I have converted to steam

[Grazza]

Frankdude said:

it's not spyware

Did anyone say it is? It is malware though.

It's fortunate that the move towards a crap delivery system has coincided with new games also becoming worse and worse. So no loss really.

[destx]

Grazza said:

It's fortunate that the move towards a crap delivery system has coincided with new games also becoming worse and worse.

OR:

A new innovative games distribution system allows independent developers with interesting ideas to get their games out there and potentially make huge amounts of money while doing it without some fucking accountant calling the shots and sucking the life out of their game to please their goddamn stockholders or mouth-breathing focus groups. Steam encourages experimentation while preventing the huge publishers and their degenerative rail-shooters from gaining complete domination of the market.

Like it or not, Steam is keeping PC gaming afloat while the likes of Microsoft (of all people) do their best to sink it. If it weren't for gaben and his bros we'd all be playing games on those glorified fucking VCRs. Sure, Valve had to use some unlike-able tactics (DRM etc) to pull it off, but on this planet run by CFOs what the fuck do you expect? Nobody ain't doing shit unless they are guaranteed their rape dollars.

[Craigs]

destx said:

OR:

A new innovative games distribution system allows independent developers with interesting ideas to get their games out there and potentially make huge amounts of money while doing it without some fucking accountant calling the shots and sucking the life out of their game to please their goddamn stockholders or mouth-breathing focus groups. Steam encourages experimentation while preventing the huge publishers and their degenerative rail-shooters from gaining complete domination of the market.

I gotta admit, I also admire Valve for working out deals with indie developers to help them promote their games, like with Monday Night Combat and Killing Floor.

[AirRaid]

Yeah, I've bought and played loads of great indie games that I would never have even heard about if not for Steams promotions and sales and such.

[Maes]

AirRaid said:

Yeah, I've bought and played loads of great indie games that I would never have even heard about if not for Steams promotions and sales and such.

Whatever happened to the old shareware model, then? Don't forget that Doom itself was not actually available on shelves when it came out, yet it became very damn well known using the typical distribution channels of the day (mostly BBSes, rather than WWW) and the rest, as they say, became legend.

What's up, is this not "fancy" enough for today's gamers, anymore? Not Web 2.x enough or what?

[magicsofa]

Ugh....I thought this was going to be a thread about doing away with electricity and combustion engines. I'm very disappointed.


(I know steam isn't spyware, it's just unnecessary. It's like iTunes for games)

[Gez]

The shareware model kinda died off a while before Steam was even launched, so I wouldn't hold them responsible for that. When Epic Megagames and Apogee Software both went into traditional commercial mode about at the same time, it was probably not a coincidence.

[Maes]

magicsofa said:

Ugh....I thought this was going to be a thread about doing away with electricity and combustion engines. I'm very disappointed.

Well, technically speaking, steam power still requires combustion, and typically is way more inefficient than internal combustion engines.

[Bucket]

Maes said:

Whatever happened to the old shareware model, then?

"Shareware" became "demos" and then "public betas". Nowadays, if you're not giving half your game away for free, you're asking people to pirate it.

[Enjay]

destx said:

A new innovative games distribution system allows independent developers with interesting ideas to get their games out there...

Actually, I do applaud Valve for their efforts in this area, but I don't swallow the rhetoric that frequently implies that Steam is the only way for indie devs to get recognition. It isn't. Notch seems to have done quite well with Minecraft, for example. But, yes, a platform that brings indie games to the attention of people who would not normally go out of their way to find them is a good thing - for the devs and the players alike.

However, again, that's not the problem. Distributing games (headline titles or indie games) is fine. Providing a game news service is fine. Forcing you to run Steam so that it can control what you are allowed to play on your computer is not.

[Gez]

Maes said:

Well, technically speaking, steam power still requires combustion

Or a way to heat water, anyway. A good example would be nuclear power plants. You can also try to use solar power, as well as geothermic power and some more exotic methods too; as long as you manage to get hot water in colder air you'll get steam which can be used mechanically in turbines to generate electricity or locomotive force.

Nuclear cars, however, are unlikely to ever make it to the marketplace.

[Maes]

Gez said:

A good example would be nuclear power plants.

Well, if you mastered nuclear technology to that degree, why would you ever revert to using it for generating steam power the 18th century way (e.g. direct pulley drives, stationary machinery and the such) instead of building an electric power grid?

