Is Your Attitude Towards Steam Positive or Negative?

[Insano]

I'm 100% positive. I've been using it since the beta's, and no problems for me

 

[boglito]

I absolutely love it. NEVER had an issue.

I've had some bad issues, but I still love it.

.bog.

 

[ZoFreX]

M-m-m-m-m-m-monster Post!

You know me I think that beats my personal best though (also set in this thread I think...)

Anything that allows me to purchase my video games in the nude is a good thing in my book.

I'm with you there bro. I've irc'd while in the bath, but I couldn't make a Steam purchase 'cos I didn't have my credit card on me

 

[RabidJester]

I just have the girlfriend spray me down with the hose now and again.

 

[Cole]

I know, but that wasn't my point. Someone said "It should make updates optional", someone else said "You can turn updating off", I said "But it forces you to update when you start the game" - by which I am countering the argument that updates already are optional. They aren't optional if you want to play the game, and they should be.

I know but there are to many things to be in consideration.
Lets say there is an update to HL2 that adds a new combine. Then a mod uses that combine in it. You download the mod but you HL2 isn't updated. What if this mod is also multiplayer? There becomes alot of factors to take in.

 

[StAtiC]

Strongly positive. Anything that alerts me for driver updates and automatic patching gets my approval. I haven't had any issues with it, only how long it took to unlock HL2 on release.

 

[guardian653]

Negative for HL2
Can't control updates (remember the gman_high bug?)
Offline mode sort of works
Should be optional (The launch sucked, I hope they're better perpared for Aftermath)

For the multiplayer games: Positive
Free add-on maps
Everyone is in sync
Server browser is great (though a little buggy from time to time)

Sadly Valve is a bit slow to admit problems, the studder issue comes to mind. I also feel for the broadband-less crowd; especially when a SP game that didn't include any MP mode required internet access regardless..

(Oh yeah, the pirated HL2, it did run faster. Plus there was no AI problem someone spoke of. And if anyone asks, I already had HL2 and suffered through the crappy launch before I tried the 'pirated' version.)

 

[ZoFreX]

I know but there are to many things to be in consideration.
Lets say there is an update to HL2 that adds a new combine. Then a mod uses that combine in it. You download the mod but you HL2 isn't updated. What if this mod is also multiplayer? There becomes alot of factors to take in.

So bring in versioning again. Every other game in the world somehow survives with optional updates, it isn't that hard to have "minimum required:" on the mod. I seriously doubt that's Valve's reason for having updates mandatory.

(Oh yeah, the pirated HL2, it did run faster. Plus there was no AI problem someone spoke of. And if anyone asks, I already had HL2 and suffered through the crappy launch before I tried the 'pirated' version.)

Aside: The pirated version makes it easier to get Half-Life 2 running in linux (via WINE)... getting Steam working is pretty tricky.

 

[Cole]

So bring in versioning again. Every other game in the world somehow survives with optional updates, it isn't that hard to have "minimum required:" on the mod. I seriously doubt that's Valve's reason for having updates mandatory.

Your completely right. But please: Single Player games take next to nothing to download there updates...even on a 56k. Multiplayer games you can't play really except if you have the latest update....
The updates are there incase something serious happens, some huge exploit that wasn't forseen. Now you can be sure that you can fix it for everyone. Theres one example on why Valve chose a reason for having updates mandatory.


And if your going to dl the pirated version of HL2 why not just partion your friggen HD, slap a pirated windows on there to have an easy way to play all your damn games instead of running them in Wine and getting reduced performance.

 

[JoeCLawrence]

Positive. Its helpful with updates, drivers, and helps manage my stuff pretty well. It does have some issues (Friends has never really worked has it?), but its potential is pretty huge.

But its not really true that you that you need new patches for MP, although if you want a better gamplay experiance you probably ought too. My version of BF2 is lik 3+ months out of date, and I can still play on a few ranked servers. I just can't get the stupid patch to install for some reason.

 

[Loc-Dog]

I like steam, as long as they dont want you to pay extra for it.

 

[ZoFreX]

And if your going to dl the pirated version of HL2 why not just partion your friggen HD, slap a pirated windows on there to have an easy way to play all your damn games instead of running them in Wine and getting reduced performance.

Because getting HL2 working under Wine in a legit manner was an interesting and challenging experience? I didn't actually wanna play it like that, I don't even use linux... just wanted to see if it could be done.

 

[rosseh]

Positive. Its helpful with updates, drivers, and helps manage my stuff pretty well. It does have some issues (Friends has never really worked has it?), but its potential is pretty huge.
.

It's late, i'm bored so...

The Friends system worked for a long time, well. Quite a while at least. It'll be back soon enough.

 

[ZoFreX]

It's been "back soon" for quite a while now, though

Shame, it's one of the coolest features.

 

[rosseh]

True, true. But we all know what valve can be like in terms of getting things done.

 

[15357]

Steam sucks. I have a pirated version of HL2 and it runs very fine. I love stealing from multi-million corporations.



EDIT: J/K. STOP PMing ME!

 

[Zaffino]

negative, sometimes when i play css it says my steam account is already in use

LOL 15357

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

negative, sometimes when i play css it says my steam account is already in use

Heres a hint, change your password...It most likely is being used by someone else....

