I have converted to steam

Take it from a former hater its not spyware. Are there any steam haters that converted here.

Now you're part of the problem!

Good one, I guess I am. Oh No!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, Steam is slow and horrible. I don't have enough gamer friends to warrant using it for a social networking platform, I don't always have uninterrupted internet connectivity, and I don't trust it to be around in 20 years.

Maybe I'm an old fogie, but I still like to have the actual game media in my hand, rather than on my hard disk. I don't buy enough new games that running to a store becomes a chore.[/rant]

I'm sure it's great for some people though.

I agree with most of this. I just recently tried Steam again and while yes, it has improved leaps and bounds over when I last tried it (which was when Half-Life 2 came out), there is still room for improvement.

It works great for games that have multiplayer or are solely multiplayer-oriented. My concern is still regarding games that are solely single player yet require you to activate the product online. I'm still scratching my head regarding this. I don't see the point (aside from their own games such as Half-Life 2, since it's their product; games like Metro 2033, however, leave me wondering what's the point). Like you said, not everyone has a stable connection, fast connection, or a connection period (of course, for those living in areas that either have dial-up or nothing in terms of connectivity, I imagine getting food on the table and paying bills is much more important, which is understandable).

I'd also rather have a physical copy of the game. However, I'd be willing to use Steam if I had issues with getting the physical copy. For example, I had bought the Painkiller Triple Dose pack off of Amazon brand new. Lo and behold when I opened it, there was no CD key. I was going to have to pay to get a CD key and I wasn't going to do that. Since all of the Painkiller games are on Steam, though, and I've been wanting to play them all (yes, even Overdose and Resurrection), I'm willing to dick with Steam to get them.

It's certainly not the one-size-fits-all solution I've seen and heard fanboys make it out to be, but there have been improvements done to it since it's been out that make it less of a headache. I'd like to see Steam become more relaxed/reasonable on games that are solely single player but I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon. \:

I saw the thread title and briefly thought of Maes.

Steam's not the worst thing ever and it's even somewhat decent (although the UI update last year has made it slow and unstable unlike what it was for a few years before then). I tolerate it, I don't love it nor hate it... and I'd much prefer a platform like GOG.com (though they don't do new games, and I somehow doubt their policy of cleaning up releases personally and having quality control will be feasible with a distribution platform as large as Steam is), where there is no DRM, no client, no need to log in to anything to _install_ and play the games.

Mithran Denizen said:

Maybe I'm an old fogie, but I still like to have the actual game media in my hand, rather than on my hard disk. I don't buy enough new games that running to a store becomes a chore.[/rant]

This.

I think it could be good for a backup type situation, say if you lose the physical copy of the game, but I would much rather have a the thing in my hand. Besides that, I don't much like the way the system is set up to begin with.

I've noticed Steam has actually succeeded in making me a lazy bum when it comes to PC games. I'm so spoiled by it that I'd rather wait for a large game to download than pop a disc in and wait for it to install and then input serial keys/activate shit. In fact, I've actually rebought a couple of games on Steam (such as Deus Ex) simply because I don't want to have to hunt for the disc when I want to reinstall the game. Plus I can install all of my games on different computers with very little difficulty.

My 'desktop' is a laptop that makes a ton of noise whenever it reads something from my cd drive. So I actually prefer having everything I play boot from a drive. And I don't really use the network for much - haven't played a multiplayer game on steam for a while. But I am almost constantly 'online' from simply not removing it from the startup programs, and it doesn't really affect the performance of other games.

I just prepurchased Portal 2 on Steam. Works for me.

Also, someone ban enjay from this thread.

I'm a convert. When it first came out, it seemed like a buggy piece of shit because my router and it had issues and it literally killed my internet connection. Then I reinstalled it about a year and a half ago, and I started buying the hell out of games with their sweet deals (I think it was Thanksgiving weekend at the time) and I love it for being an endless supply of cheap games. I actually love the fact that I now just have virtual copies of games, because my shelf of games has been fucking overflowing for years. Also, like AgentSpork I've become lazy and have re-bought a few games (like the entire Civ IV line) because it's way easier to use them and they were selling for cheap.

So yeah, I don't see what the big deal with it is.

Planky said:

I just prepurchased Portal 2 on Steam. Works for me.

Also, someone ban enjay from this thread.

Last post I read by Enjay was like 5 god damn paragraphs of how steam was evil or something. Didn't bother reading most of it since like I said, like 5 god damn paragraphs.

