Welcome to the new Respawn, coming at you every Monday. Well, hrm, I don't know. I don't specifically know if Respawn comes at you or if you come to it. Maybe Respawn is like one of those iron thrones and you must approach it, in order to consume it. Oh well let's talk about something that just pisses me off.

Let's talk about Steam games and how if you buy a game, but you don't buy the Steam version, then you can't play it on Steam. Now now now I understand you can add non-Steam games. You can do that. That's a thing. A thing that tells all of your Steam friends that you're in a non-steam game. Which means you didn't buy the thing on Steam.

Let me rephrase this into something more understandable. Landmark just came to Steam. Which is great! I'm so excited. "So excite." The excited one is me, of course. Yet the issue here is that I already have Landmark! I didn't buy it through Steam, so I can't play it on Steam. Dave Georgeson has this to say on the issue:

They're not dealing with it.

You know, I got all super excited to use that image.

Well, that's not uncommon. Tons of MMOs and other games will not give you a Steam key if you purchase it before Steam access. They just won't, you have to wait until it goes free-to-play or rebuy the game. The hilarious joke of all of this is that for MMOs, access to the game isn't defined by Steam. You can login with any account - it's nearly the same game client.

I don't know, it's kind of dumb. I think Steam for games that are behind a login screen should offer the ability to download it. It's not necessarily giving you the game for free, by any means, and it lets you play through Steam.

Then again I mean this is sort of kind of a little bit a first world issue right. Who cares if you can't play the game on Steam if you can play the game. Yet, in the same light, I do. So there is that. Since I care, it matters to me.

There is a ton of different solutions and, again, this isn't a thing to blame SOE for. I'm pretty sure Steam charges them per Steam key they generate. So, if they were to generate Steam keys for previous users, this would cost them money - money they necessarily don't have to spend since the game at one point should be free-to-play.

That's conjecture, as an FYI, so don't quote me on that and herald me as the leader of angry pissed off consumers. I've read a ton of different theories on it, but some are full with fallacy. For instance, some say it's a business decision by valve to prevent people from using up bandwidth that didn't pay Valve a dime. Yet, when it goes to free-to-play it's going to give everyone free bandwidth to download the game so…

I don't know. I'm not smart enough to theorycraft and morale enough to judge, but I would like to have Landmark on my steam so I can proudly show others that I'm playing it.

That's my two cents.

Oh, and just to put this out there: why isn't WoW on Steam yet? (this is a rhetorical question)

In the Bush with Xerin (ItBwX)

Hop in the bush with me this week as we talk about how dumb games without auction houses are. This is like 2014, not having a dungeon finder or an auction house is dumb. So, so dumb. Even TF2 has an auction house and that game is literally you running around as a whacked out crew of angry Russians. Shame on every game out there that doesn't have an auction house. If you agree with me, please like. If you disagree with me, please share. If you don't care, then do some jumping jacks please.

Oh and dude in Costco, if I have to tell you ~again~ that I use Netflix instead of cable and you keep forgetting while trying to sell me satellite, I'm going to start letting you talk about your sales pitch and waste your time and mine on principle.

~ Xerin

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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