I like Steam as well but you'll agree that Steam is kind of a resource-hog. It takes a long time to load and uses quite a bit of memory running in the background, not something I'd want when I'm running an already demanding game. That's one of the reasons why I always recommend Sprocket, because you don't have to run a separate program in order to run the game.
And I'd say that simply downloading a 400 Mb patch is much easier and faster than being several hours 'behind schedule' (if not more than that) while waiting for the patch to appear on Steam. It has happened several times when we were getting ready to play an ArmA 2: CO session and one of our Steam users couldn't play because Valve or BIS hadn't updated the Steam version yet, while the rest of us were already in the briefing screen. There's even a long-running thread on the BIS forums about the various problems people are having with the Steam versions.
Sprocket > Steam, when it comes to BIS games for sure.
I don't doubt that some people have problems with ARMA and Steam but for me it's no problem. All of the people I play ARMA with have the Steam version so we're all dealing with the same wait. I can see why it can be frustrating for others though.
As far as Steam being a resource hog, I haven't run any official benchmarks but I really can't imagine it affecting performance all that much. There would be articles every single week complaining about something like that. And considering I'm running a machine that's decent but hardly top of the line and I'm getting great performance on every game I play I just don't care about that most likely negligible percent.
Dwarden said:@Nimsky You aware that the retail patches (not the DLC ones) are compatible with the STEAM version too?
it's just not 'officially' supported route
Would this affect future auto patching from Steam? Say I manually updated my version on Steam but then the official Steam update comes, what happens then? Do I have to continually manually update from then on out or will it still function like I never did anything manually?
Also I still don't understand the process of Steam updates. If I understood you correctly, you said that you must replace large parts of ARMA through Steam whereas you don't have to do that with retail updates but then you said if Empire gives you 1gb of content then the patch is 1gb. That sounds like two different systems. And if you're saying you can install the smaller patch manually to the Steam version then why is the auto-update so much larger if it's supposed to be doing the same thing?
Btw Dwarden, thanks for being so active in the ARMA Series Steam forum, the BIS forums, and here. There only seems to be a few other developers with directly helpful feedback to the community like you offer to the fans.
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