Steam-powered equipment (like steam turbines) are most efficient at large scales, that's why it's not worthwhile building miniaturized versions of them anymore, even if they are feasible (e.g. some 20th century steam-powered cars and buses with regenerative boilers, including the last steam locomotives).

[Doom Marine]

THIS IS THE PARFECT OPPERTUNITY TO SHOW OFF MY STEAM COLLECSHUN



seriously though, Steam is the greatest thing for PC gaming since Doom, or StarCraft.

[Maes]

Doom Marine said:

seriously though, Steam is the greatest thing for PC gaming since Doom, or StarCraft.

Hardly. I would pity someone who hasn't played or heard of Doom (and to a lesser degree, Starcraft or better yet, Warcraft), but I wouldn't put a subscription to an online distribution service in the same league as classic PC gaming titles, not by a long shot.

Otherwise, I could argue that the best thing that happened to PC gaming is the Greek PC Master magazine, since I got (and am still getting) first-rate games for free each month through its bundles, or that nigerian street peddlers selling pirated DVDs are (actually, underground software piracy DID have its role in getting more people to get to know computers in general, in my part of the world, but that's another story, and I'm talking early 80s-to-early 90s here).

[Aliotroph?]

I read the thread title as "I have converted to Islam." Had to start reading it to realize my brain was being stupid.

Steam is ok. It still has a shitty UI, but at least it quit its 2004 habit of crashing and nuking all my savegames.

[Creaphis]

Maes said:

Well, if you mastered nuclear technology to that degree, why would you ever revert to using it for generating steam power the 18th century way (e.g. direct pulley drives, stationary machinery and the such) instead of building an electric power grid?

What if we never mastered electricity? We could be riding trains with nuclear reactors and steam engines right now, and that would be awesome.

[Maes]

Creaphis said:

What if we never mastered electricity? We could be riding trains with nuclear reactors and steam engines right now, and that would be awesome.

The idea of developing nuclear technology in a "steampunk" way, with purely mechanical, hydraulic and steam controls and without any of the automation and speed allowed by electrical automatic controls is simply a nightmare.

Let alone that understanding magnetism and electricity would be would actually be required to even start doing anything remotely useful with radioactive materials besides getting yoursef radiation poisoning from holding them in your bare hands, that is. You can't invent steel manufacturing if first you don't even master iron mining.

[cybdmn]

Never ever.

Thanks to shit like steam, i buy nearly zero games today. I would buy, but in steam you cannot buy, you only can rent a game.

[Shaikoten]

ITT ignorant fucks talk about technology they tried once when it came out on a dialup connection and had a bad experience with once, and stumble over their their nerd-rage induced, stalwart principles, quite forgetting that in practical usage steam is not and has never proven itself to be a 'rental' service, all while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the PC gaming market share is being nearly wholly swallowed by online distribution, and specifically steam, because users actually LIKE it, not by some big game studio induced greedy plan to jack up video game prices; in effect, actually lowering prices and driving distribution costs down to near nil.

And stuff.

[Maes]

If it wasn't that sometimes you still see boxed versions being sold as much as or lower than online distribution, so online distribution does not even have the advantage of inherently,singnificantly and CONSISTENTLY lower prices.

[Quast]

Mithran Denizen said:

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.

Nems said:

I'd also rather have a physical copy of the game.

Seeker_of_Truth said:

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.

#1: Steam does not require an internet connection to operate to let you play your games. If valve goes bankrupt and folds and steam disappears in 10 years or whatever, you would still be able to use it to launch your games.

#2: If a physical copy is what you would like and a 'real' retail box is unavailable, then your only recourse is to get burning some dvds. Which isn't a bad idea AT ALL if you're like me and don't have a 2tb hdd and don't want to redownload games again and again due to lack of space.

cybdmn said:

I would buy, but in steam you cannot buy, you only can rent a game.

Huh?

[Maes]

Quast said:

#1: Steam does not require an internet connection to operate to let you play your games. If valve goes bankrupt and folds and steam disappears in 10 years or whatever, you would still be able to use it to launch your games.

The same cannot be said about other DCDs in general. Some put validation wrappers around the games they sell, some encapsulate the whole game's filesystem and thus make it incompatible with officially released patches and community mods etc. and so in the end you're left with a lesser product that will only have a fraction of the original's, un-DRM and un-DCDed version.

