Steamy Imps

Graf Zahl said:

That's what firewalls are there for. I don't allow anything I don't trust to connect to the internet.

So how is Steam any different?

Graf Zahl said:

Are you sure that's all it sends? I'm not and as a result it won't get installed on my system.

Finished with my woman cause she couldn't help me with my life...

steam never did treat me well, especially since I dont have an internet connection that stays connected all the time ( i have to bring my laptop to a public place to steal Wi-Fi ) which is a major disappointment when i have to "login" to play half-life/2

Graf Zahl said:

Are you sure that's all it sends? I'm not and as a result it won't get installed on my system.

How can you be sure that anything that you personally don't have the source for isn't misbehaving behind your back?

Janitor said:

steam never did treat me well, especially since I dont have an internet connection that stays connected all the time ( i have to bring my laptop to a public place to steal Wi-Fi ) which is a major disappointment when i have to "login" to play half-life/2

Why does this myth keep propagating? Make sure Steam stores your login/password information and it will allow you to play offline gamse without a network connection. Boom, instant offline mode.

AlexMax said:

It looks like they listened to someone, because according to SA (I can't check myself at the moment), the appropriate files have been added in an update.

Randy Heit's version of the super pack has the file.

AlexMax said:

Why does this myth keep propagating? Make sure Steam stores your login/password information and it will allow you to play offline gamse without a network connection. Boom, instant offline mode.

not a myth. it happened to me. admittedly, its been about a year since i have used steam, so things may have changed on me

Janitor said:

not a myth. it happened to me. admittedly, its been about a year since i have used steam, so things may have changed on me

Again, that's a year ago. Things have changed. Steam is now ridiculously awesome and polished.

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. :)

So it's not just football then :p

Steam: almost as bad as football.

;)

Enjay said:

I've ranted about steam before on the forums, so I'll just dig up some of my old dtuff and quote myself. ;)

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. :)

OK, I think it's safe to say that you are definitively delusional if you think that applies to modern Steam. First of all, HL2 probably took a while to 'verify' because again, it was an earlier version of Steam and nowhere near as smooth as it is today. These days, purchasing games online is painless, and installation effortless.

Second of all, the amount of RAM it takes up is negligable, considering how much RAM the average Joe has on his computer these days. According to my Task Manager, Steam is taking up 54 megs of Virtual Memory. This sounds like a lot, but considering the fact that I have a gig of memory, and I'm also running an unoptimized "Steam Community Beta" version of the client, it's excusable. According to my task manager, I'm using about 400 megs of Pagefile (Combined RAM and Virtual Memory) as it stands, so it's really small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Also, Steam is a wild success. Games are being added every couple of weeks, and publishers apparently love it because it's much easier to make impulse purchases and it gives a 'second wind' to games that didn't really do well in retail stores. Also, consider the fact that most gaming shops are making more and more room for console games and leaving fewer and fewer spaces for PC Games.

http://xs318.xs.to/xs318/07325/welcome_to_the_future.png

Welcome to the future. It's Steam. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile.

The current client uses around 6Mb when games window is open, around 2-3Mb when it's closed, and varying amounts of memory when looking at the Steam store (Roughly 15-20Mb). Small potatoes compared to a 4Gb page file.

AlexMax said:

OK, I think it's safe to say that you are definitively delusional if you think that applies to modern Steam. First of all, HL2 probably took a while to 'verify' because again, it was an earlier version of Steam and nowhere near as smooth as it is today. These days, purchasing games online is painless, and installation effortless.

Possibly. The "old" Steam was such a pile of dung that I haven't let its decendants near my systems since. Despite a few comments, I still haven't seen anything to suggest that it has improved dramatically. As for purchasing online etc, perhaps it's an old fashioned attitude (or maybe I'm just a Luddite), but I like my hard copies for all sorts of reasons. If I have my hard copy, then I can control it. If I format my system, I can just slap a disk in and reinstall. I don't need to re-download. etc etc...

