS I MADE.
You've just proven that you aren't a smart person that I respect, and you do not have any proper English vocabulary to replace bull**** that you like and even a 2nd language speaker knows.

OK then explain how you do it without steam.

That's weird, because I've NEVER had steam interrupt my game to do an update. In fact, it ASKS PERMISSION. So if you're still playing, just leave it or click "Restart later".

OK then explain how you do it without steam.

I never said you do it without steam, I said its not steam-account exclusive, which means that you don't need to bind your account to steam in order to access them. You can either launch the Spiral Knights steam application and login with your regular credentials, or you can load Java into steam as a non-steam shortcut with "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe" -jar getdown-pro.jar as the target and "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Three Rings Design\Spiral Knights" as the Start In location (Or wherever you installed Spiral Knights), depending on whether you want to manage the game's download via the steamapp folder or your appdata folder.
Either way, if you decide that you don't want to use steam, or if steam is down, you can still return to the standalone launcher, essentially gaining most the advantages of steam, while not being stuck with any of the disadvantages.

When someone says "What are the benefits of getting steam for Spiral Knights", 99% of the time they are referring to transferring their account to a steam account. I'm just showing that there are other ways of doing it.

BTW, another disadvantage for steam: It is a lot more difficult to multibox.

[quote]
-Slower loading.

-When there is a problem on Steam server or something, you can't connect to SK.

-Steam suddenly disconnects you. For no reason (apparently)

[/quote]

I do not experience these three problems. At all.

Another upside:

+Can use steam overlay to chat with friends while in-game (much easier than typing /r all the time, can also create group chats)

@ Post #22 to Kickthebucket

I'm totally speechless that such an apparently blind Steam Fanboys exist, absolutely gross and disgusting. Why do I say that? Look here:

Quote 1: "yeah the 2 times in a year that steam servers have some problems -_- (wich they openly apolagise for... and as if the SK servers never go down huh?)"

Hello, are you kidding us? Look here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=784745&page=39 - Now count the downtimes until January 2013. That are almost 20! It's a shame that lies like yours aren't punishable, but okay, that's the freedom of speech. And the SK servers have a way more uptime than Steam will ever have.

Quote 2: "i think you need a new pc... or check your background apps... i can run my steam knight, my second steam in a VM machine AND my SK client all that and still doesn't use all my ram... so this is just BS. this clearly shows it's your PC has a lot of junk on it..."

No comment, really, no comment... To get a new PC isn't a valid answer in my eyes, and then you even mention the thing with your VM's... do you even read what you post?! You incite the people to look how to heavily abuse the systems of Spiral Knights, like the thing with the energy and crafting.

Quote 3: "sure you didn't hit the disconect button or you didn't lose your connection??? how do you know it's steam that disconnects you? i had my SK client kick me on more occasions the short time i used it then on steam."

Don't act like that he or us are stupid, because we aren't! If the Steam servers goes down for whatever reason, it's possible to get kicked out of the game. A login is only possible if the servers are back again. Sometimes these downtimes are short, sometimes they are very long, in some cases about a hour!

Quote 4: "as for the pro's and cons... it's steam, do what everybody does! create a steam knight and see for yourself. asking it here on the forum you'll get these biased answers as i replied above. if you are planning on playing more games, steam is the way to go. the haters are people that crawled from under their rock when steam just seen the light of dawn... you can now even make real money with the comunity market..."

Yes, please people, look at Steam and see your pros and cons by yourself, but please don't be surprised if the cons will hit you more than the pros does. The dislikers of Steam don't want to sell their right to own games and don't lose everything if your account is falling down from the cliff because of a banhammer. Sadly it's clear that Steam is more and more the future of PC games, times where we all have to be careful that nothing happens to our Steam account, or everything is gone. Times, where you only own a software licence anymore without being able to make a backup to play it without Steam. Only some smaller games support the ability to start itself without Steam.

Quote 5: "that allone should show it's a stable piece of software."

Maybe it's stable, but it's a very CPU and RAM intensive application. Many people which can't read and handle the taskmanager think that Steam only uses 10 MB, I'm sure you are one of them because you must love Steam and it would be a sin for you if anyone says a true bad thing about Steam. I know people like you, trust me. I got insulted many times for telling the truth, and this time it will maybe happen again.

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and my text is not intended to insult anyone. Thanks!

And also +1 for Eclaium (post #24) which has my same correct view!

"Friends list: I'm pretty sure Hexzyle is assuming you're not playing other games,"

Why wouldn't I?

"+Can use steam overlay to chat with friends while in-game (much easier than typing /r all the time, can also create group chats)"

I play windowed mode, so I don't use steam overlay as much. Also I only find this helpful if they're NOT playing sk at the time. Also steam has OFFLINE MESSAGES which sk wants you to pay cr for (mail).

"and don't lose everything if your account is falling down from the cliff because of a banhammer"

Ummm what are you doing to get your steam account banned exactly?

" Times, where you only own a software licence anymore without being able to make a backup to play it without Steam. "

I don't know about anyone else, but most of my single player games can be played in offline mode, as far as I know. Of course valve games won't do it. I'm pretty sure even SK will play outside steam (with a steam login), but I don't really know my login without the steam launcher.

"Many people which can't read and handle the taskmanager think that Steam only uses 10 MB,"

right now (outside any game) steam.exe is reporting 22,140K under "memory (private working set)" on the Processes tab. So what part do you want me to read?