 

[ZoFreX]

Yeah I get that when Kharmael steals my account, the thieving bastage. Oh and with respect to Valve saying they'll get things done: If they say they'll do it, they will do it. Maybe late. But it generally happens. They've said that in Aftermath will be AI sidekicks that don't suck, piss you off, walk into walls or repeat themselves, I trust them to do it and I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Rygir]

I believe that if you have a hack on your computer that you run on a Secure Server and certian values are out of certian bounds, then VAC will ban you. It dosn't just check your computer when steams up 24/7. You need it running in the background and\or certain values need to be out of bounds for you to be picked up by VAC.

I'm afraid you're missing my point; it's about the principle that IF you get banned, it's up to YOU to prove you weren't doing anything wrong. Which becomes a really big problem if you don't live near Gabe, or in the USA for that matter, because basically, all they have is your word that they did something wrong... it takes quite a bit of knowledge in computing then to make a solid argument, which is unfair to ordinary people. All this is because I find it hard to believe their system is flawless and doesn't make mistakes. All that wouldn't be a problem if they didn't act like the thought police when it comes to banning and blocking... So far it's all hypothetical of course, and if it would come that far Valve's name would be hurt badly. This is why this bothers me, if anything goes wrong, a good developer will take the deep plunge and I'd really hate that...

Of course you could pay $10, but anyways how can you register it to the wrong account? You would have to create 2 accounts in the first place to do that then register it to the wrong one.

By not paying attention to which account you were logged into... I registered my original Half-Life copy to a different account because otherwise it would just get "absorbed" into my Half-Life 2 account (which comes with the whole classic package anyway). That way I had 2 accounts to play HL with, which is always nice I guess. Anyway, it's only fair to mention this issue got resolved because they just refunded the games to me to allow to buy them with my other account.

Get a Steam Ticket....

The point was that their systems tell them you never installed it. What proof do you have to tell otherwise? With a little luck you can find your proof of purchase, and you can start sending scans and copies halfway across the world. Besides, steam support is not the most pleasant experience...

Yes and now PUBLISHERS you know like Vivendi for instance DON'T EVEN SHIP MANUALS, SHIP PAPER CASES, AND USE OUTDATED SCREENSHOTS ON THEIR BOX.
Yeah, Publishers get just as lazy man. With Steam at least the people who make the game actually get most of the money.

It's true, but I stick with my point : I prefer spending money on solid material, rather than just getting 2 bytes that say somethings is "yours" now... Actually, it says "you can pretend it's yours but if we don't like what you do with it it stops being yours and is ours again". I don't like EULAs either. I don't like being spammed with them, and I don't like how they keep trying to protect themselves rather than taking responsibility for anything..."where are the grown-ups?"

I hope you understand what I'm referring to with that last statement, I don't want to elaborate on it right now [exams].

Because less people. This could be because of certain filter settings. More people have probably moved on from the oringal HLDM. To more mods that improve HLDM and Cs and etc..

I should have put this differently... obviously there's less people playing the old games by now, and obviously, I'm comparing with the same set of filter settings, as well as without filters at all. And actually I was counting HL and all it's mods as one game. In fact, even if I add all CSS servers and other source mods it doesn't seem right. Maybe the whole family of games just isn't as hot as it used to be, and people flocked to other games that I'm missing out on...
And for some reason, I can't really put my finger on it, it seems more of a hassle to join a game. Especially on a particular server (if someone says "join me on...".
Anyway, if you can explain to me why sometimes (not always, but very often), I find no more than 2000 servers, while my friends gets over 10k ? This is usually when I try to join him in a game... Add to that that I can't even find all of the servers hosted by my ISP.... in the old days of HL, I went into the game (rather than some generic launching platform, you just went into the game of your choice , just like launching photoshop instead of the adobe suite because you feel like drawing something ), chose "multiplayer", set the filter to ping less than 100/50, and occassionally a certain mod or map, and then browse the list for a familiar name. Maybe that's what's bothering me :Fewer servers run by regular people, you need a powerfull connection to handle a gameserver, you can't just click host and ok anymore (I admit, this probably has nothing to do with steam, but I associate it with steam vs HL).

To make priating a hell of a lot easier. It will cancel out lazy pirates just like that, screw out alot of pirates from the mods and updates. Steam has alot of account stuff because of piracy. Piracy heavily hurts Developers. They get what $7 off of a $50 game, piracy just really hurts them. At least with online distribution it hurts them alot less because they get about $35. This allows for 5x less people to buy for you to still make the same amount of money. So this basically just cuts a good portion of piracy and gives the DEVELOPER the money they deserve.
Though what if piracy went up? Well simple, if 2/5 of the people that would normally buy the game just pirate dit, the developer is still making 3x the money.