Second of all, the amount of RAM it takes up is negligable, considering how much RAM the average Joe has on his computer these days. According to my Task Manager, Steam is taking up 54 megs of Virtual Memory. This sounds like a lot, but considering the fact that I have a gig of memory, and I'm also running an unoptimized "Steam Community Beta" version of the client, it's excusable. According to my task manager, I'm using about 400 megs of Pagefile (Combined RAM and Virtual Memory) as it stands, so it's really small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Sorry, I find that unacceptable. I'm one of these people who trim their RAM usage down to the minimum. I disable various "helpful" programs that Microsoft and others think I need and I check my system regularly to see if anything is running that I don't want. I especially don't like programs that go online in the background. If the program in question is something like Steam: something that is doing stuff that the publishers want it to do and not things I want, it's doubly unacceptable. I don't want the "features" that Steam brings to my machine. The publishers want me to have them because they make money as a result but, to me, it's a useless app that gets in the way - and eats a little RAM as it does so.

Also, Steam is a wild success. Games are being added every couple of weeks, and publishers apparently love it because it's much easier to make impulse purchases and it gives a 'second wind' to games that didn't really do well in retail stores. Also, consider the fact that most gaming shops are making more and more room for console games and leaving fewer and fewer spaces for PC Games.

Wild success is a POV. I've met plenty of people who would describe it as quite the opposite. Clearly, the publishers do like it though and I think that's the point isn't it? Publishers love it. It's something for the publishers, not the customer. It allows the publisher to get their products "out there" for a minimal overhead and not bother with all that fussy packaging, shipping and so on. It allows them to advertise to me, stop me playing games unless I get their say-so, keep a track of the games I like and to profile me. And I have to have a little applet running on my machine to let them do it. I have to compromise my system for their convenience.

I have still seen nothing that Steam "offers" that I cannot do in some other way that would be more convenient for me. In fact, even if Steam hadn't had the negative effects it did on my system (and, as I said, I have seen little evidence to say that it still wouldn't), I feel like Steam's "services" short change me. I just don't like the way it does what it does, I don't like the results and it gets between me and the games I want to play.

Welcome to the future. It's Steam. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile. [/B]

I hope I won't be assimilated - but I may get left behind.

Read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near ;)

AlexMax said:

Welcome to the future. It's Steam. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile.

Disturbing, isn't it? :?

Sorry, but the blatant ignorance to the dangers of Steam and all similar products is something that I find seriously disturbing.

It all starts somewhere and progressively gets worse. And in a few years you won't be able to control at all what software your computer runs.

TCPA anyone?

Zahl said:

TCPA anyone?

If a future law enforces TCPAs, then computers and computer activity will be marginalized, letting us return to shovels and papers. I admit -- I can't wait for that day!!!! (not serious)

@Enjay: Can't this Steam shit be cracked just like much else? Also, why don't you attach a shrinked Anti-Steam logo to your original avatar? I'm not making fun of your title, it's only what I do myself for awhile when I mean something.

http://www.soulsphere.org/img/steamstart.png

One other thing: I love how people are all up-in-arms about Steam and what it could potentially lead to in the future, but nobody complains that PunkBuster, packaged with every id game since Quake 3, is already there.

kooltore said:

OK, now on topic, great that almost all id games are on steam now, does anyone know why quake 4 ...

Some of the games that were made by Raven (Quake 4, Heretic II) are not part of this deal.

printz said:

@Enjay: Can't this Steam shit be cracked just like much else? Also, why don't you attach a shrinked Anti-Steam logo to your original avatar? I'm not making fun of your title, it's only what I do myself for awhile when I mean something.

I think it can, but I've never wanted to bether trying. Simply not installing it and not installing games that requires it works for me. It's been no great loss so far.

