I hate Steam.

[RedShirt]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
Cry more, baby. How do you think I felt downloading the 11gb F.E.A.R.2 files when my line is capped at 20gb a month? The only people who whine about 250gb caps are rampant pirates. /offtopic

Wait, you hate steam, yet you use it to download Fear 2?

If you hate it, why would you use it?

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: NeoV
the people that complain about Steam are one of several types -

the 'warez' crowd that isn't used to actually paying money for games

the 'anti' guy - people that bitch about anything without having a really good reason

people that have no idea how to make things better on their computer - plug it in and expect it to do everything right 100% of the time


You can make backups of all your steam games on CD/DVD, read the manual

No.

I complain about Steam because:
1. Kills the resale market. When Steam first started, Valve said that they would eventually address this problem. Still waiting.

2. Until you fiddle around with the options, it will automatically download updates. Even if you just want to play a single-player game, you can't until the update is complete. At no point during installation is this mentioned, and if not for AT forums, I would not have known about this option.

3. Unless you buy their weekend deals, Steam has NO cost savings over retail store copies. You get less, but pay the same. Some people prefer digital distribution. I don't.

4. An AT poster stated that Valve killed his Steam account for a BS reason, which cost him like 10 games. Those are games that he paid for that he will never be able to play again or receive a refund on. That is just plain theft, and clearly illustrates that you are completely at Valve's mercy if they decide to fvck with you. His experience with their customer service was absolutely horrible.

 

[Regs]

There is no re-sale market anymore for the PC. Just take a look at EB games or GameStop. They keep them in back in the shadows like they're a shunned religious cult.

PC software copies to the hard drive and gets requested by the CPU through the RAM. So the licenses for PC software will be more strict for obvious reasons than console ports.


I had my run-ins with steam. Mostly because I love the Total War series and it seemed like everything was going well with Empire until they announced it will be a Steam only game like FEAR 2. Always had to be updated to play and always had to be online. No, ifs , ands, or buts. So when an update came out for Empire TW that crashed the game, I would have to wait for the next update for the game to be playable. Why are they forcing us to update the game? Just last week they updated again, and even better, they turned their game into an advertisement for their upcoming add-on. Though not intrusive, still rude in my mind. The gull they have to push their add-on on me in this manner in software I bought and paid for. Next thing you know they will include a brief commercial on the History channel in the next patch.

 

[RedShirt]

Originally posted by: Regs
There is no re-sale market anymore for the PC. Just take a look at EB games or GameStop. They keep them in back in the shadows like they're a shunned religious cult.

PC software copies to the hard drive and gets requested by the CPU through the RAM. So the licenses for PC software will be more strict for obvious reasons than console ports.


I had my run-ins with steam. Mostly because I love the Total War series and it seemed like everything was going well with Empire until they announced it will be a Steam only game like FEAR 2. Always had to be updated to play and always had to be online. No, ifs , ands, or buts. So when an update came out for Empire TW that crashed the game, I would have to wait for the next update for the game to be playable. Why are they forcing us to update the game? Just last week they updated again, and even better, they turned their game into an advertisement for their upcoming add-on. Though not intrusive, still rude in my mind. The gull they have to push their add-on on me in this manner in software I bought and paid for. Next thing you know they will include a brief commercial on the History channel in the next patch.

You can turn off auto-update

You can run any game when you are offline. The only requirement is, in the past, you need to launch the game at least once while online. That validates your game for offline mode.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: NeoV
the people that complain about Steam are one of several types -

the 'warez' crowd that isn't used to actually paying money for games

the 'anti' guy - people that bitch about anything without having a really good reason

people that have no idea how to make things better on their computer - plug it in and expect it to do everything right 100% of the time


You can make backups of all your steam games on CD/DVD, read the manual

No.

I complain about Steam because:
1. Kills the resale market. When Steam first started, Valve said that they would eventually address this problem. Still waiting.

2. Until you fiddle around with the options, it will automatically download updates. Even if you just want to play a single-player game, you can't until the update is complete. At no point during installation is this mentioned, and if not for AT forums, I would not have known about this option.

3. Unless you buy their weekend deals, Steam has NO cost savings over retail store copies. You get less, but pay the same. Some people prefer digital distribution. I don't.

4. An AT poster stated that Valve killed his Steam account for a BS reason, which cost him like 10 games. Those are games that he paid for that he will never be able to play again or receive a refund on. That is just plain theft, and clearly illustrates that you are completely at Valve's mercy if they decide to fvck with you. His experience with their customer service was absolutely horrible.

they may have killed his account..but if he checks his steam folder what does that have?? they cant just delete stuff off his computer. if he has the games tehre then he might have something to go after them for.


the only gripe i have with steam..is the fact i cant play my single player games offline..for some reason it never works. no matter what. forget about playing L4D in single player or even HL2. but im never to far away from the internet to get internet.. hopefully soon the iphone will have tethering...or at least i will , so i can authenticate long enough to start up steam

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: RedShirt

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
Cry more, baby. How do you think I felt downloading the 11gb F.E.A.R.2 files when my line is capped at 20gb a month? The only people who whine about 250gb caps are rampant pirates. /offtopic

Wait, you hate steam, yet you use it to download Fear 2?

If you hate it, why would you use it?

The game is still $100 here, and I could get it for $40 on Steam - enough of a cost savings to torture myself with their download speeds. Besides, regardless of whether I downloaded through Steam or bought a box I would still be forced to use Steam if I wanted to play F.E.A.R.2 :roll:

 

[minmaster]

uh where in the world does a game cost $100?

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

New Zealand (and Australia for that matter). In fact prices have risen recently (despite the relative strength of the dollar :roll, I saw Wolfenstein for $130 :Q:Q:Q I never pay more than $80 personally, except on rare occasions like HL2 and Dawn of War 2.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: RedShirt

You can run any game when you are offline. The only requirement is, in the past, you need to launch the game at least once while online. That validates your game for offline mode.

Have you tried it with Empire TW? It won't launch without Steam online! And every time I set updates to off, it still updates the game.

 

[LumbergTech]

I've never had a problem with steam downloads. I always get at least 1.5 mb/s .. usually more

 

[minmaster]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
New Zealand (and Australia for that matter). In fact prices have risen recently (despite the relative strength of the dollar :roll, I saw Wolfenstein for $130 :Q:Q:Q I never pay more than $80 personally, except on rare occasions like HL2 and Dawn of War 2.

is that US $ you're talking about? if so, that is just ridiculous...

 

[Skott]

Originally posted by: Regs

Originally posted by: RedShirt

You can run any game when you are offline. The only requirement is, in the past, you need to launch the game at least once while online. That validates your game for offline mode.

Have you tried it with Empire TW? It won't launch without Steam online! And every time I set updates to off, it still updates the game.

I play ETW quite often on a SFF rig I use and I havent updated anything since patch v1.2.

 

[Xed]

I also hate steam but download speed is never a problem. 5-6 MB/s

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: minmaster

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
New Zealand (and Australia for that matter). In fact prices have risen recently (despite the relative strength of the dollar :roll, I saw Wolfenstein for $130 :Q:Q:Q I never pay more than $80 personally, except on rare occasions like HL2 and Dawn of War 2.

is that US $ you're talking about? if so, that is just ridiculous...

No, NZD. Currently $100NZD = $71USD, $130NZD = $93USD.

 

[BFG10K]

Well I finished downloading the DLC. In that time I also finished Medal of Honor Airborne, and my copy of Wolfenstein that I ordered online arrived in the mail. I even had enough time to install it, patch it, configure it, and it?s all ready to go.

Hooray for Steam and the ?convenience? it offers. :roll:

The one good thing is that there?s a no-Steam crack for Fear 2 DLC and it works perfectly.

Originally posted by: zerocool84

You have a much faster system than I do and Steam never slows down my comp and always get high dl speeds.

I checked and the CPU usage from Steam was only 2%. I can only conclude Steam was shitting itself because it wasn?t getting enough bandwidth.

Originally posted by: Scholzpdx

Just reinstalled and dropped a whopping 120GB of games on my new HDD. 1.5MBytes per second all the way.

Heh, there?s nothing ?whopping? about it. I backup 266 GB worth of games and it takes me about sixty minutes to move that from one spindle to another. Of course since I partition my drives I don?t have to reinstall any games after a Windows format.

Originally posted by: Ackmed

Yeah, its funny how only some people get the claimed 20kbps speeds...

Zero problems with steam here. But then again, Im not a newbie.

Considering the rest of my downloads run faster (e.g. GoG.com), why don?t you tell me how to accelerate Steam, oh wise one?

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: Zensal

Yes, but the internet cannot get scratched, lost or eaten by my 3 and 1-year-olds.

Neither can a hard-disk, which is where I back up my games to.

At 15Gigs Empire: Total War retail would have had me at the computer for a couple hours installing, while with Steam, I could buy it and leave for a few hours.

Nonsense; if it takes you two hours to install 15 GB from DVDs then you have serious problems with your computer.

Originally posted by: NeoV

the people that complain about Steam are one of several types -

the 'warez' crowd that isn't used to actually paying money for games

the 'anti' guy - people that bitch about anything without having a really good reason

people that have no idea how to make things better on their computer - plug it in and expect it to do everything right 100% of the time

Or how about option 4: those that purchase their games and believe in customer rights, and also know that Steam sucks utter balls because they?ve had more problems with it than Starforce/Securom, or any other disc based protection?

