General Opinion

[MoJo|Night]

Sorry in advance for the lengthy post.

I hate forum polls as much as anyone so I'm going to try not to turn this into one but I've got a few thoughts on valve, hl2, steam, etc and I'm interested to see what other people think. I know this question/post is not just related to HL2 but also steam and Valve in general but the people of this forum are the people I think can answer my question and General Discussion is the best I can class it as.

As little as six months ago Valve had THE reputation in the business, they could do no wrong in the eyes of the media and the game playing masses. Despite the fact that they had actually only produced one or two real products the quality shone through and people loved them.

Just under a year ago that rep went through the roof with the announcement of source and HL2.

All along there were murmurings about CS : CZ and TF2 but they were kept pretty quiet and people liked valve and everything they stood for and more importantly from Valve's point of view people were waiting with baited breath for more valve releases so that they could give their money to valve.

Since then there has been Steam, various CZ delays and announcements, code theft and the HL2 delay.

Personally If cz and hl2 came out in a shop I'd snap them up but if they came out today via steam I have to say I'm not sure I would buy them quite so readily.

I'm sure HL2 will be one of the greatest games ever to grace a pc and the modding comminuty will go from strength to strength but with new payment methodds and new delivery methods combined with revolutionary gameplay and game mechanics I'm not too sure Valve didn't bite off more than they can chew.

Valve will insist that steam was thought of to improve the game experience and update process for players but even the most diehard Valve supporter or even staff member would find it hard to dismiss that cutting out the middlemen of the publishers with steam isn't part of their motivation for implementing it.

After that massive rambling here's my question.

Have the readers of this forum (and lets face it it's going to be a slightly biased opinion since the less techie members of the world don't tend to frequent places like this forum as much as some of us) had their intentions to purchase games from valve effected positively or negatively effected by both the delays to HL2 and also the repeated bandwidth/authentication problems associated with steam updates and also the good parts of steam for those who have used it.

Have valve potentially shot themselves in the foot by trying to add steam into HL2 instead of doing a standard commercial single publisher release?

 

[Axyon]

As a program, Steam could potentially revolutionize the whole access to Multiplayer gaming route, but VALVe really need to get their ideas together and clean it up bigtime. With a little effort they could perfect it.

That said, I'll bet that the majority of people will buy the packaged game; me included. I love sitting back and relaxing with a good game manual in my hand, waiting for the game to finish installing.

 

[Murray_H]

That said, I'll bet that the majority of people will buy the packaged game; me included. I love sitting back and relaxing with a good game manual in my hand, waiting for the game to finish installing.

Affirmative, and as soon as games are DVD'orized it'll mean more manual reading time without having to "insert disc 2....0000000"

That said, steam is a good idea for people who want the game asap without having to wait for the game to be released when people in america for example have completed the game twice and are now playing the sequel

Like someone said before on here, there are always problems with new technologies before they become used by everyone, but Valve's problems are more apparent because they appear to be holding up the release of one of the most anticipated games in recent years

 

[Spiffae]

Well, I'm of the school of thought that Steam is a great thing, I just needs more resources.
Let's look at yesterday's update.

It would have gone fine, but the content servers were quicly overwhelmed. The steam website went down, and users started getting incomplete downloads, faulty installs, and all manner of problems. I think that if Valve had had enough content servers to meet the demand (whatever that might have been... maybe 10 times what they have now) the update would have gone smoothly. I hope that their partnering with LimeLight networks will give them the enormous bandwidth to provide these titles to everyone who wants them, when they want them. I have complete faith that Valve will correct any problems that might arise when releasing a big title, it would just be critical that those fixes happened very quickly.

Steam is not a perfect system, but some of the advantages are really incredible. The ability to constantly check in with an authentication server, though it might be a pain, will dramatically cut down piracy. I can't wait for the day that the Warez groups realize that they can't distribute HL2 because to play it, you need a Steam account and HL2 key provided by valve. Steam could also be a boon to modders, because a mod could easily be spread across the steam network and simply show up as another "game" if you wanted it.

Yes, Steam does cut out the middleman... good for valve. If they make more money, i think they deserve it.

don't forget the possibility that Steam HL2 will be significantly cheaper than Boxed HL2

 

[marksmanHL2 :)]

Right now steam is really getting on my tits....


Can anyone tell me how to find out your own CD key through the registry?




Anyway, basically I have had to create a new steam account because I lost my old one in the recent update. Now I have to change the CD key to use my other HL CD key for my new account.... Its really really pissing me off!

 

[MoJo|Night]

Fair points all round, I wonder what capacity Valve contracted the maker of BitTorrent. The legal issues of peer to peer commercial sales would be a nightmare but the nature of torrents only being available for upload from a computer which is currently downloading would mean that a connection to the steam auth servers would be implied and it might solve the bandwidth problems from the server end, the client end could be a whole other matter.

