What games are you playing?

[Daniil]

You said you can also click on the game's icon to launch it. Does the mean you don't need Steam to play it? I'd like to avoid Steam entirely if possible. It's a waste of resources plus I prefer to play the game by myself -- no friends, no multiplayer or anything like that. To ask the question another way - what if you download the game and then uninstall the Steam app from the computer. Will the game play?

Yes, you required Steam to play the game. Game has a protection library inside of it, which deny it to launch without Steam. But don't worry, Steam is very stable and fast app, it won't eat much.

About money required by Steam Shadow.97 already descripted everything very well.

[humbert]

$5 is only for participating in the community, adding friends etc.
Most of us bought some game and therefor passed this threshhold.
Can send you a link with my friend code if you want to add me If you end up paying $5
I've used steam actively since 2008 and can barely imagine life without it.

By all means do give me your friends code. Of course I've played games before but none had anything to do with Steam. This would be the first one.

As for the $5, all I have to do is buy some cheap game or some other stuff I don't intend to use? Any recommendations?
I feel this is necessary because the forums are usually a vital source when it comes to getting help.

[Shadow.97]

$5 is only for participating in the community, adding friends etc.
Most of us bought some game and therefor passed this threshhold.
Can send you a link with my friend code if you want to add me If you end up paying $5
I've used steam actively since 2008 and can barely imagine life without it.

By all means do give me your friends code. Of course I've played games before but none had anything to do with Steam. This would be the first one.

As for the $5, all I have to do is buy some cheap game or some other stuff I don't intend to use? Any recommendations?
I feel this is necessary because the forums are usually a vital source when it comes to getting help.

I personally do not really use the forums all too much. I use reddit, discord or youtube if I require help.
If you havn't checked in discord communities, I would give it a strong recommendation. It's my primary source of socialising nowdays.

I forgot to mention, I'm fairly certain that $5 is every 2 years or something. My secondary account got the lock again after I didnt put any money in it for a few years.

The reason the introduced it was due to huge amount of scams, porn and other stuff that was too hard to moderate. I used to get daily friend requests and completely disregard their forums due to the amount of spam. Unfortunately hijacked accounts/phishing is still common. Be weary of people who add you unprompted.

[humbert]

I personally do not really use the forums all too much. I use reddit, discord or youtube if I require help.
If you havn't checked in discord communities, I would give it a strong recommendation. It's my primary source of socialising nowdays.

I'm not very social and as such I don't know anything about Discord and Reddit. Are you saying these sites are massive forums where you can discuss just about anything, or are they limited to certain topics?

The reason the introduced it was due to huge amount of scams, porn and other stuff that was too hard to moderate. I used to get daily friend requests and completely disregard their forums due to the amount of spam. Unfortunately hijacked accounts/phishing is still common. Be weary of people who add you unprompted.

There's an old proverb: "the righteous pay the sinner's wages". This is a good example. With respect to people adding me unprompted, can I remove them or are they stuck there?

[Shadow.97]

I personally do not really use the forums all too much. I use reddit, discord or youtube if I require help.
If you havn't checked in discord communities, I would give it a strong recommendation. It's my primary source of socialising nowdays.

I'm not very social and as such I don't know anything about Discord and Reddit. Are you saying these sites are massive forums where you can discuss just about anything, or are they limited to certain topics?

The reason the introduced it was due to huge amount of scams, porn and other stuff that was too hard to moderate. I used to get daily friend requests and completely disregard their forums due to the amount of spam. Unfortunately hijacked accounts/phishing is still common. Be weary of people who add you unprompted.

There's an old proverb: "the righteous pay the sinner's wages". This is a good example. With respect to people adding me unprompted, can I remove them or are they stuck there?

Reddit is what I would say is a "Modern forum" or social media forum.
You have what's called subreddits, one example would be https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/ A sub for the game Factorio, if you ever are stuck with an issue what I do is google on "factorio cant rotate furnace site:reddit.com" and you get results specificly for the game.
If you have a reddit account you can follow either users or subreddits to get information about user posts. If they are frequently commented/upvoted/very recently posted they will have a higher chance of landing in your feed. You can tweak your feed to see hot/top(1h24h7d etc)/new posts first.


Discord is in a sense like a non-public-internet facing forum, with smaller groups generally speaking and is more focused on chatting and bonding with people over things in common.
It has screenshare, voice/video, livestream, channels and minigames.
You can join 'servers' for example if you download Discord and search for "factorio" there is an official one run by the game devs if i recall correctly, where there are sections about how tos, general chat, find friends and open voice channels where you can hop in and call with strangers about the game.

The expectations of a post is higher on reddit. I would not recommend asking "how do i rotate a furnace" on reddit, while i wouldnt really feel embarrased to do it on discord.
Discord in that sense is a live-chat where everything disappears after a day, while on reddit it becomes google-able for all of our kids to see.

Discord and reddit has servers/subreddits for everything you can imagine. All from lgbtq+, porn, how to videos, to moms discussing how to best feed their babies.

[humbert]

Thanks for the info. I'm seeing that on Reddit you can look around and read without having to open an account. Not so on Discord. You have to open an account and confirm it with a phone number and a text. I'm wondering if Discord is really worth the hassle.

[Shadow.97]

Thanks for the info. I'm seeing that on Reddit you can look around and read without having to open an account. Not so on Discord. You have to open an account and confirm it with a phone number and a text. I'm wondering if Discord is really worth the hassle.

Phone verification is only required on some popular discord servers to my understanding.
Is it a hassle to verify with phone? Most online services nowdays tend to nag about it so I gave up and started doing it on some.

I would strongly recommend opening a reddit account as a lot of communities do not allow you to post for 30 or so days upon registring to prevent spam. Then post some random comments in random communities as some communities have a 'karma' restriction, meaning you have to have a few "points"(upvotes) to be allowed in..

[humbert]

Phone verification is only required on some popular discord servers to my understanding.
Is it a hassle to verify with phone? Most online services nowdays tend to nag about it so I gave up and started doing it on some.

Do you believe Discord is worth it? Is it good enough to give then your phone number? Will they respect your privacy in that they won't sell it to spammers?

I would strongly recommend opening a reddit account as a lot of communities do not allow you to post for 30 or so days upon registring to prevent spam. Then post some random comments in random communities as some communities have a 'karma' restriction, meaning you have to have a few "points"(upvotes) to be allowed in.

Thanks. I'll do exactly that. 

[Shadow.97]

Phone verification is only required on some popular discord servers to my understanding.
Is it a hassle to verify with phone? Most online services nowdays tend to nag about it so I gave up and started doing it on some.

Do you believe Discord is worth it? Is it good enough to give then your phone number? Will they respect your privacy in that they won't sell it to spammers?

I would strongly recommend opening a reddit account as a lot of communities do not allow you to post for 30 or so days upon registring to prevent spam. Then post some random comments in random communities as some communities have a 'karma' restriction, meaning you have to have a few "points"(upvotes) to be allowed in.

Thanks. I'll do exactly that. 

I think I had 3 spam texts in my entire life. Maybe it's a different thing if you have a US number? I would not worry about giving them my number.

[humbert]

I think I had 3 spam texts in my entire life. Maybe it's a different thing if you have a US number? I would not worry about giving them my number.

Thanks. I've already signed up with Reddit as humb_11 and even posted a message. Let me check out Discord.