When Steam released the most recent Civilization IV expansion, things went fairly smoothly, and I got the game before any of the stores around town had a boxed copy in. So I figured, why wait? Just download Bioshock via Steam, save a trip to the store, great.

The release was set for 4:00pm, whereupon the game would be unlocked and you would be able to play immediately. I had all the files pre-loaded last night. This is what Steam said at 4:35pm today:

An extra hour isn’t much to pay, I guess, but I know people who took off work today to play this game. And having a release at 4pm when boxed copies have been sitting in stores since the morning is just stupid. Plus, what was the point of pre-loading the game when you still have to download 400MB upon the game’s release?