Steam is product from Valve (the makers of half-life) and in few weeks, all Half-Life users will have to download it to be able to play online. This includes all mods for half-life. and well, no one have a say in it so esf will be forced to move on to steam.
Why? you ask! well if i have to answer it i will have to use tech terms. but i'll try: when you play online there must be something to verify your cd-key and to give you the server list and the players ect ect ... right now this thing is WON.net but soon it is going to die and be replaced by Steam, which you have to download when the next half-life patch comes. if you don't download it you will stil be able to play single player, but not multiplayer, because it will try to connect to WON, but guess what? WON will be dead!
so what is steam? well, vavle uses it to sell thier games, and to give you game patches/updates without you having to wander around looking for them on the net.
bad points:
-it has some issues at the moment. But i think when the time comes and you have to use it most bugs wil be fixed. some of these issues:
-you might need to download half-life all over again!!
-program freezes sometimes.
-for some people it just doesn't seem work right at all!
-relativly high system requirments (should be lowered ..)
good points:
-steam downloads updates automatically for you.
-if you have a valid half-life cd-key you will gain access to Op4 and maybe blueshift.
-you can alt-tab without losing sound
-new user interface
-instant messeging even while in games
-bleh .. I dunno. I'm not advertising steam
edti : Wizard's Curse beats me to it :/
