Frustrated with steam

[fractalbit]

Ok, i waited an hour and something for steam to update, create account, verify cdkey, decrypt the game and all the bullshit.

Now sometimes, although i have chosen the "start in offline mode" when i am trying to play the game i am getting the message "this game is not ready to be played in offline mode"!!! I am not sure when this happens, but i think that usually, its when i start in oflline mode and then connect to the internet. But i am not sure, sometimes it just seems random!

Furthermore i am not able to play online. When i connect to internet and start steam again it displays "connecting steam account fractalbit ..." and stays there! So no hl2 deathmatch for me :-(

 

[doomed - uk]

Steam can lie and say it's "connecting" and it might seem to be a connection problem when, in actual fact, it could be updating and downloading something. This happens for me.

If you have some way to look at what your internet connection is doing other than Steam's monitor, then it could show massive activity during this "connection" phase.

I'm not sure if it's a common problem but I have no reason not to suspect it isn't as otherwise Steam functions on my system as it should. It could be the case that millions of people are tricked into believing there is a connection problem because Steam decides to update without telling anyone what it's doing.

Also, Steam's monitor graph of activity will not show the update that occured during connection either once the "connection" is complete.

My connection phase on broadband lasted 5 to 10 minutes when Deathmatch became available. I figure people with 56k modems will have to leave their modems in the "connection" phase for at least 1 hour for it to finish the update.

But how will they know to do this? I guess they might never know and start and stop connection a whole lot of times.

Oh yeah, Steam is helpful like this.

It's really nice of Valve to inflict on millions of people software whose natural behaviour could be to make them think there is a connection fault.

 

[fractalbit]

Thank you very much for your answer. It maybe happens what you are talking about because while the steam says it is connecting my connection is fully active, receiving and sending bytes. Since i am on ISDN 64 i suppose that it downloads the deathmatch mode. I never left it for more than 5-6 minutes since i thought it was stuck. I didnt thought about this secret updating because when the deathcmatch came out it displayed an updating steam window which lasted for 5 minutes, so i thought that this was it. Apparently it was not ... WHAT A CRAPY PROGRAM :frown: