Importance of Online Game Retailers

We all love Valve, right? They've, you know, created pretty much the biggest pieces related to gaming in the last dozen years. Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and they even have Counter-Strike under their damn belt. But let's face it, Steam is the place to go if you want to buy a game for your PC. What with all the sales that are constantly going on, finding something that both appeals to your tastes and your wallet isn't hard at all. It also doubles as a F*CKING WEB BROWSER (and a damn fast one at that) and gives free online support for many games, making it the biggest software for a PC gamer's computer.

Then you have your consoles, which too need themselves some love and affection to your rough & tough hands. It has a sexual need for you to put that disc in them and play with them. It's just a natural thing. And, if you have no money, going to Game Fly is a great thing to do. It's cheap and you can keep 2 games at a time for as long as you want or buy the game if you like it enough (just pay shipping and handling :D).

And today, I feel we need these online retailers. While there are far more for me to count, (Direct2Drive, and even friggin' Amazon) they help move the industry forward. GameStop, however, isn't doing as well as they used to (please say they go away and GameInformer dies!) due to the online competition. I mean, seriously, when you can download games right from the PlayStation Network or from Xbox LIVE, what need do you have to go out, waste your gas, get the game, proceed to waste more gas, come home, play the game for 3 days, waste some more gas, sell it for far less than you bought it for, waste more gas coming home, and then become bored out of your f*king mind? Or... you can install Steam which takes 5 minutes, look at the game you want that's probably on sale anyway, then take a minute to put in your credit card information and not leave the house?

For many gamers, online retailers are the better option (unless you want the game system, in which case making GameStop only temporarily useful for the next 3 or 4 years) and why wouldn't they be? They're so easy to use and quickly get you into the game. IF you get off work and are trying to figure out whether to drop by EB Games on the other side of town to grab a game or go home, f*ck EB Games and go pull up Steam or Game Fly and buy it/rent it. There's no reason we should have to suffer for crappy customer service, either, though GameStop/EB Games doesn't care (I say these guys because they're the only ones I really know of. And Blockbuster? Not really...)

So, which would you pick? Boxes or your money to get more damn games? I pick the second one.