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In fact, what happens if you lose your Steam files -- does it just throw you a fresh copy?

Yes. If your hard disk goes bad and you don't have a backup, merely reinstall steam and sign on with your ID and password, and it'll send you fresh copies of all the games.

The only important thing that you can't lose is your Steam user ID and password. As long as you've got that, you'll always have whatever you've bought through steam and it'll just re-download.

In fact, you could have the game downloaded and installed on multiple computers under that steam ID. Whichever computer you log into with that ID, it downloads whatever games you feel like playing.

Think of the steam files as just a local cache of online content. In fact, the store-bought CDs are merely a copy of this set of cache files, no different than what you'd download. The only difference is that the store-bought CD slowly go more and more out of date as they make updates and patches to the game.

There is a feature within Steam that allows you to zip your steam files into nice CDR-sized chunks for backup, but really I'm not sure it's even worth it, since it's kind of the equivalent of backing up your "temporary internet files" folder. All it saves you is the time to re-download the game, and if you're on broadband that's just an overnight run.


I must echo the sentiments expressed about the game. I expected that last night I'd play for an hour and then go to bed.

At 4am I was still wide awake and utterly rivited. This morning I called in a vacation day. It's that good. No spoilers, but there are many MANY moments of "this is so utterly cool" alternating with "HOLY CRAP" jump-out-of-your-chair startles. There are scenes where you're doing things that are just beyond cool and fun, totally immersed.

And I haven't even gotten to the cool scenes they showed in the E3 videos.
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Tony Fabris