I was referring to how Steam "hacked" the front end menu system of HL. All this code changing means it's fairly incompatible with the original games; the HL Demo "Uplink" still isn't playable AFAIK. I don't see why they had to make such an ugly menu, compared to the stylish original (at least at the time, it was fairly unique and it still has a very special feel to it if you ask me).
But now that you have stirred the piracy-pot :
Much like the music industry is abusing peer to peer as an excuse for losses, publishers keep claiming that if their games couldn't be pirated, their sales would soar and they "wouldn't have to live of scraps and 2nd hand shoes" anymore... In the end, this results in anti-piracy measures that force me to get cracked exe's for games I paid for just to run them hassle-free... In terms of steam, I don't believe in having to jump through hoops just because others *might* not buy the game and hack it to play it for free. Why do *I* have to pay for what others do wrong? Why does it have to take so long to connect to a server because VAC is having tons of fun exchanging encrypted packages. The purpose of my post was to compare this with the good old days of HL multi, and back then you just clicked the server and everything it did was directly related to let you play, rather than stopping you from doing anything else.
And to the argument that steam as a distribution mechanism lets the developer get much more money per sold game is great, I find this a wonderful development. Same for the future of online distribution of music btw (although I think it's not good they offer MP3 rips whose quality is inferior to CDs). But the this doesn't require steam to have to run before letting me play the damn game. If it was just a distribution mechanism all it have to do is provide a secure data channel to allow me to make purchases, tied to an account, which allowed me to download them. When playing online, you chose a nickname and joined a server, and the serial key was verified by a public server. On the other hand, right now it seems everyone who plays online now can be uniquely identified by the server's host (authentication mechanisms seem to pass the server, as they can block accounts from their servers?), taking away from what online anonimity you have and once again sacrificing a tiny bit of privacy for the good of OTHERS. And the best thing is : People who play the warez version DON'T have these problems, they play on servers that don't require authentication...

Every Developer makes games with the very intention on making money. For any company even one like Valve or Blizzard sees money as the 1st priority. Then what do we need to make that money? Make a good game. Add unique things in. Get a huge community behind it. As you can see it all goes back as a scheme to simply make money.

Well, call me naive, but as a budding developer I believe the desire to make a good game COMES FIRST. The money is just a means to get it off the ground. And for the same reason I believe it's time the music industry changes completely, I believe any "artcommunity" should run on the basis of the efforts of the artists, rather than money being in charge. Every artist deserves equal chances, and depending on how much they influence people they deserve to get rewarded. Not because of how much money they can throw at it to get it advertised and boosted into pop culture, no, they actually have to work to make a name for themselves *gasp*. This goes for game developers all the same, as they are just as much in the entertainment industry. And I don't really see much of a difference between art and entertainment.

It dosn't Scan your HD, all it does is a quick scan for what is in memory and if any Values in the game is out of Date and STEAM does not do this. HL2 DOES THIS. Without Steam there is no doubt Valve would have still made VAC.

I guess you have a point that VAC and steam aren't really one thing. Still I would have preferred not to be bound by VAC, it's like a sword of Damocles. One mis-step and your branded a horse thief forever. Add to that it's all digital and your status of horse thief/murderer/child molester/cheater is reduced to 1 bit. One boolean variable set to true or false determines whether we help you or make things as hard as possible for you. And as far as the quick scan in memory, I recall reading stuff in a EULA about giving permission for it to scan my hard drive... maybe that's changed since then. If, and only if, it just scans the game's memory area, then I'll shut up and retract my opposition. It has every right to check for awkward hooks if I CHOOSE TO PLAY ON A PROTECTED SERVER. If I want to check for variables and test things on my own server, that's my business and I don't want anyone to try and intervene.

Thats wierd, it seems to me most people have said it takes less.
To log in or load? I don't see it taking a long time to load. I click on steam, it starts up checks for update and logs in.

I haven't measured anything, it just felt more sluggish. I assume the whole loading/logging in process. The amount of time from deciding to play a game and actually launching the game. Having to fight my way through various screens I don't need is not my idea of fun.

Most 56kers should have learned the meaning of patience. For singleplayer games the updates are very small and take 1-10 minutes on a 56k. For multiplayer, well since servers and things damn update on the fly...well your going to have to anyway so this just makes it so you don't have to wait in line at fileplanet.

The point fo not having to update is NOT HAVING TO UDPATE. Not getting the update elsewhere. I'm sure all the people that (used to) wish they could go back to CS 1.3 understand. It also means I can't just install 2 copies of the game, one with and one without a certain patch. Basically they're forcing something that could and should be optional, again.

Maybe I can sum it up like this : Technically, steam works fine. But I could do fine without it. In fact, I expect I would do better without it.

If I may go so far as to express a wish : Make steam less graphical. More dry lists (like the old game list), less fancy menu styles and skinning. And just stick to a window that loads as fast as Notepad, is as obvious to work with as notepad, and just does what we ask it to do and nothing else.

 

[Rygir]

"And what do you think will happen when Steam becomes obsolete (you don't believe anything lasts more than a couple years in computer land, do you?"

If steam didn't last more than a couple years in computer land it is bound to shut down at any minute now. But it's not going to, is it?

I don't know, my crystal ball is a bit foggy. The point is "Sooner or later" it WILL.

I could pick most of your flawed arguments apart, but that would be too timeconsuming, so I picked the most obvious one.

Don't mind if I do. And I agree with you on the time consuming part. I don't really see how you can pick apart an opinion anyway, but I assume you mean giving another opinion that counters the first one...and in the case of examples, you can always find a counter example. You can turn this thing over and over and it's still the same, fact is my feelings about it are ambigious at best and I wish some people would think ahead a bit and try and see through peoples intentions at a deeper level.

Steam is currently the very best (only really good afaik) online distribution system. You don't have to like that, but you can't deny it.

I don't, I never did, and I never will. This is actually the bit that I like about steam, it's good for developers! Which means it's good for me! But there are "rough edges" that keep "scratching" me.

You could say the antipiracy features of steam sucks, but you can't deny they work to some extent (note that hl2 did not leak weaks before its worldwide release, unlike doom3), and you certainly cannot blame valve for trying. Blame the pirates.

I'm not interested in a blaming game and regardless, I don't want to be treated as a potential pirate.How on earth are leaks related to anti piracy measures? Leaks are about opportunities, if you keep something locked in a jar, it won't get out, but if you show it to people chances increase that it escapes into the wild. Besides, it helps to build hype.
Btw, anti-piracy measures aren't free. Running them, designing them, maintaining them...it's all extra work. Work that needs to be payed. And who do you think will get to pick up the check?

The steam inteface itself could be a lot better, heck, I would be able to design a much better interface, but it does work, and it _will_ be improved in time.
I can see why people would think the store tab being front sucks, but that is solved by using the mini-view.

Good, I'm glad you agree. The problem is they just iterated a new version of the interface and it got worse, bigger, clumsier, uglier. And I haven't been able to make it stick to the miniview, which btw became bigger and bulkier in terms of screen estate, compared to the old version, as well. And the monitor show less interesting information instead of more. Where's the "undo" button? (to revert to the old UI, I mean. It's a joke. Stop looking like that. )

Oh, and whining about cheat-detection. That's a good one.

.bog.

So is saying that people who whine about cheat detection must be cheaters. How about we do it like this, I'll come and stand behind you with a gun pointed at your head, the second I suspect you're cheating, or for that matter, actually are cheating, I'll blow your brains out. Deal? What's that you say? You don't trust my judgement? WELL OH MY GOD ISN'T THAT ODD :drool: :dork:

 

[Rygir]

Agreed, the store tab is a bit annoying. It constantly shows for me HL2 (which I own), CSS (which I own) and DoD (which I don't own and don't want).

As for the manuals... HL2 isn't really the game which could come with a manual in the first place. I mean, just how much useful info could you get in one? I love my older games with fat manuals, though.

cfr HL1 manual. I just loved taking them (game manuals, toy ads,...) with me everywhere I went (mind you I was a lot younger )... fantasizing(sp?) about the rest of the game is usually more thrilling than actually playing it, as I'm sure you know.

 

[Beerdude26]

Holy crap those were a lot of quotes

 

[Rygir]

Not on my computer it doesn't, nor on my laptop.

I'll put it this way : It responds slower on my P4 1.8Ghz than the old version on my PIII 600.

One of my favourite features of Steam is I can buy new games on it, that kinda requires a store front. It doesn't scan your computer either, get your facts straight.

It doesn't require the store front to pop up every time you want to play a game. In fact it doesn't require that storefront to even be loaded when you want to play a game. Or do you buy a new game every week? As far as the scanning goes, it probably stems from my assumption that VAC was active as long as Steam was, which is probably not true (anymore?).

There are several warning levels, so you'd have to cheat more than once to get banned. IIRC you normally just get banned from individual servers rather than the whole of Steam unless you really go nuts. I doubt VAC makes many (if any) false detections, this seems to be one of a number of purely hypothetical points you've made with no basis in the real world.

There are several levels? I apologise, I didn't know, back when I followed all the news I frequently read posts of people who had gotten banned and claimed this wasn't right. I doubt VAC, or anything else, is flawless. Obviously, I've never been banned so I wouldn't know the specifics, but I just make it a point to have a healthy amount of skepticism. I wasn't aware hypotheses were not allowed to explain a point?

I was unable to reproduce this. Sure, I get a page telling me I'm logged in as me, but as soon as I click a link I realise I'm not actually logged in.

Good, as this was months ago (it was 2 months after the release of HL2 when I was trying to get a response on my steam ticket that my Gold edition bonus material hadn't arrived. They've arrived by now (albeit in a badly dented box :frown: .

You can transfer games from one account to another, it costs money but this is to stop people reselling games (which of course loses them money). You have to be pretty special to register a game to the wrong account anyway. Oh, and they refuse to do refunds for eminently obvious reasons - you could download, set up offline mode, and then get a refund, and play away at your heart's content. Most game shops round here don't give refunds for pc games cos they know you can just crack them.

As said above, this issue has been kindly resolved. I guess I'm pretty special then... (it happened because I just logged in automatically, the accounts look very similar, and quite honestly I'd just forgotten about it after not having used steam intensively for months). As far as offline mode goes, I haven't been able to get that to work without disabling my internet connection completely, and if I reboot it wants to go online ASAP... They can have all the reasons in the world for not wanting to do refunds, it's a basic customer right, if you want to talk business you can't pretend your special and the rules don't apply to you. If you don't want to do business and actually be special I'm with you all the way, but then you don't get to harass and sue people either (I'm being light hearted, I hope you don't take this the wrong way). I'm not a lawyer and don't think it's in anyones interest to pick and poke at each other with rules, but there has to be some sort of relationship of trust between a merchant and his clients. If that's gone than what are you doing? And at some point second hand games were out of the question here too, but recently, they've begun doing this again. I guess they decided it was more fun selling the same game over and over...

