Personally I dislike steam. For one, since I got rid of my home broadband to save cash, I can't download any games through steam on my mobile broadband dongle since the speed is crap, 170kb at most in work, 40kb at most at home, and I only have a 5gb download per month. Also unless you have the space to backup your entire steam folder (mine was 67gb at one stage), you risk losing the lot if your install of windows ever needs re-installing for some reason, and then having to re-download everything from steam again. Steams fine if you have shed loads of HD space for regular backups and a fast internet connection, if you don't well, that's where stores that sell pre-owned PC games come in handy.