As for the title, I didn't do it: it was "gifted" to me... but it's kinda fun. :)

fraggle said:
...nobody complains that PunkBuster, packaged with every id game since Quake 3. [/B]

I've never actually installed PunkBuster. At least it's optional whereas Steam is compulsory if you want to play a Steam game. Even for the full version of HL2 that I bought and had all the data for sitting in my sweaty hands on DVD, Steam needed to be installed and sitting in my system tray every time I played simply to verify that I was allowed to play it - even if all I was ever doing was playing the single player missions with no other need to contact teh internet at all.

What's more, the early version of the packaging gave no warning that this was the case (a situation that they have now been forced to rectify - but it is still in very small print).

I can't see how anybody could argue with Enjay, take up "a small amount" of RAM it may do, but it should be taking up NO RAM, and it's installation should be optional. Luckily it appears no other companies have decided to follow in the footsteps of this "innovative" and "groundbreaking" concept, which ought to say something (unless they have and i havent noticed, me not giving a fuck about videogames like i do)

Sorry, but the blatant ignorance to the dangers of Steam and all similar products is something that I find seriously disturbing.

Orwellian paranoia asside...

I'm happy that they monitor my purchasing decisions. You never know, the publishers may just begin to notice that not everyone is interested in nothing else but AAA+ FPS sci-fi shooters. It also saves me from yet another boring online questionaire that I feel obliged to take just because I feel the industry "doesn't know what we really want".

Enjay said:

Sorry, I find that unacceptable. I'm one of these people who trim their RAM usage down to the minimum. I disable various "helpful" programs that Microsoft and others think I need and I check my system regularly to see if anything is running that I don't want.

Oh, so you're one of those ricer computer users who loves to trim every little service and unneeded bit on your computer so it runs as fast as possible while blissfully unaware that there are even more bits that you don't even know about that are slowing down your computer and probably can't disable without breaking the computer in some fashion. When you work on your computer, you can either spend all day auditing your system and trying to gain an extra 50ms of reaction time, or you can actually get work done on it.

I especially don't like programs that go online in the background. If the program in question is something like Steam: something that is doing stuff that the publishers want it to do and not things I want, it's doubly unacceptable. I don't want the "features" that Steam brings to my machine. The publishers want me to have them because they make money as a result but, to me, it's a useless app that gets in the way - and eats a little RAM as it does so.

Jesus, it's not like the company is siphoning money away from your credit card every time it connects to the Internet or something. The publishers already have your money, they earened it when you bought the software. Now you get the real benefits of Steam, like automatic updates, not having to keep track of your CD's to install or play the game. Yeah, there is a front page that loads every time you start steam that advertises the latest games for Steam. There's also a pop up window that appears anytime there's big Steam news, like a new set of games out on steam or some random thoughts from Valve, but you can turn the latter two things off and start directly from your Games list to bypass the former.

I'm sorry if I'm a bit skeptical, and perhaps I'd be pretty wary of Steam if this was someone like Microsoft or the MPAA we were talking about, but Valve isn't really sysnonmous with fucking people over.

deathbringer said:

I can't see how anybody could argue with Enjay, take up "a small amount" of RAM it may do, but it should be taking up NO RAM, and it's installation should be optional.

Oh, I'm sorry, I suppose we'll go back to the age of manually having to download updates, forcing the play CD to remain in the drive and using system-damaging copy-protection systems like Starforce. Also, what good does unused RAM do you?

Graf Zahl said:

Disturbing, isn't it? :?

Sorry, but the blatant ignorance to the dangers of Steam and all similar products is something that I find seriously disturbing.

It all starts somewhere and progressively gets worse. And in a few years you won't be able to control at all what software your computer runs.

TCPA anyone?

Jesus christ, this kind of tinfoilhattery in this post almost made my brain aneurysm. You even namedropped TCPA, a boogeyman from a coupole of years ago that never manifested itself due to unfeasability and the reassurance that it would just get hacked to pieces anyway.

Bucket said:

Those evil bastards are discovering things like it's not worth the time and effort to fix their Matrox G200 OpenGL minidrivers.

