I'd say Steam botched the BioShock release

I don’t know how many big-time releases Steam has put out besides Valve’s own Half-Life games, but this one hasn’t gone particularly smoothly for me. Don’t get me wrong---I’m still glad I picked it up on Steam, because it means that I don’t have a game disc to lose, which I inevitably would.

But I would have liked to play the damn game.

The first sign of trouble was the confusing release time. Supposedly, I get to play the game as soon as it’s “officially released.” But it turns out that’s not midnight last night. Nor is it 9am when all the retail stores open and people can pick up a physical copy. In fact, it wasn’t even noon today, when the press release officially announced that the game was released.

The clock ran out at 1pm, at which point I had to re-start Steam to get it to believe that the game was released. OK, that’s not so bad. I pre-loaded the game three days ago, all I have to do is decrypt the files and---

Oh wait, it’s 82% done? I have to download another 700mb of data? What’s going on?

Next time, Valve, the process should be a few steps simpler. Update the Steam client so that you don’t have to restart to unlock a new release. And make sure that “pre-loaded” means “pre-loaded.”

You’re trying to be better than the brick-and-mortar stores, not 7 hours behind.

ps. I’ll post some BioShock impressions when I actually get to play.