Is Your Attitude Towards Steam Positive or Negative?

What is your attitude towards Steam?

  • Strongly Positive

    Votes: 104 41.1%

  • Positive

    Votes: 90 35.6%

  • Neutral

    Votes: 29 11.5%

  • Negative

    Votes: 16 6.3%

  • Strongly Negative

    Votes: 14 5.5%
  • Total voters
    253
C

_Chaz_

Guest
Sorry if this isn't really in the right section, there isnt a forum for discussion on steam or valve or really the bigger picture, so I hope here will do. Anyway, I was wondering just generally what everyones view on Steam is, personally I dont like it and I'd hate to see HL3 plagued with it.

So - what are your views?
 
Why do you dislike it so much?

IMO i see nothing wrong with it, its easy to use and makes accessing valves games easier. :)
 
_Chaz_ said:
personally I dont like it and I'd hate to see HL3 plagued with it.
Click to expand...

Well its going to be, so I guess you're going to be getting used to the program some more.

I like the whole idea, I only hope Epic will jump on the Steam bandwagon and release things over it aswell.
 
Only "Positive". I see the need for it, but nonetheless, I do find it extremely irritating having to use the offline mode whilst i'm away at Uni, where I have no internet connection. I have to get any Single Player games installed, and have to know if i'm likely to want to play them for the next 11 weeks. If I want to free up HDD space, I have to weigh up the fact that I'll probably not get to a connection for several weeks to reinstall the game. It's great when you have the net, but it sucks bottom-holes when you don't.
 
Neutral, as the steam loading thing in opposing force / blue shift really gets on my nerves and it can be annoying at times in general.
 
Strongly Positive. Never had a single problem with Steam.


Only been using it for a year and a half or so, so I didn't experience how it was in the beginning.
 
its pretty tight..rough start...but good now..never have to patch a thing myself
 
fine unless you're buying a new computer and you arent gonna have the net when you get it, in which case i hate steam and wish it didnt exist.
 
agreed on that...or just bringing the game home and being so excited to play it and then several hours of steam pain later..you just want to go cry
 
Strongly Positive. Had a very rough first few months but after that it works like a charm. The only problem I see would be is if you don't have the internet. 56k even works well though(I'm a 56ker) and if you don't have the internet, just pull out an old AOL disc...aint that hard you should be able to find them well....with just about everything
 
Strongly positive. I've been using it since the Beta and it's a very clever system. Never had any major issues with it. It's easy to use, lets valve update their games, and notify us about changes in one easy step.

http://steampowered.com/status/status.html

And with that many players, they must be doing something right. Sure it's cool to be on the anti-steam band wagon, but it still does a good job of keeping 250000 people gaming.
 
Strongly Positive. I hated it at first, because it was rushed out, and releases werent planned well... but now its been runing smooth as a babies rump. It makes games easy to buy (I bought dod:s, preloaded the night before release, and was playing next day without a hassle), and I dont have to go to websites to find patches, or to see if I am up to date.
 
Positive. Only problemm I saw was that I wasn't playing HL2 within 5 minutes of it being released. Having said that I go it a darn sight quicker than if I had gone to the shops.

Oh and VALVe could make it a WHOLE lot securer too, but they haven't. The whole Email Address Forgotten Password thing could be made more secure for the users that want it, and STEAMID's could be made worthwhile too if VALVe wanted to.
~EDIT: Lessthanthree VALVe!
 
Never had a single problem with it.

Only time ever was on release day where downloading took awhile, but that was expected because I knew the servers would be bogged.
 
Strongly Positive, I love it, its the future.

You're right though, Kupoartist, offline mode isn't very stable and steam doesn't work great for people who have dial-up internet.
 
I'd say negative, I left a support ticket and have yet to receive message from them and its been 3 weeks.
 
and steam doesn't work great for people who have dial-up internet.
Click to expand...
Actually Yes, yes it does works great. Yes I have dial-up.
You're right though, Kupoartist, offline mode isn't very stable
Click to expand...
Well for me it works great.
 
Initially I hated the buggy and laggy POS client Valve churned out that forced one to update their games no matter what. But now I like it, and see it's usefulness. I now only wish the in game menus weren't as ugly (Original HL games) and that Friends would actually work.

I would probably hate it if I were still on dial up I admit.
 
I'm sure Steam would be great if everyone on the planet had broadband, and unlimited MB usage per month. However, we do not. I was (as I'm sure we all were) really excited to bring home my copy of HL2. I knew about the need for an internet connection, and although I only had dial-up at the time, I figured that was ok, as the net was just going to be needed to verify that I had a legal copy. Or so I thought. After installing the game, a thing called "Steam" started up. Ok, this must help start HL2. Then this "steam" proceded to update itself. C'mon, I thought. I just want to plaaaayyyyyy. After half an hour or more, it was done. Alright! I thought. Let's go! NO. Now I would have to wait for steam to verify my cd key- which took a surprisingly long time. Then it started to update HL2. Another 1 1/2 hours go by. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD- I just want to play the damn game I just PAID for. Who are these people to prevent me from using something I paid for until they are ready? I also have noticed that if you don't log steam onto the net for a while, you cannot play any steam games until you do so.- More downloading time forced upon you- just to update steam, and that's if you don't want to update your games.

