Another "I hate steam" thread

ronkmonster

i see steam as a marketing system more than a drm system. pretty much every game has drm so i either live with it or bypass it.

5uspect

Jazzy wrote: »

not require you to have an internet connection to play half life 2.
anti-piracy is nonsense as hl2 can be pirated anyway. they want to ram it down our throats cos its $$$ to them

Valve own Half-Life 2, you don't. You purchase a licence to enable you to play it. Valve is also a company that exists to make profit and without profit there'd be no more games from them. You may be able to pirate HL2 just as you can pretty much crack any software eventually. The trick is to make it difficult or undesirable as opposed impossible. You also have to avoid pissing off your paying customers. The support for TF2 I think greatly helps this.

Some will find the need to go online to update/verify annoying. That's mainly a result of piracy. More and more games now require some sort on online activation.

The orange box is currently €30 on Steam. That's a bargain. I'm sure you can buy it down the road for less if you looked. It was €10 a few weeks ago.
If you can't even be bother to part with a tenner to get 5 great games there's no hope for you.

Gone Drinking

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

How is any of that Valves fault?

Did i say it was valves fault? I said the whole situation is aload of ghey.

ronkmonster

5uspect wrote: »

Some will find the need to go online to update/verify annoying. That's mainly a result of piracy. More and more games now require some sort on online activation.

Some of it is piracy but some people, like me, want to have the choice. I've no problem with online activation (really should be a grace period in case net happens to be down though) but I don't want to have to wait for steam to update or game to update to play.

My recent experience with Demigod installation was as it should be. No asking activation for single player but for online had to register key with Impulse (stardocks steam-like system). There was no dvd check.

wayne040576

ronkmonster wrote: »

Some of it is piracy but some people, like me, want to have the choice. I've no problem with online activation (really should be a grace period in case net happens to be down though) but I don't want to have to wait for steam to update or game to update to play.

My recent experience with Demigod installation was as it should be. No asking activation for single player but for online had to register key with Impulse (stardocks steam-like system). There was no dvd check.

The funny thing is, Stardock still get grief from some people for having that system. There's actually an anti-DRM site that recently removed Stardock as one of there recommended Publishers. Can't remember the link but you can find it on the Stardock forums.

ronkmonster

think they had to because 90% of copies trying to play online were pirated during the US release.

I'm not too familar with the online side of the game as my bb is crap but systems like steam and impulse are perfect for managing online parts of games. No problem with them in that regard.

5uspect

The 90% number was in error.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/04/demigod-hit-by-massive-piracy-review-scores-take-beating.ars

Jazzy

5uspect wrote: »

Valve own Half-Life 2, you don't.

i dont like that.

i dunno, i just think steam is valves way of controlling how we spend our money on games. i dont like not owning something when i buy it. i tend to always get the dvd's for games i get and if i was required to have an internet connection to play them but one wasnt available, id have no second thoughts about pirating said game.
if their product was hassle free this would not be an issue, but its full of hassle because it suits valve, not you.

Genghiz Cohen

Jazzy wrote: »

i dont like that.

i dunno, i just think steam is valves way of controlling how we spend our money on games. i dont like not owning something when i buy it. i tend to always get the dvd's for games i get and if i was required to have an internet connection to play them but one wasnt available, id have no second thoughts about pirating said game.
if their product was hassle free this would not be an issue, but its full of hassle because it suits valve, not you.

Nearly every bit of media you buy, you don't own, you just have a license to use it.
Windows for example.

ronkmonster

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Nearly every bit of media you buy, you don't own, you just have a license to use it.
Windows for example.

yes but you don't have to install it remotely over internet every time you want to install it.
once it's on your pc and activated, can't really be taken away.
valve could disable your account for whatever reason and you lose your games/software.

Jazzy

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Nearly every bit of media you buy, you don't own, you just have a license to use it.
Windows for example.

doesnt mean that steam still isnt a pain in the tits

tman

ronkmonster wrote: »

yes but you don't have to install it remotely over internet every time you want to install it.
once it's on your pc and activated, can't really be taken away.
valve could disable your account for whatever reason and you lose your games/software.

There's nothing stopping you from backing up your steam folder though. There's even a backup tool included within Steam...
Since we're going for wild theoretics here; a naughty little hacker could steal your Windows product key and MS could end up blacklisting it

thebman

ronkmonster wrote: »

yes but you don't have to install it remotely over internet every time you want to install it.
once it's on your pc and activated, can't really be taken away.
valve could disable your account for whatever reason and you lose your games/software.

Well they couldn't do that unless you broke their license agreement or they would have to refund you.

They can't tell you that you can't use it anymore for no reason after you've bought the license.

D

I too would like to express my appreciation for steam. I love it.

Antar Bolaeisk

Same here, their weekend deals have cost me a lot of money for the last few months

Originally I hated it when it was getting in the way of me and playing Half Life 2 but since then massive improvements have been made to the client and I truely believe that it is the future of game distribution. I just wish they'd sort out their euro pricing as we generally end up paying about 50% more than people in the UK. Of course, if you know someone over there who also uses Steam they can gift it to you for the lower price

thebman

Been at parents house for past few days with only mobile bb and I've been using Steam in Offline mode on my laptop with not a bother to play all the games I've installed.

No updates at all required and no different to launching any other game.

Overheal

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

I just wish they'd sort out their euro pricing as we generally end up paying about 50% more than people in the UK. Of course, if you know someone over there who also uses Steam they can gift it to you for the lower price

I offered to help people pay in $ but nobody listened to me

Antar Bolaeisk

I possibly wasn't around these parts when you made that offer. If it's still open I may take you up on it the next time there's an interesting offer on Steam.

conzy

Steam is awesome ye dirty pirates!

ronkmonster

argh. away with ya, damn steam lovers

Seifer

I thought steam was much improved until I started playing l4d in the last month.
Apparently l4d's matchmaking servers are the steam servers so when steam goes to sh!t e.g. when they're pushing out a new tf2 patch, l4d goes to sh!t.
One game shouldn't be affected by updates for others.