If Steam went down completely (as in never coming back), Valve would release patches to let you carry on playing the games, without doubt.

Assuming Valve was in a position to do so...let's pretend EA got the rights to the games, and being their usual selfish selves, they don't want to invest anymore energy in old stuff because it doesn't bring in money. In general, you're at the mercy of the entity holding the bits and bytes that claim you have a legal licensing right (which is sucky by itself, you spend money, and the game is legally not even yours thanks to modern day EULAs. Good thing they haven't been tested in court yet - AFAIK) of certain amounts of software, and to use it, you need to install another platform that manages all this software (encrypting it, putting it in annoying container files, moving it around your harddrive all the while not really letting you control where to put things, or what it's allowed to modify and what not). Basically it suffers from the same disease the whole of windows suffers from : "The user doesn't have to know". I prefer to be the one controlling my PC. It's good that you don't have to when you don't want to, but if you can't do it when you do want to, that's wrong.

That reminds me, one particular form of piracy control I really liked and still like is that of Dune II : it asked stuff like "the 3rd word on the umpteenth page of the manual", and then you had to go look that up before you could continue playing. It was kind fun, definitly not disruptive and required you to have the manual. Obviously, back then the limitations made it easy to circumvent (only a limited number of things were asked), but if the manual was big enough and anything could be asked this could be fairly hard to fake your way through. You'd need a crack, just like you do with CD checks (which is what I want to evade, needing a CD or other medium). It's just an example, but I'm sure some creative minds could come up with a much more intelligent approach to anti piracy than harassing legitimate users.

What, someone could accidentally slip, load your account, accidentally slip, click half-life 2, accidentally slip, and click remove? If you're going to use hypotheticals at least use one that's remotely possible.

Ahem. Assuming it's a database stored on harddrives, there's probably just one boolean, just one bit that determines whether I have access to a particular game or not. So technically, a good dose of space radiation at the wrong time in the wrong place could con me out of my game
On the other hand, using a couple error correction methods probably eliminates this danger, but it doesn't make me feel safer that I'm being represented by a couple lame numbers .

You're paying for the game, which for me is the best bit. If you believe otherwise I have plenty of empty game boxes and manuals I can sell to you at very reasonable prices.

I don't like second hand stuff, but otherwise you would have my attention
I agree the game is the best bit though. But I also believe that it's the extra's that make something exceptional. It's the magic of special editions I guess, but Special Editions have been abused as well, by throwing in crap that's just not interesting (I'm not going to point fingers, but I'm sure you can think of examples yourselves).

Probably because less people use HL now, duh.

I'm comparing with someone else's list, duh. Yes this is a technical issue, but since it happens when I don't have any firewall that could be blocking it, I don't know what could cause this (and no filters active, see above).

Also, it doesn't strike you as sad that there are less ppl playing HL& HL2 &mods now than just HL(+cs) back in the days? This has nothing to do with Steam per sé, but I've got the feeling that playing online doesn't feel the same anymore, how about you?

It hardly wastes bandwidth for no good reason - most of its bandwidth is for updates which is what you want it to do, I don't see what you're chatting about here.

I'm talking about background noise, "phoning home". The things you don't notice until something goes wrong... I guess I shouldn't have called it bandwidth since I barely notice it on my connection, but the fact it just keeps connecting and doing things without me telling it to do so bothers me.

Can't wait for people to say TL,DR

 

[Patriarch2000]

- Slow downloads of updates
- Massive CPU usage

Other than that, I give it a 'positive' rating.

 

[boglito]

I don't know, my crystal ball is a bit foggy. The point is "Sooner or later" it WILL.

If the steam system is cancelled as soon as 2015, highly unlikely as that may seem, a sollution will be constructed to make the games work. Doubting that is akin to not buying cars because "in the future there may not be roads".

Don't mind if I do. And I agree with you on the time consuming part. I don't really see how you can pick apart an opinion anyway, but I assume you mean giving another opinion that counters the first one...and in the case of examples, you can always find a counter example. You can turn this thing over and over and it's still the same, fact is my feelings about it are ambigious at best and I wish some people would think ahead a bit and try and see through peoples intentions at a deeper level.

Oppinions can be flawed. They can be based upon obviously unlikely scenarios ("steam being shut down in the near future without any sort of back-up plan" springs to mind).

I don't, I never did, and I never will. This is actually the bit that I like about steam, it's good for developers! Which means it's good for me! But there are "rough edges" that keep "scratching" me.

I agree that there are rough edges. They will be smoothed over. Steam being required to play hl2, having cheat detection, having piracy-countermeassures are not rough edges. They are the future.

I'm not interested in a blaming game and regardless, I don't want to be treated as a potential pirate.How on earth are leaks related to anti piracy measures? Leaks are about opportunities, if you keep something locked in a jar, it won't get out, but if you show it to people chances increase that it escapes into the wild. Besides, it helps to build hype.
Btw, anti-piracy measures aren't free. Running them, designing them, maintaining them...it's all extra work. Work that needs to be payed. And who do you think will get to pick up the check?