Personally I like Steam since it makes it pretty easy for me to jump into games with friends. Plus adding non steam games in leaves a lot of room for fucking with friends since it shows the name of what you're playing.

I don't always have uninterrupted internet connectivity, and I don't trust it to be around in 20 years.

That's what offline mode is for

My concern is still regarding games that are solely single player yet require you to activate the product online.

I've been wondering why developers do this myself. Probably just paranoia.

The only issue Ive ever had with Steam was when I first got it with The Orange Box. I registered it and installed Steam, then Steam went to download the games I had on the CD... I had to unplug my internet cable to force it to install from the CD.

Apart from that I think it's great, although I'm fucked if I ever change computer as I've forgotten my steam password.

Yay, another thread where the Doomworld assembly is evenly split over whether they like using Steam or not.

Mithran Denizen said:

I still like to have the actual game media in my hand, rather than on my hard disk.

Unfortunately, it was that situation where I had a physical copy that Started my dislike of Steam. I went to a store, bought a disk that had a full copy of Half Life 2 on it (and the packaging made no mention of Steam or the requirement for an Internet connection). I installed the game and then had to go through hours of forced upgrades that I didn't want and eventually get Nanny Steam's permission to play a game that I had physically walked in to a shop, paid for and received.


A similar situation happened to my son yesterday. Now, this is with an EA game so it is perhaps unfair to associate it with Steam, but it is an example of the kind of thing that worries me about systems like Steam.

He bought Battlefield 2: Collectors Pack and installed everything from the disk. The Collectors Pack contains all the game add ons, including 2 add ons called Euro Force and Armored Fury. Everything installed and the game worked.

However, when he tried to play any of the EF or AF maps, a popup appeared telling him that he needed to register the booster packs before he was allowed to play them (remember, he paid for them, they are installed, they exist on his HD, but he is not allowed to play them yet).

The popup provided a handy link to a web page so he clicked on it and his browser opened. Unfortunately, the page has been removed and the link auto redirects to a page advertising BF3 with no mention of BF2 or add on packs on it.

We tried going in to his EA account setting online and found no way to register the add ons through there. We contacted EA support who advise upgrading the game to the latest version because it contains free copies of the boosters that do not have to be registered.

Problem solved? No! The 2GB download will take days over our Internet connection (the main reason that he wanted a physical copy) and all he will be doing is downloading data that he already has a physical copy of simply to get the tiny tweak that says it's OK for him to play it.

(7 paragraphs, but they are all brief. :P )

I have decided to get Steam as well. As of last summer I am a steam user. I don't particularly like it though. But it is necessary for me to have it to be able to play games like Magicka... so I concede victory to the evil overlords at Valve.

That said, Steam has done a great deal of good for indie developers like the ones of Magicka. And that should not be forgotten.

Of course Steam seemed like a buggy piece of shit when it first launched. IT WAS. Years later however, and it has been refined to the point of excellence. It's so far ahead of any other Digital Distribution system out there.

Enjay: That situation right there is partly WHY Steam is so far ahead. It can detect and skip files it already has downloaded, for starters. I've only heard bad things about EAs DD service.

The greatest thing about Steam for me, though, as a rather empoverished gamer of late is the sales. There's always something on sale, Midweek or Weekend deals, and then masive sale with huge reductions around holiday times. There are loads of games I have that I would never have paid full price for, but 75% off? Why not?

I've been using Steam since HL2 launched, (and I tried the beta a bit before but there wasn't any real reason to use it then, it was just a concept) and I've watched it get better and better. I have no worries about Steam disappearing in 10-20 years and losing my games. Even if the unthinkable happened and Valve went bust, some company or other would step in and buy the Steam system. Something this successful will never be allowed to simply close it's doors. Steam took an approximate $970 Million dollars last year alone. Not all of that would have been profit, but it's still a mammoth sum of money.

So yeah I love Steam. Of course I have 50Mbit cable internet, so I have no bandwidth worries and such. I know that people on slower connections won't be so enamoured, but average connection speeds will generally only ever go up, so in the future that'll be less of a problem too.

What AirRaid said about the sales on Steam. I bought such things as The Witcher enhanced edition for $4.99..., which also brings up the point that Steam is also great for getting games you can no longer find in the shops. I don't know how many times I wanted to get a game in a shop and they just didn't have the damned thing, but I suppose that is partially due to me not buying games as soon as they're released and prefer to wait for a price drop... unless it's an Elder Scrolls or Doom title.... ;)

AirRaid said:

Enjay: That situation right there is partly WHY Steam is so far ahead. It can detect and skip files it already has downloaded, for starters. I've only heard bad things about EAs DD service.

