What benefits are there to play the Steam version?

From what I can tell, the Steam version simply introduces a middle-man between you and GGG's servers that can screw you over at any moment. Various aspects of the game are modified to depend on Steam infrastructure and if any of that infrastructure fails/goes offline then you'll either:

1) Be unable to log in to the game.
2) Randomly disconnect from a existing game session.

Even when GGG's own servers are functioning perfectly fine and you have a stable connection to them, if something buggers up on Steam then you run a good risk of being screwed over.

So, seriously, why do people even use the Steam version and not simply use a non-steam version added to Steam as a non-Steam game shortcut (I assume people use it for the Steam Overlay)?

It's not about YOU dingus, its the exposure PoE gets by being on steam. Why don't people understand that? No one is forcing you to use Gabe's DRM.

"

Zepidell wrote:

It's not about YOU dingus, its the exposure PoE gets by being on steam. Why don't people understand that? No one is forcing you to use Gabe's DRM.

From what it seems the main benefit is the ability to post "the sky is falling" graphs about player numbers.

Autopatch when I turn my computer on.

To clarify, this doesn't affect me personally. My friend switched from the regular client to the Steam one because he considered it more convenient at the time. However after various disconnects that he encountered that I did not (While we were partied) he's given up on it and has switched back to the regular client.

I believe his friend might switch to the regular client too as the recent Steam downtime has brought to their attention the issue of stupidly not being able to log in to a game that largely depends on stuff unrelated to Steam.

I just like having all my game in steam. Nice list and auto updates with steam ingame gui. Downtime is a bitch though.

Anyways, I see there are other, harsher threads on this topic and I didn't mean to create yet another thread on the issue (Though technically I'm not discussing the issue, I'm sure this thread would devolve in to the same topic as those other threads anyways).

I can't play right now because I play through Steam and Steam is down ;^;

Well one of the reason is downloading, patching speeds Compared to regular client