[S-99]

I hate steam. I can applaud it for it's efforts of making games through steam worth the money to help crack down on piracy. But, the client itself is really turning out to be some slow restrictive DRM. It takes forever to connect, forever to install games, and you can't play anything unless you have the latest updates. To top it off, offline mode hasn't wanted to work. After that i have to reinstall the games because of a microsoft visual C runtime error that occured during install (the install time is ridiculous).

Plus if you forgot your username, email, and password for your steam account, then something like orange box is ready for the garbage.

Steam really only should be used as a community portal, game store, means for updating and cataloging your games from steam, and should be a little less restrictive. Aside from that, being able to play the games independent of steam is something of a stoners dream as a way of putting it.

Upsides to this is that someone got me orange box for christmas years ago (no loss of purchase if i throw it away), and i did a lot of deducing to break into my old steam account (the steam client "i forgot my login ****" feature can be used to see what account names and emails do or do not exist in the steam account database).

It doesn't matter which way i look at this, i wasted 8 hours getting into my old steam account and game installation to still not be able to play games.

I do not recommend getting games through steam.

[Rick James]

It's even more pointless, because there are pirate groups out there that will create custom installers and cracks for Steam games anyway, making Steam's anti-piracy measures effectively useless.

Penny Arcade got it right: the pirates always win, given a long enough timeline.

[Nuclear1]

Steam sucks

Steam does indeed cause a high level of suction. 

[SpardaSon21]

S-99, you might want to try Impulse.  It is a community portal, games catalog/update platform, and a game store, and it does not require online authorization for you to be able to play your games, unless the game's publisher has added DRM of their own (EA did this with Crysis: Warhead, Spore, RA3, and ME1).

[S-99]

I'll check out impulse, but i'm more of a classic gamer. I'm only running steam because i have too for right now at least. I'll check out those pirate installers if they do work, i do for a fact own orangebox and it is registered to me. I mean ****, steam takes like 5 mins to login, yahoo messenger takes seconds.

Currently finally got the game installs off the ground. Everything runs great in linux through wine. My only gripe is if the third party installers will work in wine (they probably will).

[Dark RevenantX]

Steam gave me no problems and starts up in a couple of seconds.  Wonder what's going on.

[blackhole]

I was once installing steam on my little brother's computer and the installer sat there doing nothing for almost 20 minutes before suddenly finishing.

[Nuclear1]

Steam gave me no problems and starts up in a couple of seconds.  Wonder what's going on.

Steam gave me no problems..then I turned it on.

[Nemesis6]

Steam's alright, I guess... I just hate the pipes.

[S-99]

Steam is unflexible. And if you don't write your **** down, you're nearly ****ed, if not fully ****ed. I'll see how calling up tech support works for my friend with the hl2 and counter strike games he has. He forgot his password, and the answer to the secret question. He has the cd key and everything else though, i'll get to see how much steam tech support will help him out or if he just throws the games in the garbage. It's one of the two.

Yes he did try the password reset option for steam, but i found it to be quite stupid compared to other password reset options. The steam password reset sends an email to your email associated with steam. The email has a verification code, and asks for your secret question answer. I find this to be too much. Other services on the internet simply send you an email with a link to click to reset your password (it's gotten to be that easy because your email is password protected and is associated with the service you requested the password reset from; basically you've provided enough authorization).

My gripes with steam among how slow and cludgy it is, is that it's too easy to have perfectly good games that you'll  never be able to play anymore.

[Hades]

I must admit that I'm not a fan of Steam, my little brother registered Portal on his account so now I can't register it on mine, and you have to have Steam running to play either Valve or Steam-bought games. Not to mention for some reason when I try to change some account info, even if I put my info in right, it just keeps me at the account login window... :\

[iamzack]

Steam sucks

Steam does indeed cause a high level of suction. 

that could come in handy

[MP-Ryan]

I've never understood all the griping about Steam; I actually prefer to buy my games through it.  Offline mode (the few times I needed it) worked flawlessly, and frankly I love the auto-updates; I don't like spending my time finding and downloading patches (anyone tried to navigate the nightmare that is EA for the Mass Effect 1 patches recently?  Yeah... it makes you really appreciate Steam).  As for DRM, it's one of the least ass-tastic DRM schemes out there compared with the **** EA loads in their products.  As for load times, I bought ME on disc and it takes longer to load that than any of my Steam games; the platform launches in less than 10 seconds and I can be in-game in any of the games in under 20 more (depending on the videos/load screens).

Honestly, it's probably the least painful distribution platform in existence.  I can't remember the last time I bought a game from a physical store; the Steam Christmas sales usually keep me in games for the rest of the year (and for cheap!)

Also, Settings - Verification is the best defense against both a lost password and getting your account hacked.

[CP5670]

The only things I have bought on Steam are a few cheap titles, usually $10 or less. I don't expect to be able to play the Steam games indefinitely, but at those prices I don't really care. I would certainly never buy a full-priced game on there.

Offline mode (the few times I needed it) worked flawlessly, and frankly I love the auto-updates; I don't like spending my time finding and downloading patches (anyone tried to navigate the nightmare that is EA for the Mass Effect 1 patches recently?  Yeah... it makes you really appreciate Steam).

I have never had trouble finding patches on Filefront by just using Google, even for obscure games. Auto-patching can be annoying because there have been cases where a patch broke something or made the game worse in some way. C&C3's expansion and Fallout 3 come to mind here.

[Mongoose]

The only games I have on my Steam account are those I bought via the Orange Box, but I've never had a single problem with it.  I have a rather old and certainly crappy machine, yet Steam loads quickly and updates even faster.  I could easily see myself foregoing buying physical copies and just purchasing new stuff through it, though I haven't yet.

[mxlm]

Well, I for one endorse Steam as a platform. Their bargains are great and I've not had any problems getting the games to work.

you can't play anything unless you have the latest updates.

Yes you can. Turn off autoupdating. Right click, properties, updates. Now you only update the game(s) when you want to. Though you are stuck with whatever the latest version was when you installed.

[SpardaSon21]

No, Steam will still update the game when you try to start the game.

[S-99]

That's the problem with steam, it locks you in. But, i however do agree with you about what steam promotes. The fact that the games through steam have too many strings attached to steam is a big downer. I'd rather steam just be a store, automatically updates your games, and keeps the community aspect of it, at the same time it'd still be used as a way to register your game and the only way to pull updates.

It'd make steam and the games for it a little more manageable. A more flexible form of drm that says, you want to play the game go for it as long as you register (which will be forced), the string attached would be the fact that the only way to update games is through steam only.

It'd help facilitate the playing of games without steam and only keeping steam around when it's necessary. And like i mentioned about people who don't have all of their stuff.

How good is steam tech support? Sure, you can have verification, but verification doesn't mean **** if you can't do anything with it (this is akin to steam tech support telling you to **** off). Their whole system fosters a good deal of untrustworthiness towards their user base. This fact based on how much bull**** there is to steam for being able to play games all the way to steam account salvaging. The only thing befitting of a system that doesn't trust you is to not trust them.

I'm on dialup right now, i got steam working, but now i have to wait for all of the game updates to finish before i can play. I'd just like to pause the updating (which you can do) so i can play after all of this wasted time (clicking play on a game with the update paused just prompts the game to finish updating before you can play).

[Colonol Dekker]

I Don't think I mentioned it in the AVP game thread, but I bought the actual DVD media. Two of em in the box.
Normally this should install in fifteen minutes to half an hour. reasonably.
 
 
So first thing the installer does is fire up steam, re-download itself. Ask for a login (luckily I write my stuff down), I pop in my auth code. It doesn't ask me to specify a folder which is BULL**** then two HOURS later it finishes the first disc. So I swap it out for number two. Another fifty minutes. And done. I click the checkbox marked as 'launch game' or whatever them click next or ok or whatever it's called.
 
So . . . . . . . . Nothing happens. I spy an update window by my installed progs, it's gonna take ages on my limited connection. I think, a bit of ARMA2 demo or DOW2 demo will keep my patience in control. Except, when steam reinstalled itself my DEMOS WENT WITH THE OLD VERSION
 
 
I hate steam like fat people hate exercise.

[QuantumDelta]

Only issues I've had with steam are because GfWL and 2k are "*)%@£*$(%&$)(*^.

I stab the bioshock 2 team for ACTUALLY managing to make a game worse than bioshock 1.