The other thing I hate about it is they don't seem to tell you how big an update is- and I have seen some whoppers. People with MB limits- and yes, there are whole countries that ALL the ISP's there have limits, or rediculous monthly prices to not have a limit. How can these people decide if they can acommodate the update?

I'm sure that steam type delivery systems are "the way of the future",- but what about people that are trying to get by today?
 
Shasta said:
I'm sure Steam would be great if everyone on the planet had broadband, and unlimited MB usage per month. However, we do not. I was (as I'm sure we all were) really excited to bring home my copy of HL2. I knew about the need for an internet connection, and although I only had dial-up at the time, I figured that was ok, as the net was just going to be needed to verify that I had a legal copy. Or so I thought. After installing the game, a thing called "Steam" started up. Ok, this must help start HL2. Then this "steam" proceded to update itself. C'mon, I thought. I just want to plaaaayyyyyy. After half an hour or more, it was done. Alright! I thought. Let's go! NO. Now I would have to wait for steam to verify my cd key- which took a surprisingly long time. Then it started to update HL2. Another 1 1/2 hours go by. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD- I just want to play the damn game I just PAID for. Who are these people to prevent me from using something I paid for until they are ready? I also have noticed that if you don't log steam onto the net for a while, you cannot play any steam games until you do so.- More downloading time forced upon you- just to update steam, and that's if you don't want to update your games.

The other thing I hate about it is they don't seem to tell you how big an update is- and I have seen some whoppers. People with MB limits- and yes, there are whole countries that ALL the ISP's there have limits, or rediculous monthly prices to not have a limit. How can these people decide if they can acommodate the update?

I'm sure that steam type delivery systems are "the way of the future",- but what about people that are trying to get by today?
Click to expand...

Holy F#%king $#!+, after reading your post I went to check my Steam folder. 14 F#%king gigs! It started off as about 4 with simply HL2 and CSS, as well as less than a gig for all the original HL games. 14 gigs!
 
DoctorWeeTodd said:
Holy F#%king $#!+, after reading your post I went to check my Steam folder. 14 F#%king gigs! It started off as about 4 with simply HL2 and CSS, as well as less than a gig for all the original HL games. 14 gigs!
Click to expand...

You must be full of stupid CSS\CS mods, textures and .wav files. That's nothing to do with how Steam works. Not everyone with Steam and or Half-Life 2 will have a 14 gig Folder.
 
Agreed Rosseh, my steam folder is 5gigs with HL2 and CS:S installed with CS:S not being updated yet.
It gets massive when you start adding mods. I've had an 12gig folder before.
 
I think Steam is the slightly thicker part of the wedge driving beetween those with and without a decent connection.
It has created a lot of frustration, oh boy.
 
rosseh said:
You must be full of stupid CSS\CS mods, textures and .wav files. That's nothing to do with how Steam works. Not everyone with Steam and or Half-Life 2 will have a 14 gig Folder.
Click to expand...
Correct- but a 1GB - 2GB limit in NZ seem to be the standard MB limits per month offered over here. So even though an extra 1GB or even 500MB may not seem much to you, that can equal half or more of someones monthly limit. I think we should be given the information and a choice for ALL downloads, whether they are steam updates or game ones. Then we can make an informed decision on how to proceed, not this "you have no choice" system. I would hate to do a simple update (or have it done for me), only to find out that I will not be surfing the net for the rest of the month as I have reached my limit. Some ISP's won't even stop you surfing- they will just charge $1 per MB over. Ouch.

Give us knowledge and a choice, Steam. It's not rocket science.
 
I like Steam, in fact, I haven't played a multiplayer game since UT (apart from Q4) without the Steam interface :)
 
shasta I agree with you wholeheartedly...my same experience upon buying hl2..."wtf is steam??" boy did I earn my right to play after taking steam up the ass for several hours....and then I remember there was some bug or something with the game that everyone seemed to be having, or maybe it was with steam, whatever, pain in the ass
 
I have no reason to hate it, but I wish it didn't have to be running in the background all the time. (while I'm playing)
 
I'm ganna say neutral. Steam is a stable program, but we all have our share of problems and disagreements on the subject. I don't like downloading games, I rather install them, it's faster. But as long as Half-Life 2, and please god Aftermath, are available in retail i'm happy.
 
Shasta said:
Correct- but a 1GB - 2GB limit in NZ seem to be the standard MB limits per month offered over here. So even though an extra 1GB or even 500MB may not seem much to you, that can equal half or more of someones monthly limit. I think we should be given the information and a choice for ALL downloads, whether they are steam updates or game ones. Then we can make an informed decision on how to proceed, not this "you have no choice" system. I would hate to do a simple update (or have it done for me), only to find out that I will not be surfing the net for the rest of the month as I have reached my limit. Some ISP's won't even stop you surfing- they will just charge $1 per MB over. Ouch.