You can make backups of all your steam games on CD/DVD, read the manual

If you actually knew about this you would know that the feature is basically broken, and it?s far easier to make manual backups yourself. But since I make manual backups for all my other games anyway, Steam is totally worthless to me.

Originally posted by: RedShirt

Wait, you hate steam, yet you use it to download Fear 2?

If you hate it, why would you use it?

Because the boxed version of Fear 2 is a Steam game so you have no choice whether to use it. At least not initially anyway. Once it?s installed you can crack it, but not everyone does that.

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

they may have killed his account..but if he checks his steam folder what does that have?? they cant just delete stuff off his computer. if he has the games tehre then he might have something to go after them for.

I don?t think you?re familiar with the details of that incident. Not to mention that even if he has the games, he can?t use them from a blocked Steam account unless he cracks them.

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Originally posted by: Scholzpdx

Just reinstalled and dropped a whopping 120GB of games on my new HDD. 1.5MBytes per second all the way.

Heh, there?s nothing ?whopping? about it. I backup 266 GB worth of games and it takes me about sixty minutes to move that from one spindle to another. Of course since I partition my drives I don?t have to reinstall any games after a Windows format.

Then I guess that's not really a valid complaint since you can do the same thing with Steam.

 

[MStele]

I went from ~300KB/s to 2+MB/s in Steam from a simple cable modem swap out (just hardware, no service change). More often than not download rates are tied to your ISP/hardware instead of specific internet services. Before people blame Steam from low download rates, focus should be placed in more logical places, especially considering Steam is just the end member of a long list of potential problems. Work your way down the list.

Yes, it can be as simple as that. Happy days.

 

[Raduque]

Is it just me, or are "PC Gamers" impossible to please?

Personally, I like Steam. I only buy games that are on the weekend deal though.

 

[alcoholbob]

Have you considered installing the games on a seperate partition or hard drive? That will save you some grief of redownloading every time you reformat.

 

[450R]

If you're having problems downloading from Steam, check the settings under Downloads and ensure your region is set to something sane. For some odd reason, mine sporadically sets itself to Shanghai and other wacky regions where I get under 100kb/s. Almost anywhere in the US gives me at least 700kb/s.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I've been trying to launch the Operation Flashpoint missions editor for nearly half an hour. The result: This game is current unavailable. Please try again at another time.

Of course, this is totally understandable. Why wouldn't a map editor need to ask Valve's permission before launching? :roll:

 

[oogabooga]

Originally posted by: Raduque
Is it just me, or are "PC Gamers" impossible to please?

Personally, I like Steam. I only buy games that are on the weekend deal though.

It's not just you. Most people I know like steam.

They have their issues and individual nitpicks with it of course. On a whole though, it's a useful platform that does mostly what it promises. I regularly get around 1mb/download on games, I don't know if their "backup" feature really works - namely cause I don't see the reason to use it when I can just download it again, I haven't had any issues ever regarding games launching from steam [Desktop is my main computer and it's always connected to the internet]

I guess if I had a crappy connection I'd really hate it, but it's seemed to always do what it said it would.

 

[JoshGuru7]

I think a lot of the people who dislike Steam are those at the extremes of the spectrum ranging between collecting and reselling. Collectors derive value not just from the individual games in their library but the library itself and they have very legitimate concerns about what's going to happen to their collection at some point undetermined point in the future. The physical DVDs are valuable to them as trophies on their bookshelves rather than a nuisance. At the other end, Steam is definitely not for the players who prefer to buy and sell used games.

Steam is a good fit for me because I purchase only the games I think I'll want to keep permanently but I'm not terribly concerned about having a huge collection of old PC games. If I were to lose my entire steam library today I would only attempt to repurchase probably 5 titles or so and newer games will replace those titles moving forward.

The downside of this is outweighed by the upside of not having to deal with physical copies and all that entails. The automatic patches are very nice as I jump from game to game and don't follow any of the older ones to the point that I would know when patches are released. Not having to carry DVDs around with me for DVD checks is also important. I was able to painlessly download and play a game on my laptop I was in the mood for while working in South Africa when I never would have brought the game DVDs with me. I also rarely have to deal with activation based DRM so I can play my library across multiple locations and systems without hassle. There have been a few exceptions to this lately that have been annoying, however.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Originally posted by: Astrallite
Have you considered installing the games on a seperate partition or hard drive? That will save you some grief of redownloading every time you reformat.

I just started this with my most recent install. Really a genius idea. :thumbsup: