[SadisticSid]

Let's not pretend that Steam is something meant to enable the consumer, rather than Valve. Steam is essentially a slightly more pallatable version of Starforce combined with Windows Update. It lets Valve monitor your software use, and acts like a driver to enable HL2 (and, I believe, the original Half Life - and possibly other Valve games) which cannot run without it. And by default, it will sit on your PC doing goodness-knows-what, while eating 20-50MB of RAM. The thin veil of respectability comes from the auto-patcher and digital distribution for new titles, but then these could have been included in a standalone package.

Now Valve have shown they can produce technically excellent software. I don't accept that the bad bits in Steam are a result of sloppiness. It seems more likely that it's a deliberate attempt to place unnecessary, performance-draining monitoring middleware on as many systems as possible. My guess is that they might license the system to other developers in the future.

[neoterran]

They already are, the otherwise excellent game darwinia for example is available through steam.

I hate steam, i think it sucks. Even if I buy a game, i'll hack it to avoid steam.

[Dough with Fish]

For the record, if you guys really want too, there is an option to enable Steam to start in an offline mode, so all this *****ing about their copy protection is kind of worthless in that regard. Seriously, after you install and authenticate the game if you really want to, you never EVER have to have Steam connect again for as long as you have it.

[aldo_14]

For the record, if you guys really want too, there is an option to enable Steam to start in an offline mode, so all this *****ing about their copy protection is kind of worthless in that regard. Seriously, after you install and authenticate the game if you really want to, you never EVER have to have Steam connect again for as long as you have it.

Except that every time you update Steam it sets itself to auto-connect on startup, and Steam/HL2 itself is hideously buggy, so even though you can set it too offline, you'll probably need to set it online to update the bugs (stut...ttutt....er.rrr.r....iiiinnnggg..ggg?), at which point all hell breaks loose and you have to fanny about with it to set back your original preferences.....

[Ferret]

Don't get me started on Steam....

[Dough with Fish]

Well, AFAIK you can download the patches manually. I mean, I'm not saying that it's NOT buggy. But peoples number one complaint here seems to be they need to be always connected and having Valve essentially spy on them, when if they want they can just start it up in offline mode. It's by no means perfect, but it is an option.

[aldo_14]

Well, AFAIK you can download the patches manually. I mean, I'm not saying that it's NOT buggy. But peoples number one complaint here seems to be they need to be always connected and having Valve essentially spy on them, when if they want they can just start it up in offline mode. It's by no means perfect, but it is an option.

Last patch I downloaded manually still required steam to connect and verify it or somesuch.  Which repeatedly crashed, restarted automatically on system startup, and then crashed again.  This went on for a few weeks IIRC before it finally completed.

[Ferret]

Having to wait a few weeks to get a freaking patch to work is just ridiculous on a million levels.

[Black Wolf]

I like steam. It's a quick and healthy way to cook vegetables.

[Deepblue]

Once Vista comes out, and consequently Live anywhere, I sincerely hope Valve kills Steam.

[aldo_14]

Once Vista comes out, and consequently Live anywhere, I sincerely hope Valve kills Steam.

Firstly, why would we want a monopoly situation?  The last thing any sensible person should want is Valve to kill Steam for that reason; what we want is to see both them, MS and everyone else forced to provide a better service through competition.  This also relates to both Valve and Ms (and others) publishing (digitally distributing) games from smaller/indy dev houses; you need to make sure these guys can go 'screw you, I can get a better deal from ####', which cuts down prices for both them and the consumer.

Secondly, the whole point of Steam and its ilk - regardless of shoddy implementation - was to free Valve from the shackles (so to speak) of the publisher and allow financial independence (in the sense that you can far more easily afford to self-publish digitally).  There's no sense in them going independent and then chucking that away to rely on another 3rd party.

That's, of course, hoping that the whole Live thing doesn't lead to problems with MS excercising leverage over those using it in a negative way for the rest of us (let's face it, it's to be expected they would act in their own financial interest rather than that of the market or consumer; it's why we need competition to keep everyone relatively honest).

[Cyker]

<overly verbose moany whiney ***** rant>
There are some good things about Steam - It's proven to be a good way for indep companies to get exposure for their games, and it does do the direct download thing pretty well.

Alas the advantages are not major benefits for me, while the downsides are HUGE turn-offs.

I'm dead against any kind of on-line authentication like this, and it's even more bloody intrusive than Windows' one! Yes you can set it to off-line mode, but contrary to what you think it doesn't turn of authentication completely; Just means you don't have to authenticate all the time.
It's like some of those SecuROM titles that let you play the game without the CD 10 times, then on the 11th it asks for the CD again and then resets its counter.

My friend has provided the worst-case scenario for Steam:

He bought the game on DVD because he has a modem.
On installing it, he discovered with considerable horror that it was essentially just an incomplete Steam pre-download, and that his poor modem would still have to download what was a considerable chunk of data.
Resigned to this, he created a Steam account, gave them all sorts of personal info and started the thing downloading - He gave up aftser 2 days; The connection kept dropping and one time actually got cut off and restarted from scratch!
Now quite pissed, but determined to play the game, he dragged his box round my house and finally got the pieces he needed. Feeling better, he went back home, ran the game, and then discovered the game wouldn't run unless he was connected to the 'net!
For a singleplayer game?!
We found out about that Off-Line mode thing after much forum trawling, but for some reason it wouldn't stick on his; We'd enable it and it'd turn itself back off when we closed the dialog!

He put up with this for a bit, running up a fairly hefty phone bill (Steam, being so awesome, didn't close down his modem connection while HL2 was running...), but things can only go so far.

I'm not sure how far he actually got into the game, but about a week later he was asking me if I wanted to buy it off him. I declined.
He eventually sold it to another friend, but guess what - Yup, it didn't work!
My friend had to either give over his Steam account details to this friend, or give him his money back.

Not wanting to turn over the account details, he gave the money back. Now fairly peeved, he tried to return the game to the shop; This being the UK, the obviously wouldn't take it back. I think he tried to get Valve to give him a refund, but lets face it, that was doomed to fail from the start.

At some point, I found that hacked steamless version floating around on the 'net, and he's been using that ever since.

The fact that Steam could inflict such pain is scary; This friend normally has tenacity of an angry badger, but was defeated by Steam and forced to pirate a game he actually owned in order to play it!


Now, to put things in perspective, this is about as worst-case as you can get. The two other people I know that actually bought HL2 who had broadband connections had it a lot easier; They couldn't play the game for a few days because the servers were being slaughtered, but once they got the download things went pretty smooth.

But my modem friend's experience, combined with similar experiences with activated software in the past have put me right off.
I'll never buy any program that relies on some external third-party to work.


If Valve got taken over by, like, EA or something, and decided to charge a monthly fee (For 'Administration overheads') or cut you off from Steam access, you'd be ****ed.

All software I own has to be self-contained; If I can't just install it and go, *it* goes.
If I can't make a CD/DVD with the program and all up to date patches, then it can get stuffed.

I was pretty hacked off about GalCiv2; That whole no copy protection line is a lie - I made a CD with GalCiv2 and the latest patch on it, and then found the patch won't work unless you goto StarDock's website, sign up and create yet another bloody acount, then submit a very long CD-Key and god-knows what system information that's encoded into the string their authentication proggy sends.

Valve has opened a Pandora's box with Steam, and proved to Microsoft that people are dumb enough to swallow that kind of intrusion if they get Shineys for it.
I can see Microsoft software taking on a similar constant-online authentication system soon, which will probably be followed by a subscription model soon after...

A gargantuan beast like Steam is not needed for on-line distribution. It doesn't stop piracy, and doesn't benefit the customer in any way at all. Quite the opposite in fact.
I've bought a few games on-line; EA Nova, Jets'n'Gunz, SAIS, Starscape - They were all quite painless, and have no intrusive copy protection garbage and don't require me to submit my life story or anything - They just work!

And they got my money, while Valve don't.

It's hard 'tho; I'm stuck on Win2k and will never play HL2 legally because I don't want to compromise my ethics. Most people aren't like that, which is why it'll only get worse.

[pecenipicek]

Steam... get it off of my PC.

i was considering buying the collectors edition HL2, but after reading all the **** with steam, i just gave it up, cause i already had more than one experience with steam and CS... graarg.


anyways, i picked up a pirated DVD from a local "distributor" and went to install hl2. to my amazement, the version was already cracked by deviance and it worked quite nicely. if we count out horrid crashes when trying to play CS:S on the net

point being, i didnt buy a game legally since '99, and that was FS2. it was damn worth the 50€ i paid for it back then (50€ would be the price roughly when transferred from croatian currency...)

i'm really pissed at all the new games and all. for 50€ nowadays you rarely get with the game anything other than the CD/DVD, back in '97, i got the Total Annihilation Commanders Pack with the game, both expansions, one manual, some random flyers i think and a bloody 350 page strategy guide. nowadays, you're lucky if you get a jewel case and a bloody manual.


i own 6 original games. FS2, TA, Dungeon Keeper, Tiberian Sun, Duke Nukem 3D and Descent 1,2 and their expansions. all of them came with a manual at least and some other stuff in, hotkey reference sheets, some background info and such.

new games arent even worth shelling out the money for them. i respect all the cracker/distributor crews on the net and their policy(policy, yeah ) of "If you like the game/album/whatever buy it and support the company/artist/author that made the game. If you dont like it, delete it."

i think of it as try and buy/delete.

better to download something from the net, try it, see its crap and send it to the recycle bin than to shall out lots of money for a crappy game and then shed tears when you realise you cant sell it to anyone nor do anything with it.