When the program looks for the graphic and sound files it looks to where the store bought copy would've been installed.  Since a game purchased on Steam is put into the Steam directory instead it can't find the files and doesn't work.  I'm talking about non-steam games purchased through steam.  There are ways around it like copying all the files into a folder with the original game name but that means having 2 copies of the game filling up the hard drive. 

It's not Steams fault if a mod/patch program cant read install locations from registry. I never install games to default directories anyway.  Default locations is usually Program Files and on vista/w7 systems this is a bad idea for a lot of games.

I don't have a long bootup time for steam, but I'm not sure I see what difference it makes - there's no reason for me to ever turn Steam off.    Sure, if you only have 1 or 2 Steam games, I can see why you might view it as an unnecessary extra-program. But when you have several Steam games you just leave it running. Especially if you start adding people as Steam-friends, and use it to organize gaming sessions.

And if more of your games are Steam than not (like me), you use Steam as your game launching center for everything.  (I love that you can add non-steam games to the list, and sometimes even get the Overlay. Heh.)

I guess what throws me most about Steam-anger is that the complaints always seem rooted in that it's DRM, rather than anything else about steam... its well known that the DRM aspect of Steam is extremely weak. Steam was designed as a patching service, then evolved to a digital distribution service. DRM has always been a distant third - publishers looking for actual DRM for a Steam release put in their own.  Steam lists such DRM on the store page when its present. 

I hate Steam because of the DRM, but namely one aspect of it:   if you're not connected to the internet, you can't play the games.  That's BS.   And then they gather statistics of how many people play their game & how often--there is no way you can do this and NOT gather private information.   Besides the privacy issues, what do you think is the first thing I want to do if I'm not connected to the net/don't want to connect to the net?  Play my games.

I got Steam for one reason only:   Napoleon: Total War.  Awesome game.  Steam gives that otherwise good game a black eye.   This is my first experience with Steam; I'm not buying any games that require it again.

Just for the hell of it I timed both Steam and Impulse today. I recorded the time it took for them both to start up and reach their respective homepage. It took steam 15 seconds and Impulse 5 seconds on my machine. Now I like both of them but in the end I do prefer Impulse. Impulse is just prettier and faster under the covers.

Did you not read the OP? I specifically said that that's not the case anymore. And I find steam to start up faster than impulse on my machine,but not by much. I wish I could keep impulse running in the background like steam so I can go to it immediately.

It was Kane's Wrath.  My buddy couldn't get the  map maker to work since it would say the directory with the files it needed didnt exist unless he copied all the files from the steam folder into a folder named EA/Kanes Wrath.  If steam offers the game with the map editor which it sometimes does it isn't an issue but they don't have that for all the games that don't require Steam.

I don't hate steam but will try to buy my games elsewhere if possible.

"too bad it can take weeks, sometimes even a month or two for a game to get a patch on Steam"

Yes, that is the biggest crock.

Then I would specifically say you're wrong.   When my internet goes out, I cannot play Total War:Napoleon.   It does not start.  Period.  I could care less about Steam; I just want to play the #$#$ game I  bought.   When & how often I play my game is none of Steam's damm business.

he probably hadnt logged into steam on that session.

just leave steam running tetleytea...

i still think its absurd that people are citing steam as a primarily DRM when thats really not what its about.  a lot of the games that are Steam-only, its because they are using Steam's capabilities as a whole... not because publishers trust Steam to stop piracy. (They don't.)  A Steam-only game means patching is easy from the developers perspective, it means steamworks, it means built in player-ID/community/achievements et. al..  Impulse::reactor will be that way too presumably.  One stop shop solutions are a big reason DD is breaking down the traditional distribution model.

As for slow patches... it does happen, by a few days. longer than that is because the developer delayed sending it to Steam, not because of faults on Steams end.  (Well, unless the whole steam staff is on vacation - which they usually are christmas-new years, heh.)  Sometimes developers think of patches as still a little beta and delay posting to steam until the next patch.  This happened with Space Empires V, IIRC.

Impulse has the same deal with slow patches, I had issues in this respect with Fort Zombie. 

D.R.M. Software, or Digitial Rights Management software, is software that - strangely enough - allows the user to manage the software that they have the rights to in the ways that their licenses permit.  Things like downloading, installing, updating, playing, backing up, multiplayer, etc.  These are the things that the EULA for games grant the End User.  Steam is quite literally the definition of DRM Software.

For over a year I had this problem and still have some problems with running Steam in offline mode properly. In this case Steam worse than Ubisoft DRM. Also it takes around 2 minutes to launch Steam and 5-10 seconds to open Community/Store tabs EVERYTIME.

I was a big fan of Steam last year but now i'm dissappointed in it and Valve policy in general.

Well, in that case, buying the boxed game means not having to download the 6 or more gigs worth of content in that box from steam. You only create a steam id and download just a few 100s mb of patches instead.