1920x1200. Owned.

Damn I was just about to say that

Enjay makes a very valid point right here, since 50% of us with internet access still aren't using high speed, not because we don't want to, but because it's not available for one reason or another:

Enjay said:

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.

I recall my first experience with Steam to be quite profain:

01 - Oh, wow, HL2! And my computer can run it! Oh, it needs the internet? No big deal, probably just needs it to verify my CD Key.

02 - Alright, fine, install Steam, now install HL2. Five CD's doesn't take too long to install.

03 - (Fifteen Min. Later) Alright, start this up...wait, updating Steam Platform? What the fuck?

04 - (Two crashes and an Hour Later) Sweet, updated...wait, what the fuck? A Steam update? ANOTHER ONE?

05 - (Three crashes and and Hour Later) Okay, finally, HL2 time...oh wait, I still have to download the last 25% of the game? WTF did I just pay for then?

06 - (Six and a Half Hours Later) FINALLY, it's ready for offline mode. Get offline, I won't how many phone calls I missed in the last ten hours. Alright, start HL2...go into offline mode...cool...WHAT THE GOD DAMN FUCK? WHY DO I HAVE TO REDOWNLOAD THE LAST 2% AGAIN?

07 - (Fifteen minutes Later) Alright, let's try this again. (repeat #6) OH COME ON YOU MOTHERFUCKER, I JUST REDOWNLOADED THE LAST 2%.

08 - (Thirty minutes later only because I searched the Steam forums for a fix) Alright, let's try starting the game up and closing it before we get offline. That might finalize it. (ten minutes later, waiting for the fucking game to load), alright, exit, get offline.

09 - Almost ten hours after PURCHASING A PHYSICAL COPY OF THE GAME IN A STORE it finally runs.

It's not like I can get high speed when it's not available (unless I want to pay a hundred bucks a month for satellite service that, with a two second signal delay, is worthless for the things I want to do, i.e. game) and it's not like I can just up and move for the sake of getting high speed. I generally tend to avoid doing thing that require high speed. If there is a new Doom wad out, okay. Maybe I want to download an album, hey, I've got an hour. Ten hours of downloading to play a game I just purchased the license to a copy of is bullshit.

I know Valve wants complete control, but I don't need them fucking holding my hand every time I want to do something the way Microsoft tries to do. I've never updated a game because I simply don't need to: if it's not broken, don't fix it.

The only reason Valve really wants Steam is for money. This forced system of verification probably makes them feel like they aren't going to get pirated.

Well, fuck them. I borrowed a friend's high speed line for four hours (three of them to update steam, go figure) after a computer format and now I have all the games I want from them as offline only, and haven't been online since. What does that have to do with the last paragraph? Well, those same friends are using MY account to play online. They can always be online with it because I never am. Instead of selling two copies of each piece of software, they only sold one.

Does that make a difference in the long run? No, not at all, but the point is that their mandatory requirement of Steam is bullshit no matter how much they've improved it. Unless I can buy a game from them, install it and play it straight from the box (assuming my computer meets the requirement), it's nothing but corporate bullshit.

Johnatone said:

Enjay makes a very valid point right here, since 50% of us with internet access still aren't using high speed, not because we don't want to, but because it's not available for one reason or another:

Linguica said:

Oh, shit, I almost quoted a picture.

Good point. I had actually thought, right before I posted, that if you factor non-gamers vs. gamers, the statistics change. I know with that qualifier added I'm wrong, but so is that picture in the sense it doesn't represent all the gamers. So, touche, but I'm still giving Valve the finger.

"He uses statistics as a drunk uses a light pole: for support rather than illunination."

Oh, I'm sorry, I suppose we'll go back to the age of manually having to download updates, forcing the play CD to remain in the drive and using system-damaging copy-protection systems like Starforce.

Better that than being forced to use a ram-eating, crash-happy, bugged, "you might also like these products!"-spouting, auto-updating (newer =/= better) peice of shit. I'll be over buying cracked pirate copies that run on thier own if anybody needs me.