Give us knowledge and a choice, Steam. It's not rocket science.
Click to expand...

Most of the official Steam patches are reasonably small. Take a look at say, http://www.steampowered.com/platform/update_history/Half-Life%202.html for example. The changes made are often small and over a course of a few weeks. I'm willing to bet none of those downloads will be over even 100mb. So, in a way Steam is doing you a favour. Imagine if you had to download a massive 500mb patch all the time, you'd be pissed off with that too, right? We just have to accept the fact that patches happen, and Steam is actually a very good way of doing it. You might be forced to download them, but it does tell you what you're downloading, and what it's going to change.

The things that will be filling up his hard drive are going to be server side mod downloads/screen shots/demos and other client related and custom things.
 
i like Steam very much and well.. i voted "positive"
my vote very well could have been "very positive" but i suppose the thing that bothers me most is requiring an internet connection to play the single player portion.
now this is not a huge problem for me...and i don't ever see it being a problem (well hopefully) but it is bothersome that if people for whatever reason don't have a net connection, they are essentially left in the dark as far as this great game goes.
 
rosseh said:
Most of the official Steam patches are reasonably small. Take a look at say, http://www.steampowered.com/platform/update_history/Half-Life%202.html for example. The changes made are often small and over a course of a few weeks. I'm willing to bet none of those downloads will be over even 100mb. So, in a way Steam is doing you a favour. Imagine if you had to download a massive 500mb patch all the time, you'd be pissed off with that too, right? We just have to accept the fact that patches happen, and Steam is actually a very good way of doing it. You might be forced to download them, but it does tell you what you're downloading, and what it's going to change.
Click to expand...
I do not consider a 100MB patch to be "small", let alone a 500MB one. I bet someone on dial will feel the same way. We are living in a world where a lot of people still have that, so why does steam pretend we don't? In my opinon patches that size represent a HUGE stuff up on behalf of the developers. This is made much worse when the patch is for steam- I couldn't give a rats left testicle about keeping some 3rd party program I don't particularly want up to date. It just uses up my MB usage, without even giving me a choice.

And where does it tell you the SIZE of the update? It just lets you know there is one, and what it will do. I WANT TO KNOW HOW MUCH I'm downloading, BEFORE I start. It doesn't even matter why I do, it should be common courtesy to give your customers this sort of information.
 
I can see where you are coming from. And it would be nice to know the size of the update. There is a "Monitor" section in Steam which you can use to see how much you've downloaded in a session, but I don't suppose that's all that useful if you want to know beforehand how large a file is.
I didn't mean that a 100mb patch would be small, I was saying that updates are tiny these days, maybe when you first install Steam/Half-Life it will take a while longer, but if you want to patch any game you have the same problem, it's not a design fault in Steam. Third Party games don't update themselves do they? The changes are to the Steam/Source engine, so every thing is updated at the same time. It's very good for people who have a lot of source/Steam related games.

I do agree that users should be told how large the download is though and I can't understand why Valve would leave it out.
 
The 3rd party program I was referring to was Steam. As far as I can tell, it updates the content delivery / protection side often, not just the games and source engine. = Waste of my MB limit IMO. I just want to play the damn game! It works fine for me how it is, I don't need any updates forced on me. I definatly don't care if I have the latest patch / update for some content delivery system! :)
 
Shasta said:
I don't need any updates forced on me. I definatly don't care if I have the latest patch / update for some content delivery system! :)
Click to expand...

They aren't forced on you, when you installed Steam you knew about the automatic patching. If you don't care about not having the lastest update then how do you expect to play online on servers? :|
 
DiSTuRbEd said:
They aren't forced on you, when you installed Steam you knew about the automatic patching. If you don't care about not having the lastest update then how do you expect to play online on servers? :|
Click to expand...
When I installed HL2, I didn't even know about Steam, let alone automatic patching. I just thought I was buying a cool game, and had never heard of this sort of system of doing things. If I CHOOSE to play online, then I would clearly need to update. The problem is- even if I never ever ever wanted to play online, I am still forced to update steam. I discovered this when I still had my dial up, and had always played in offline mode, for about a month or two. I went to play it as usual, and found I couldn't play till I let Steam check the net for updates. Which of course it found, and started a long download. That is not cool.
 
Shodan said:
You're right though, Kupoartist, offline mode isn't very stable
Click to expand...
Well, It's all fine and stable here. It's just a pain the arse that it exists at all, when you don't have Internet access for half of the year.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Pikminiman
CES 2014: Steam Machines Round-Up
Replies
3
Views
4K
Pikminiman
Pikminiman
ríomhaire
Science is weird
Replies
38
Views
2K
BabyHeadCrab
BabyHeadCrab
Pi Mu Rho
Zombie Master Postmortem
Replies
7
Views
7K
Insano
Insano
jverne
what is your general attitude when dating someone
Replies
34
Views
1K
Dalamari
Dalamari
Dekstar
Counter-Strike: GOing Deep - Part 1
Replies
17
Views
5K
Ennui
Ennui
Back
Top