Well, while you can argue your right to not be treated as a potential pirate you can't really stop valve from doing it, short of not buying their games. When I mentioned leak I also mentioned DooM3, for a reason. The gold version of DooM3 leaked before the game actually launched. This meant that DooM3 had to compete for customers with its own identical pirated version. In some parts of the world (where I live for example) DooM3 launched later than in the US. The pirated version was maybe 30hours of downloads away, and I think that really hurt the sales. As for piracy countermeassures not being free, I know that, and I know we pay the fee. Who are to blame? The pirates.

Good, I'm glad you agree. The problem is they just iterated a new version of the interface and it got worse, bigger, clumsier, uglier. And I haven't been able to make it stick to the miniview, which btw became bigger and bulkier in terms of screen estate, compared to the old version, as well. And the monitor show less interesting information instead of more. Where's the "undo" button? (to revert to the old UI, I mean. It's a joke. Stop looking like that. )

I agree that the new interface is no success, it is poorly designed, both from a technical view (which is something I dabble in at an amateur level) and from an aesthetical view (which I do not dabble in, but I do care about it). While it takes its sweet time I think steam will evolve into a more userfriendly interface with time. Miniview works for me so I can't really comment on that. I guess steam has its bugs that need to be ironed out.

So is saying that people who whine about cheat detection must be cheaters. How about we do it like this, I'll come and stand behind you with a gun pointed at your head, the second I suspect you're cheating, or for that matter, actually are cheating, I'll blow your brains out. Deal? What's that you say? You don't trust my judgement? WELL OH MY GOD ISN'T THAT ODD :drool: :dork:

No, I did not imply that you are a cheater because you question the vac2 system, but I did imply that you must have little to no knowledge about public gaming. Cheating will be rampant without countermeassures. Some servers (like the ones I usually play on) have good admins that can do most of the work, but for the 10000 servers out there that satisfy my ping-requirements an automated anti-cheat system is a must. Most mp-games have this, and for games that do not the users despair. I will not argue that vac2 is perfect, because I do not know exactly how it works, but it does prevent a lot of cheating and is a very good thing indeed. While Valve could make mistakes and ban people that did not actually cheat, that theoretical possibility is not enough to want me to play online without cheat protection.

All in all I will agree with you that steam needs to improve, but I will not agree with you that even one of its features (features, not quirks and bugs) need to be removed. We players need an anti-cheat system. The developers need an anti-piracy system. The online distribution, including the store, is a benefit to developers and players alike.

.bog.

 

[Mr. COWmaster]

I like steam, its very convenient for me.
Plus I rarly have any connection problems, and if I do, I can always play singleplayer.

 

[ZoFreX]

The point was that their systems tell them you never installed it. What proof do you have to tell otherwise? With a little luck you can find your proof of purchase, and you can start sending scans and copies halfway across the world. Besides, steam support is not the most pleasant experience...

With a little bit of luck? Most people know to keep hold of proof of purchase, if you're silly enough to lose that you deserve to get burned. Even if you do lose proof of purchase... being in a bad position isn't a Steam specific thing, with goods in real life you need to keep hold of it too (and it's much easier to keep hold of a confirmation email than a paper receipt!).

It's true, but I stick with my point : I prefer spending money on solid material, rather than just getting 2 bytes that say somethings is "yours" now... Actually, it says "you can pretend it's yours but if we don't like what you do with it it stops being yours and is ours again". I don't like EULAs either. I don't like being spammed with them, and I don't like how they keep trying to protect themselves rather than taking responsibility for anything..."where are the grown-ups?"

Tough ****, if you cheat online they have every legal right to withdraw their service. Do you lose the ability to play single player if you get banned online? I wasn't aware of that happening, if it doesn't happen it's not like they can take the game away from you.

I should have put this differently... obviously there's less people playing the old games by now, and obviously, I'm comparing with the same set of filter settings, as well as without filters at all. And actually I was counting HL and all it's mods as one game. In fact, even if I add all CSS servers and other source mods it doesn't seem right. Maybe the whole family of games just isn't as hot as it used to be, and people flocked to other games that I'm missing out on...
And for some reason, I can't really put my finger on it, it seems more of a hassle to join a game. Especially on a particular server (if someone says "join me on...".
Anyway, if you can explain to me why sometimes (not always, but very often), I find no more than 2000 servers, while my friends gets over 10k ? This is usually when I try to join him in a game... Add to that that I can't even find all of the servers hosted by my ISP.... in the old days of HL, I went into the game (rather than some generic launching platform, you just went into the game of your choice , just like launching photoshop instead of the adobe suite because you feel like drawing something ), chose "multiplayer", set the filter to ping less than 100/50, and occassionally a certain mod or map, and then browse the list for a familiar name. Maybe that's what's bothering me :Fewer servers run by regular people, you need a powerfull connection to handle a gameserver, you can't just click host and ok anymore (I admit, this probably has nothing to do with steam, but I associate it with steam vs HL).

