My problems are definitely idiosyncratic. I had already said that I had it working on an old machine, so the problem is almost certainly RELATED to my installed software or my cheap Acer computer.

That said, it doesn't matter what caused the problem I am having with Steam. The problem I am having has already claimed hours of my time trying to get around it, and it seems intractable. Also, trying other Steam products is not appealing even if they'll refund my money because a) I have already proven there's a problem and spent hours trying to solve it despite having 37 years professional experience debugging computers (I'm that old), getting the money back is a hassle I don't need, especially when I bought the software from somewhere other than Valve directly (yes, Amazon will make exceptions to their policy of not accepting "returns" of electronic software distribution [ESD] games).

From the poll I saw on a Stardock forum, about 7% of users won't buy Steam products. True: some of these people might be ignorant, some might object to having yet another program running not under their control on their computer and some might be basing their objections on Valve's marketing strategy, but some of us are none of the above.

Steam doesn't suck completely. If you haven't been bitten, you probably don't know what a pain it can be. More power to you.

Me, though, I will steer clear and advise anyone else who has any problem at all not to try to solve it but to just get their money back and follow my example. I also encourage vendors to accommodate people like me and use non-steam ESD.

Fair enough- As I said in my second post I was probably venting some olf irritation superimposing generalizations on your specific case.

That said again, if you don't plan to keep playing Rebellion you should pursue a Refund- Steam is usually pretty good about those when someone is dissatisfied with what they got for their money.

Dude, hes trolling and nobody is ever going to ask for a refund on rebellion even if they say they will.