I'd be careful when contemplating buying it on Steam. I'm sure it'll be fine, but non-Steam games can turn into kind of a mess on Steam if the relationship with the publisher goes south. What I mean is...sure CD Projekt Red designed the game, but it's publisher is Atari, and Steam may be getting it through a deal they've made with Atari (looks like they are). Problem is, with Steam games the patches have to come automatically through Steam, and Valve is very rigid about only updating games they get an official, legal patch from the publisher for. Actually, this is all better explained with something that happened that actually got me banned from the Steam forums (I made a sarcastic post):
I got STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl on Steam since it was cheap. The game is developed by GSC (Eastern European as well) but published in the US by THQ. As such, Valve can only update the game with patches they get from THQ, since legally that's who they have the game through. Simple enough, but GSC has had a falling out with THQ. So basically what happened is GSC put out the 1.6 patch for STALKER:SOC, and it works fine with retail versions. Problem is, because of the falling out, THQ doesn't recognize the US 1.6 patch, since they didn't get it from the developer because of the falling out. Well, guess what that means for people who bought it through Steam? No patch! The folks at Valve were decent about it. They posted on their forum how their hands were basically tied because of THQ, which is fair enough. The reason I got banned though is they kept locking threads where people were expressing their dissatisfaction, and I posted a sarcastic thread likening Valve to fascists(for the closing of threads, not the lack of patch).
So basically, there are a ton of people out there with Steam copies of STALKER who can't play it multiplayer because Valve can't patch it. I admit it isn't Valve's "fault" necessarily, but I just wanted to post my little story here so that people will be aware of it when deciding to order through Steam, as I noticed it does appear Valve has the game through a deal with Atari, not CD Projekt. I'm sure it'll be okay...I'm just very skeptical of buying non-Valve games on Steam because of the potential for problems like this. Might just be safter to get a retail copy that you KNOW you'll be able to update in the future.
Thanks for the heads up! Steam was a last resort. I figure if I have to download the game, I mind as well download it as a free patch since I have the original game. However, as I mentioned in another thread, I am having one hell of a time finding a Canadian retailer!