Although I'm pleased to hear that Steam is better in this regard (really, I am), the main point of what I was posting still stands I think. ie, as soon as you have a live, online system administering what you are and are not allowed to play, you can end up at the mercy of the system. If the system decides that you must upgrade, or register or do whatever, then you must do it - whether you want to or not.

And, yes, EA's DD service does indeed seem awful - and I'm prepared to believe much worse than Steam. But remember, all my son wanted to do was play a couple of add ons that he had bought on disk and had already installed on to his machine. There should have been no DD involvement at all. However, he needed permission to play it and, because the system had changed, he couldn't get it - despite having a bought and paid for product in his sweaty little hands. As a result, he is being forced down the DD route despite the prohibitively large download size of an upgrade that he doesn't want.

And there is the problem IMO. Systems like this are not just friendly content delivery systems that allow you access to a nice, convenient online store. If that's all Steam was, I'd be fine with it. However, they are also a form of DRM that controls what you can and can not do on your machine. And it's that compulsory "asking for permission to play and do it in the way we tell you" aspect of Steam et al that really bites as far as I am concerned.

Enjay said:

And there is the problem IMO. Systems like this are not just friendly content delivery systems that allow you access to a nice, convenient online store. If that's all Steam was, I'd be fine with it. However, they are also a form of DRM that controls what you can and can not do on your machine. And it's that compulsory "asking for permission to play and do it in the way we tell you" aspect of Steam et al that really bites as far as I am concerned.

Exactly, and as long as they have that aspect to them, I will never use them on principle, ever.

chungy said:

I saw the thread title and briefly thought of Maes.

Thanks (I guess?).


I'd just say that, in itself, Steam is yet another marketing system that can only really work in a sufficiently developed online market and with a consumer culture to match, such as the one you can find in the USA.

Take any of the previous elements out of the equation, and it will fail miserably.

Some already mentioned:

• Stable and guaranteed broadband
  
• Long-term viability of the service itself
  
• Acceptance of DD from customers
  

I'd also add:

• Assuming that everyone has an online-enabled credit card or equivalent means of payment in order to use such a service.
  
• Existence of a sufficiently protected trading and market system, in which a consumer can feel safe and reasonably protected when doing
  business.
  
• Acceptance of paying for immaterial services online and in a foreign country.
  
• Availability of alternative distribution channels.
  

The latter are a few of the reasons why such a service couldn't fly in Europe, at least not to the same level it does in the USA. Not everybody has a credit card and/or a culture of doing all of his/her shopping in front of a telemarketing channel sitting on the couch, trusting that a helthy Free Trade (TM) system will safeguard his transactions and give him a "money back 100%" guarantee.

As for "alternative channels", I don't mean warez, but stuff like magazine bundles and bargain bins. There have been many times where I saw magazine bundles directly competing with actual or online DD retail, for the very same product.

Maes said:

• Assuming that everyone has an online-enabled credit card or equivalent means of payment in order to use such a service.
  

Steam somewhat bypass this one in that you can also buy the games from retail, and then you don't have to use a credit card over the Internet; though you still have to go through Steam.

And of course, only a small portion of their game catalog will be available in retail; the "vintage" and "indie" being exclusively digital.

Maes said:

The latter are a few of the reasons why such a service couldn't fly in Europe

GOG is a European company. Polish, more precisely.

Gez said:

GOG is a European company. Polish, more precisely.

Still, their target group is in the USA, or at least with a market/consumer attitude close to what one might expect from the USA. Maybe western/north Europe and the UK, but no souther. To make an example, Greece's first successful e-shop was the one that included CoD as its main means of transaction, understanding that credit cards weren't for everyone here. I bet that GoG doesn't do much of their (paying) business in Poland either.

And in any case, GoG is in an only superficially similar kind of business as Steam: they sell old games, which is quite different than working with distributors in order to get DRM-ized versions of leading CURRENT market titles.