 

[jet jaguar]

Funny that you bring Steam up today. Steam was supposed to be set for a major update(offline play, lan play, purchase over steam...) but has been overloaded both Wed and today(Thur). This is not a good sign considering CS:CZ is set for a 3/30 release.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

Funny that you bring Steam up today. Steam was supposed to be set for a major update(offline play, lan play, purchase over steam...) but has been overloaded both Wed and today(Thur). This is not a good sign considering CS:CZ is set for a 3/30 release.

I also like how CS:CZ won't be on content servers, therefore nothing will be wrong with them, limelight networks has to deal with that, VALVe doesn't.

 

[Epsi]

Even if Steam says that it can't find your account, that's a weird patch day glitch most likely, your account will still exist. Anyways, Steam doesn't keep your CD-Key around anywhere at all, Steam only cares about what "subscriptions" you have, and if you entered a CD-Key, that means free permanent subscription, and then Steam promptly forgets there was ever a CD-Key involved at all.

It's sad this kind of horror happens on patch days... it really is. Steam, in theory is a brilliant idea, and it has benefits for almost everyone involved. Personally, I can't see why they don't utilise pre-load technologies for updates. The update can be streamed into a Steam cache before it happens, then when enough people have it, they flick the switch at Valve and the update comes into effect.

The "patch day effect" is simply caused by every user of Steam needing the patch right away for Steam to work at all online, so the servers get a *huge* load at once, and die. If they spread this load out, things will work so, so much better.


And I'll bet much money that the Limelight deal is to host Steam content servers on Limelight's network. Most likely, Limelight will be able to offer a Steam capacity service, so that anyone can sign up with Limelight to buy Steam publishing capacity.

 

[wonkers]

What I am thinking is that Valve has got to put a serious effort into this. If this is what happens when they want to update, how will they ever get a game going through steam? I am no programmer, but I thought the concept of BIT (bittorrent spelling*) was that the client took the load. Steam as a system is flawed but isn't it supposed to work no matter what?

The main point is that I am dissapointed in the failures of steam. Up until now it's worked fine for me. I have had no problems really, but when the steam team fails, HL2 fails. It bothers me to know that there might be a time where this program could halt the release of a good game.

It's been said elsewhere, maybe Valve bit off more than they could chew?

 

[Epsi]

I think that HL2 is going to be a different matter as far as Steam is concerned.

1) People are going to be buying HL2, so Valve are going to have a lot more cash to splash.

2) They can not even consider trying to release HL2 on the crappy bandwidth they have now.

3) They are actually going to use their preloading tech.

 

[WaterMelon34]

You need an account for steam? I just dled it and made a nickname..... it works for me.
??? You need a CD-Key for steam ???
wat da hell is goin on here :O

:sniper: :O

 

[Mr-Fusion]

HL2 will do one of two things.

1. Expose Valve as the frauds they are (They have only created one successful game).

or

2. Improve their currently tarnished and utterly destroyed reputation.



Though i've had more fun playing the HL2 beta than i did playing Max Payne 2, Call of Duty, Farcry demo, Painkiller demo...Doom 3 alpha. But that's just me.

EDIT: This recent steam update has turned into an utter catastrophe. Imagine the DDOS attacks that will occur when HL2 or CZ is released. The steampowered website has been down for about 2 days now.

This is atrocious.

I can imagine it now. HL2 will be released on Steam, no-one will be able to actually download it for at least 2-3 weeks, no-one will be able to access steampowered for about 2-3 weeks to find out wtf is going on as the DOS attacks and lack of bandwidth completely destroy Valves vision for the future.

That's the worst case scenario.

 

[MoJo|Night]

No the worst case scenario is that hackers with access to the steam and HL2 source kidnap the steam servers and use the valve online gaming community as a mass bot machine source to take over the world........

 

[Edcrab]

I'd never even consider downloading HL2 via Steam, even if someone dropped through the roof and offered me a £2 a month T3 connection. I reckon anyone with sense- regardless of their available bandwidth- will simply buy it retail.

In my opinion (yes, that's the classic "beware, biased opionated rant incoming!" warning sign) Valve's only excuse for delaying the offline play release was to improve their server load- which they clearly haven't done. As some cynic on the PHL forums quite correctly said, "only Steam could call offline play an achievement".

Every time I play through Steam, I'll think "hey, that's a good feature." Of course, half the time I can't play through Steam... but once Valve gives the system a boost it'll be revolutionary. They just appear to have grossly underestimated the community, both in volume and in DOS-happy attitude :x