Firstly, there is still a server browser in the game, so if you prefer to do it that way you can. Secondly, before you extol the virtues of the old game browser may I remind you that it crashes any modern ADSL router? And wrt your not being able to find all the servers.. you possibly have a firewall or ISP issue there.

I was referring to how Steam "hacked" the front end menu system of HL. All this code changing means it's fairly incompatible with the original games; the HL Demo "Uplink" still isn't playable AFAIK.

I have seen zero backwards compatibility issues with Half-Life. I might give Uplink a try later.

Much like the music industry is abusing peer to peer as an excuse for losses, publishers keep claiming that if their games couldn't be pirated, their sales would soar and they "wouldn't have to live of scraps and 2nd hand shoes" anymore... In the end, this results in anti-piracy measures that force me to get cracked exe's for games I paid for just to run them hassle-free... In terms of steam, I don't believe in having to jump through hoops just because others *might* not buy the game and hack it to play it for free. Why do *I* have to pay for what others do wrong? Why does it have to take so long to connect to a server because VAC is having tons of fun exchanging encrypted packages. The purpose of my post was to compare this with the good old days of HL multi, and back then you just clicked the server and everything it did was directly related to let you play, rather than stopping you from doing anything else.
And to the argument that steam as a distribution mechanism lets the developer get much more money per sold game is great, I find this a wonderful development. Same for the future of online distribution of music btw (although I think it's not good they offer MP3 rips whose quality is inferior to CDs). But the this doesn't require steam to have to run before letting me play the damn game. If it was just a distribution mechanism all it have to do is provide a secure data channel to allow me to make purchases, tied to an account, which allowed me to download them. When playing online, you chose a nickname and joined a server, and the serial key was verified by a public server. On the other hand, right now it seems everyone who plays online now can be uniquely identified by the server's host (authentication mechanisms seem to pass the server, as they can block accounts from their servers?), taking away from what online anonimity you have and once again sacrificing a tiny bit of privacy for the good of OTHERS. And the best thing is : People who play the warez version DON'T have these problems, they play on servers that don't require authentication...

I tried to pirate Half-Life 2 because everyone keeps saying how easy it is, I gave up after a couple of hours. Reason being, in 2 hours I can earn enough to buy the damn game anyway. Most games out there I can crack and be playing in roughly 20 seconds, some of the newer copy protections maybe take me 10 minutes. Yes you *can* pirate Half-Life 2 but I'm willing to bet it happens far less than other games (not to say too much but I'm in a good position to know about that).

Well, call me naive, but as a budding developer I believe the desire to make a good game COMES FIRST.

I dunno, I'd like to make a game but I'd like money for it. Lots of money. I'd definitely make compromises for what would sell well vs. what I think is better. Not to say I'd completely whore out, I wouldn't release a game if I didn't think it was good.. but money would be a pretty high priority.

I guess you have a point that VAC and steam aren't really one thing. Still I would have preferred not to be bound by VAC, it's like a sword of Damocles. One mis-step and your branded a horse thief forever.

It's not a one-shot thing like that, there are stages of trouble you're in, there's a warning system, you can be banned from individual servers... it's not "one mistake and you're out" like you imply, that simply isn't true.

I haven't measured anything, it just felt more sluggish.

It definitely loads and launches faster on my pc. I guess it varies per hardware.

The point fo not having to update is NOT HAVING TO UDPATE. Not getting the update elsewhere. I'm sure all the people that (used to) wish they could go back to CS 1.3 understand. It also means I can't just install 2 copies of the game, one with and one without a certain patch. Basically they're forcing something that could and should be optional, again.

I agree with you 100% here. I cannot emphasise that enough. In fact, I'ma put this bit in bold!

Maybe I can sum it up like this : Technically, steam works fine. But I could do fine without it. In fact, I expect I would do better without it.

If I may go so far as to express a wish : Make steam less graphical. More dry lists (like the old game list), less fancy menu styles and skinning. And just stick to a window that loads as fast as Notepad, is as obvious to work with as notepad, and just does what we ask it to do and nothing else.

Does what you ask it to do? No. Steam is good for the developers too, it's only to be expected that it does something they want it to do, too. I still don't understand why you hate VAC, I haven't heard a single person complain about being unfairly banned yet the way you write one would think it's happening all the time. If you aren't running any cheats, then you have nothing to fear. Hell, I think it's quite nice I can join a server and be assured to a reasonable degree that people aren't cheating.

Wrt the look and feel... more skins perhaps?

I don't know, my crystal ball is a bit foggy. The point is "Sooner or later" it WILL.

If it does, and obviously it will, Valve will release a patch, I'm sure, so you can carry on playing games. More and more developers are releasing old games for free (sometimes even the source code!) so I'm sure a community friendly bunch like them will do too. Even if they don't, pirating it would be easier because it wouldn't be being continually updated.

Btw, anti-piracy measures aren't free. Running them, designing them, maintaining them...it's all extra work. Work that needs to be payed. And who do you think will get to pick up the check?

The developers save themselves a lot of publishing money by using Steam. Apparently publishers can take around 80% of the retail price of a game!