Maybe Steam is better in that respect NOW, but I bet that it wasn't always like that even for it, and that they might simply about-face on this policy, if marketing/legal/lobbying reasons force them to.

[Gez]

Quast said:

#1: Steam does not require an internet connection to operate to let you play your games. If valve goes bankrupt and folds and steam disappears in 10 years or whatever, you would still be able to use it to launch your games.

Not entirely. There is an offline mode, sure, but you have to have connected at least once before you can use it.

And I have experienced amnesia from the Steam client, which wanted me to reauthenticate because it had forgotten I had already done so and it denied me offline mode in the meantime.

[phi108]

It's done that once or twice to me too. I think Valve once stated that they would make a "no-steam" patch for games if the service was ever discontinued, but given we don't know the circumstances that could happen under (zombie outbreak or similar...), they may not have the motivation to make it happen if it comes to that.

The DRM nature of the service isn't even the greatest bother to me, it's their insistence that I run the most current versions of all (Valve) software. If I buy a game after the unwanted updates, I'm out of luck, and if the update even begins to download, cancelling it and checking "never update this game" makes the game unlaunchable.

[Maes]

I'm sure somebody could cobble together a witty, patriotic, and definitively anti-communist response by remarking how on any well-functioning Western economy, Internet availability is not a concern, every socially and economically important citizen can afford such a service, and how anyone who disagrees is a miserable commie nerd living in his mother's basement and should really get on with the times "cuz THAT'S how we do stuff in OUT neck of the woods, friggin' pinko foreigners!".

But there are folks out there who are better at this kind of duckspeak than me, so I'll pass.

[_bruce_]

Maes said:

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!

Haha

[caco_killer]

Grazza said:

Did anyone say it is? It is malware though.

It's fortunate that the move towards a crap delivery system has coincided with new games also becoming worse and worse. So no loss really.

If it is malware, then how come none of the spyware or virus scanners recognize it as such? My computer is running just fine with it on, and I can shut it down with ease when I need to. If you are going to dislike something, you should have real reasons instead of lies and jaded opinions.

[Quast]

Gez said:

Not entirely. There is an offline mode, sure, but you have to have connected at least once before you can use it.

Yes, I realize that this is an incredible hurdle to leap over, having to connect to the internet...once.

Maes said:

I'm sure somebody could cobble together a witty, patriotic, and definitively anti-communist response by remarking how on any well-functioning Western economy, Internet availability is not a concern, every socially and economically important citizen can afford such a service, and how anyone who disagrees is a miserable commie nerd living in his mother's basement and should really get on with the times "cuz THAT'S how we do stuff in OUT neck of the woods, friggin' pinko foreigners!".

What are you talking about, really? Internet availability in the western world is near 80-90% in most places. The fact is, people that cannot afford or acquire an internet connection because of whatever their social, geographical or financial situation may be, probably aren't the people that would be bitching about not being able to have a DRM free physical copy of fucking call of duty.

[Maes]

Quast said:

Internet availability in the western world is near 80-90% in most places.

It's precisely that 10-20% you're leaving out that comes biting you in the ass.

And Internet != broadband, or even "broadband enough". Technically, even 128 kbps ISDN is "broadband", as is 384 kbps ADSL, ADSM wireless and satellite internet, but I would never dream of purchasing something over the gigabyte mark over such channels. Maybe on a dedicated T3 connection or something, or with a bit torrent like mechanism...

But the main problem is trading for something immaterial with nonexisting trade laws to protect me or at least guarantee me a refund. Money spent online is as good as giving it away to a street con man: you're never gonna see it again, and none (but you and the con man) will know that you actually spent it. Quite an egg to shave now, eh? As I said, I'd rather buy a shitty famiclone that I can actually use, than turn money into smoke when I can avoid it and alternatives exist.

[phi108]

Quast said:

Yes, I realize that this is an incredible hurdle to leap over, having to connect to the internet...once.

It's more than that, it's connecting to the internet and then being forced to download a >500 MB update before being able to launch a game and set "never update". That can be an issue for the 10-20% or for people with inadequate internet speed.

And coming back to a game disc bought 20 years ago, the user would have to hope Steam is still running and supporting that game, or that there is a no-Steam patch for download somewhere.