You forgot the random "This game is temporarily unavailable." too !

AlexMax said:

Oh, I'm sorry, I suppose we'll go back to the age of manually having to download updates, forcing the play CD to remain in the drive and using system-damaging copy-protection systems like Starforce.

I'd much rather have that than Steam.

Manual downloads of game updates? Well, I don't know how manual they have been of late. Most games I have use a "check for update button". (Yay!, that's under my control, not Steam's.) What's more, most allow you to update or download the patch and update at your leisure - meaning you can keep the patch file handy to re-patch without re-downloading. Even if it was totally manual, how hard is it to check for an update on a game website? Most of the time games run pretty well without the updates and often they update features that I don't use or want. So, I really don't want a program checking for updates for me every time I play and downloading them even if I don't want them. Every now and again, I can check a website and see if there are any updates I want. It's pretty transparent and easy in most cases. That is not the case with Steam in my experience.

Forcing the CD to remain in the drive? Much better, IMO, to put the CD in the drive when you need it than have a little app sitting there all the time, whether you need it or not. And I have control over it. I put the CD in the drive. I don't have an automated app running off and checking my credentials against a remote server which, if nothing else, may simply be down. Or what if my connection is down for some reason (happens a lot to me). If I put the CD in the drive, it's in the drive and the game works. If I'm left at the mercy of a remote server somewhere, I don't know what's going on. What if Steam screws up somehow and I'm locked out of my game until I get it resolved? I know that it happens (although probably rarely).

I've never experienced system damaging copy protections... well, except Steam which, by the way it hijacked my system, slowed things down and got between me and playing half life in a story very similar to Johnatone's one, can only be considered as a system damaging copy protection scheme - plus all the other insidious things it is.

AlexMax said:

Oh, I'm sorry, I suppose we'll go back to the age of manually having to download updates, forcing the play CD to remain in the drive and using system-damaging copy-protection systems like Starforce.

O NOES. THE HUMANITY. ETC

Starforce? Never even heard of it. Other than that junk that FEAR was using (the one that made it impossible for a lot of people who bought the game to play it, cause it thought they had ripped it.) But who cares, FEAR was a horrible game anyway.

I don't see this in Doom3, QuakeIV, WoW, MystIV, etc-
or to go older:
Diablo2, Strife, System Shock2, Syndicate wars, Tiberian Sun, Max Payne, Red faction. whatever else...

Doom3/QuakeIV's copy protection for instance, is a key and that the program "calls home" when it's ran to check if the copy is legit. But that's not happening if you're not connected to the internet, so it's rather easy to circumvent that.

In diablo2/WoW's case, all you have to do is connect to a server to get the latest updates. Or also in diablo2's case, you can download them online if you want to.

Most games these days allow for some kind of instant direction towards a patch w/o the need for anything like Steam, ever head of something called an "updater"? It's working out great. What you do is start the program, and it finds an update for you. Or tells you to fuck off since you already got the latest version.
Doom3 for instance got a cruder version of this, where it through the menu connects to the internet and compares your version with what info it got, and if you got an obsolete version it'll direct you to a website with a list of mirrors where you can get the latest patch.

Apart from in Riven for instance, where you had to continuously switch between 5 cds. I don't see the problem with putting a cd in the drive to play a game. Most games these days have abandoned that too anyway, most likely since people can just make an image of the cd.

Are you claiming that Half Life 2 hasn't or can't be warezed? If you are, then you're sorely mistaken. What's even more funny is, that if you got a cracked version of HL2, you don't need Steam. With that in mind, it almost seems like Valve is trying to make people steal their game rather than actually buying it.

Actually, I were told from a friend of mine who got Half Life 2 and at the day of release cracked it by simply unplugging the network cable at the crucial moments. But I dunno, I wasn't there.

EDIT: OH and yeah: Steam is fantastic