Enjay
ASK ME ABOUT FOOTBALL / STEAM / DEAD CELEBRITIES / THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
Posts: 3745
Registered: 12-00 |
fraggle said:
Why? What's wrong with it?
I've ranted about steam before on the forums, so I'll just dig up some of my old dtuff and quote myself. ;)
Enjay said:
Yup, Steam is absolute arse. I will not buy another game that requires Steam.
I bought HL2 on DVD-ROM - so I had the full game in my hand! I took it home, installed it - all went smoothly, then the whole Steam fiasco started. Over an hour later I was able to play. An hour! For a game I had a full disk copy of and had already installed! I could have played without an update, but Steam didn't give me the opportunity. It also means that, had I only had dial-up, or possibly a machine with no connection, I wouldn't be able to play the game even though all the data I actually needed to play was already in my sweaty little hands. What's more, every time I played, it delayed the start-up of the game.
Having that vile little program sitting in my system tray validating, checking for updates, getting news etc etc (OK, so I disabled what I could) was just pish. It is a clumsy, slow, badly written, unfriendly piece of crap and until Valve release a game that does not use it my days of buying their games are over. It acts as a barrier to getting the game started and playing and, in its default configuration, is a constant little resource hog sitting there interfering with anything you try and do on your computer. The negative aspects of Steam far outweigh any enjoyment I get from the games it polices.
Because of Steam, I uninstalled HL2 far quicker than I would have normally and now I have a couple of very expensive drinks coasters just sitting here - there is no way that crap is going back on my machine. But hey, what do they care, they got my cash right? Never again. Not whilst Steam is on the go.
I hope that the backlash against it has done some significant damage to the company. I hope thousands of people like me will refuse to buy Steam powered games in future and that such a reaction will be seen in their financial figures and cause them to realise their mistake. It would be just desserts - fair payment for them releasing it on the public, for the disturbance and frustration it caused and most of all, for thinking the public would be fine with it.
Enjay said:
It's not just that it ran like a pile of stale wank and tried to suck the life out of my machine at the same time: there's also a principle involved. Why should I host their fucking advertising and information gathering tool for them?
Plus Steve makes another good point that concerns me. I will not use another Steam delivered program. If other companies follow suit, I will not use their products either. The cost (not financial) isn't worth it.
Enjay said:
...but 14 meg for a little applet to verify your game and advertise Valve products at you? Fucking ridiculous! It shouldn't be running anyway. How much RAM do the little spy programs from other game companies take up? Oh, that's right... None because they don't use them.
...Well that wasn't an option, or at least not transparently so when I installed HL2, Steam just went online and fucked around for an hour to enable and update a game I already had installed on my HD.
...And that's more convenient than "whammo, I'm installing from disc" how? I like my hard copies. I have them. They're mine. They're in my house. Whenever I need them, I can pick them up and slam them in the drive. I don't need to go online. I don't need to worry about if the Steam server is up, congested or any of the other vagaries of the internet. No sign-ins no registering, no nothing.
...It never crashed for me either, that's about the only positive thing I can say about it. If I don't want it to run I just "right click, close"? What about if I don't want it running at all? Why should I want it running? Why do I need an extra program to allow me to play a game I bought on DVD?
Enjay said:
Again: Any of the supposed advantages that Steam brings can already be done by another and equally (if not more) convenient method that doesn't require a program to be constantly running in the background whilst you play or, worse, by default running ALL the time just in case you need an emergency bulletin about an essential new Valve product.
So, the customer gets no advantages from Steam that can't be done by other methods. So who benefits? The people advertising at you, getting information about your machine and its use and, yes, using it as a DRM tool. Steam is for Valve, not the customer. The customer does not need it, Valve does. None of that is conspiracy theory stuff: it's what Steam does.
It's main reason to exist is as a DRM application. Everything else is the sugar coating on the bitter pill. However, it's a pretty artificial sweetener. The conspiracy theory starts coming in when you think about where it will lead and, frankly, it's not really a wild, ill considered theory: it's logical and very likely. It's what the big publishers want. They have stated as much. Note: it's them that want it, to suit their ends - not yours.
Enjay said:
I don't want Steam - they pushed that on me. I want to install HL2 from my disks and run HL2 without steam running or even being on my machine. There is no reason a set of disks with the full game needs Steam. I don't want their news, I don't want their updates, I don't want their presence. I want a self contained game with no additional applications tied to it that I have to run just to enable the game.
I've ranted even more about it, and made a few more points, but I think that gives the main jist of what I've been saying. :)
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08-08-07 18:08 