How about we do it like this, I'll come and stand behind you with a gun pointed at your head, the second I suspect you're cheating, or for that matter, actually are cheating, I'll blow your brains out. Deal? What's that you say? You don't trust my judgement? WELL OH MY GOD ISN'T THAT ODD :drool: :dork:

For the last fscking time, it isn't like that at all. It isn't a one strike and you're out system, and false detections do not seem to happen. Most Steam account closures, like the ones whinged about on steampowered forums, are because of using fake credit cards, or using cracks to pirate the game.. there was one great thread where some people whinged for being banned for "no reason" and a valve dev posted a log of their offences, I lol'd. Anyways, VAC isn't a Steam thing, it existed for a long time before Steam, and Valve are not the only devs to use an anticheat system.

They can have all the reasons in the world for not wanting to do refunds, it's a basic customer right, if you want to talk business you can't pretend your special and the rules don't apply to you..

I know, I'm not too keen on it either. My point was, it's not unique to Steam, real life retailers have similar policies. Why do they? Because piracy is so rife.

let's pretend EA got the rights to the games.

Let's not Seriously, Valve wouldn't let that happen. They've had publisher issues before, they're very wary now. Even if EA got it and decided not to release a patch the community would, like I said above it would be easier to crack it if it stops changing all the time.

That reminds me, one particular form of piracy control I really liked and still like is that of Dune II : it asked stuff like "the 3rd word on the umpteenth page of the manual", and then you had to go look that up before you could continue playing. It was kind fun, definitly not disruptive and required you to have the manual. Obviously, back then the limitations made it easy to circumvent (only a limited number of things were asked), but if the manual was big enough and anything could be asked this could be fairly hard to fake your way through. You'd need a crack, just like you do with CD checks (which is what I want to evade, needing a CD or other medium). It's just an example, but I'm sure some creative minds could come up with a much more intelligent approach to anti piracy than harassing legitimate users..

I hate those manual ones, I always lose manuals Another reason I don't hold much by the physical incarnation of my games, I don't have many games I don't play using Daemon Tools (virtual cd program). I wouldn't say Steam's antipiracy harrassed me, especially compared to say, Splinter Cell 3's (which installs a driver on my computer that stops me being able to rip ANY game with similar copy protection!!).

Ahem. Assuming it's a database stored on harddrives, there's probably just one boolean, just one bit that determines whether I have access to a particular game or not. So technically, a good dose of space radiation at the wrong time in the wrong place could con me out of my game
On the other hand, using a couple error correction methods probably eliminates this danger, but it doesn't make me feel safer that I'm being represented by a couple lame numbers ..

They'll be using error correction, RAID, backups, the lot. Also it's nigh on impossible for external sources to affect the data on a hard disk, space radiation is definitely out.

Also, it doesn't strike you as sad that there are less ppl playing HL& HL2 &mods now than just HL(+cs) back in the days? This has nothing to do with Steam per sé, but I've got the feeling that playing online doesn't feel the same anymore, how about you?.

I kinda had that vibe yeah.. at the moment I normally get a few friends from uni and we all hit a server and play together, we played a great us vs them (the clan who's server it was), but I'm definitely not feeling the mods like I did for HL. I really doubt that's anything to do with Steam though.

- Slow downloads of updates
- Massive CPU usage

Other than that, I give it a 'positive' rating.

I have noticed that recently, downloads not so fast. 6 months, a year ago, they'd max out a 4meg downstream.. these days it struggles to fill 2meg.

All in all I will agree with you that steam needs to improve, but I will not agree with you that even one of its features (features, not quirks and bugs) need to be removed. We players need an anti-cheat system. The developers need an anti-piracy system. The online distribution, including the store, is a benefit to developers and players alike.

.bog.

I really agree with this post.. and I hope you agree with it. Maybe they should change the skin, make the storefront less intrusive, make patching optional.. but you can't really argue you want the anti cheat system gone entirely, stuff like that.

 

[gunny-man]

Strongly Positive

 

[Azner]

Steam provides upgrades and is great for online play. Only problem is when you have a slow internet... yet its not their fault its the crappy internet connection.

 

[Sparda]

Steam is a way of valve keeping there money and stoping people having "BURNT" copys and really lacks costemer serves. the idear is good but if you have a slow speed internet its F###ED i hated it but i have no probs now

 

[drunkymonkey]

Steam is lovely, but it's also a bitch. But I approve.

 

[$kelet0r]

I'm neutral - aside from the obvious benefits there's some hefty negatives...
1. Offline mode doesnt work properly - getting your games to work offline requires a process ridiculously time-consuming that isnt in fact correct on the steam support page. Steam really punishes people who don't have an always on connection, just getting Steam to open in offline mode is a pain. It has discouraged me from playing VALVe games online anymore because I may not be able to play offline afterwards which leads to me not playing Steam games at all. Vicious circle. The offline play thing is a deal breaker for me - I'm seriously considering removing all my Steam content in the next few weeks because the trouble it has caused me means I no longer play VALVe's games
2. Causes instability in other non steam games when it's running
3. Downloads at mega speeds and then decides at 97% that it will take an hour to complete the task

 

[ríomhaire]

What is with this Offline mode is hell thing? I click on steam when I'm not connected to the internet, I click the 'Start Steam in Offine Mode' button and it opens in offline mode :|