Steam is more like what iTunes/the Apple iStore are doing (BTW, both don't fly well in economies where a service oriented mentality is not welcome among consumers). When I pay for something, I expect something tangible, else it's vaporware I cannot trust. I put more trust in a counterfeit cell phone battery bought from a street peddler because I can hold it in my hand, than some phantom service hosted in a country I don't know shit about, and where I can't walk into an office and complain if something goes wrong.

steam fuckin' rocks.....
anyone who sez otherwise is a hermit nerd and probably on dialup or some other 1995 internet B-)



The only thing that irks me about it is that it seems to grab a lot of superfluous data at times, L4D2's latest DLC is a good example. And 10GB for (m)ass effect? seems excessive.

I think it grabbed all of the language files instead of just english.

Also the game was absolutely shit.

destx said:

steam fuckin' rocks.....
anyone who sez otherwise is a hermit nerd and probably on dialup or some other 1995 internet B-)

Or simply doesn't like going through ridiculous hoops and rely on flimsy infrastructure to play a fucking game ;-) A game = something solid you pop in and play.

"Cloud computing", "network storage", "iBusiness" and "social networks" and the such are for basement-dwellers that watch too much star trek and never get off their butts, or for those who like doing everything by computer because it's "fancy" and stuff. I bet then even order pizza by credit card through their "iPhones" or somesuch (the interests on which are paid back by their parents, BTW).

Fuck that. I go buyz me some Famiclonez from the street by giving away perfectly good money to chinese commie sweatshop knockoffers that don't even deserve them and shit all over western copyrights, instead of fueling an innovative, healthy and prosperous web-based economy ;-) Sieg heil!

maes do you genuinely believe this shit or are you trolling

because you sound like a total retard

marry me

destx said:

maes do you genuinely believe this shit or are you trolling

Some is genuine...but you don't know which ;-) That's the beauty of it all.

destx said:

because you sound like a total retard

It takes a quite a lot of effort to achieve that without writing AWSUM STUFF LIKE OMFG ZOMG LMAO STEMA SI T3H F41L D00D G3T 4 L1F1 B1FF RULEZZ!!11! dont you agree

destx said:

marry me

The line is quite long, I don't know... *shrug*

Enjay said:

Although I'm pleased to hear that Steam is better in this regard (really, I am), the main point of what I was posting still stands I think. ie, as soon as you have a live, online system administering what you are and are not allowed to play, you can end up at the mercy of the system. If the system decides that you must upgrade, or register or do whatever, then you must do it - whether you want to or not.

You and everyone like you is going to hate the rest of their life living in the 21st century. This whole vague fear of some nameless system doing some nameless something that may in fact be bad was complete and utter crap during the cold war, a time which it was actually a real and very plausible event, and it's utter crap now, and must be a terribly depressing way to live. That is all.

Also Maes I hope you're trolling, because otherwise you just sound poor.

If you mean economically poor, you may have some good reasons to think so. I'm not exactly considered one of the driving forces of the world economy, not even what you'd call a "dutiful consumer" by any standard. Mainstream ads don't work on me, I don't know what the latest hypes are, I don't have a credit card, and in general, if I was an USA citizen, you'd consider me pretty "Un-American". Charles Bukowski style, if you get the picture.

"Scrooge", "Ghetto", "Bean counter", "Bang-for-the-buck fanboy" are all apt descriptions for me, though not necessarily "frugal", since I don't really deprive myself of something I really want or need, and won't hesitate giving extra money on a superior product or for long-term maintenance of some essential equipment.

I just prefer doing some bean counting, putting down some data black-on-white with pencil & paper, and examining alternatives before I spend any significant amount (which depends on the item considered, of course).

It's simply a coincidence that if you put certain commodities under my wallet-sensitive scrutiny, they just don't hold up. These include (but are not limited to) most Apple products, services like Steam, etc. : there are better and cheaper alternatives in every case, which is why they won't ever win me over, simple as that.

I've been tolerating Steam since I got my new comp and got into TF2, but I feel guilty using it given my principles.

John Smith said:

This whole vague fear of some nameless system doing some nameless something...

Well, if we give the system the name of "Valve", and the nameless something the name of "Updating old Source engine games to the 2007+ engine", then it has happened already. Now that I have a better computer, I'm not as bothered. But when it happened last summer, all I had was my old crappy laptop, that ran the vanilla/2006 Half Life 2 surprisingly well. After the update, HL2 and all source games ran horribly for me, even on lowest resolution/settings. To not even give users with varying system performances a choice of updates/versions to use is irresponsible.

And regardless of performance, the mipmapping is still broken on all updated source games (on multiple computers), and I have to live with it or wait for a fix, instead choosing a previous version of the engine.