Tell me about Steam...

[Angilion]

I'll nail my colours to the mast straight away - I dislike modern DRM. I'd even prefer crappy old DRM solutions such as Lenslok from the 1980s (yes, I'm old - my first computer was a ZX-81). The only place I've bought any games in years is gog.com, precisely because they don't have any DRM at all.

So I've completely avoided Steam, but that's becoming more and more restrictive. The potential tipping point is Fallout: New Vegas, which I really want to buy and is yet another Steam-only game.

Steam ticks the two major boxes of why I dislike modern DRM - it's spyware because it takes information from your computer and sends it to the publisher and it makes all game "purchases" game rentals because it leaves the publisher in control of when or if you are allowed to play the game you've paid for. Nobody would accept that crap if it wasn't imposed on them.

I've looked around online for details and all I've found is ~85% fans saying everything is fine regardless of anything because Gabe Newell and Steam are heroes beyond reproach, something like Father Christmas and Superman, ~10% opposition saying that it's utterly terrible under any circumstances and the remainder saying that this sort of DRM is unavoidable, Steam works well enough and Valve haven't got a history of being incompetent or malicious. It seems to be rather polarised and rather short of actual information.


So...does anyone know what information Steam spies from you? Not what is written in the typically vague EULA (I've read that), but what it actually takes and sends to Valve. As far as I can tell, nobody knows or cares apart from me - people either won't use it regardless of what it spies or they'll use it regardless of what it spies as an act of trust and faith in Gabe Newell and Valve. If it's just something like some hardware specs and how many hours I've spent playing a game, I don't really care...as long as somebody is checking that's all they take and that they haven't started taking more.

I wouldn't bother with Steam at all, but I'd really like to buy Fallout: New Vegas.

 

[Angilion]

couldnt a stand alone game snoop on your actions too, potentialy?

Yes, but it wouldn't have access to the net through my firewall. I suppose it could abuse something that requires internet access to function, but I don't think that's likely.

its not perfect, but its better than everything else by far at the moment

About half of my games have no DRM at all (gog.com). The rest have offline DRM, old style, and no internet access. So no, Steam is not better than everything else by far. It might well be less bad than other rent-a-game-and-call-it-buying spyware, but that's far from a stellar recommendation for it.

 

[Angilion]

I find Steam to make the gaming experience better, with Achievements, Auto-Patches & Updates, extra DLC and being able to join a gaming community...

None of which I care about.

Whilst the price for this is DRM and actually paying for the game,

Wrong. The price for it is not being able to buy a game (you rent Steam games for an unspecified period, terminated by Valve at their discretion) and spyware.

the last time I installed a non-Steam game for free, said game was very unreliable and unstable... Doesn't seem worth it these days, especially considering the discounts available if you just wait a couple of months...

If you're making an oblique reference to piracy, you're way off mark. The last time I pirated a game was the mid 1980s when I was a schoolboy swapping Spectrum games on audio cassettes in the playground and I hadn't even heard the word "piracy".

The last few hundred times I installed a non-Steam game, it worked fine in almost all cases (which is as good as it gets with PC games, as we all know). Apart from Test Drive Unlimited 2, which shipped as an early beta version (0.6.2 IIRC). Since I pre-ordered it, I of course got the shipping version. Which didn't work. At all.

Have I mentioned that I buy a lot of games? My slim boxes alone fill about 7 feet of space and I've got another few dozen games I bought without physical media.

Oh, good choice on New Vegas, if you played Fallout 3, you'll love the little extras in NV!

I'm still playing Fallout 3. I got it a while back in a "bargain bin" for older games. Cost me about a fiver. I didn't install it for ages, then did so on a whim (I have ~100 games I've never played, which is silly). Then I bought 2 DLC modules and installed a user mod to improve the graphics. I considered buying the GOTY addition as well as the release version, to get all the official DLC, but decided I only really wanted Broken Steel and Point Lookout anyway. The childhood tutorial was meh, but as soon as I left the vault I was absorbed. "I'll just give this one a go before going to bed" turned into "Aarrgh, crap, it's 06:00!" Possibly the best game I've ever played.

If Fallout New Vegas wasn't steam-only, I'd have bought the ultimate edition shortly after starting Fallout 3. I'd also have bought Borderlands 2, which looks like fun.

 

[Angilion]

As long as you lock down the 'Social' side of STEAM and make sure everything is private, are careful about what you allow the client to do (It will ask to snoop, just don't allow it) then you can pay via PayPal and give it any name and address you want, the only thing they'll really have on you is your IP address and your email.

I'll be buying physical media anyway (someone sent me an Amazon gift voucher, so I'll buy it from there).

So...Valve requires your real name and physical address? Why? How do they determine it's genuine? Comparison with card company records?

The only thing it tracks is how long you have played for (No way to turn this off that I can see) and some games have achievements, but you can lock those down so only you can see them.

I walked a step! Yay, achievement! I completed the whole game naked using only a teaspoon as a weapon, which took me 6 months IRL and 8 million quicksaves/quickloads. Yay, achievement!

I'm not hugely bothered about achievements I'd make them private and ignore them.

A lot of it is bloat to me, I have zero interest in joining groups or recommending/sharing/friending players online, it's a shame you can't opt out of it completely and the only thing you can do is disable it all. I guess it's down to you whether it's worth it for putting up with a disc in an optical drive to play a game or not.

I go back to when loading a game meant finding the right cassette, rewinding it if you hadn't done so the last time you played the game, waiting 6 minutes for it to load and, very often, adjusting the head alignment with a tiny screwdriver to get the game to load at all (after you spent 6 minutes only to see it crash after loading, sometimes more than once). I can tolerate putting a disc in a drive

 

[Angilion]

I don't know where all this renting/buying software comes from, in fact I don't think the English language has a word for it.

Consider this: You write a book and publish it. There is only one owner, and that is the person holding the copyright. The OWNER (usually the author or publisher).

Now copies of the book are made, and people buy this copy; they OWN their COPY, but they don't own the book, only a COPY of it. All copyright restrictions apply, including any additional restrictions mutually agreed upon through purchase agreement, if within the given law.

Now, people might have bought and OWN their COPY, but they're also not RENTING it. You RENT a book from a public library.

There is no single word to describe the distinction between owning a book and owning a copy of it, the terminology is only agreed upon by convention, and in the sense of the commonly used words, they are used incorrectly.

The same applies to software. The programmer(s) or publishers own the software, buyers own a copy, under copyright laws and agreements. Nobody rents anything.

Registration method or not is not a factor here.

You're barking up the wrong tree. In the wrong forest.

I've already said why it's renting and it has nothing to do with the difference between owning the rights to a book (or anything else) and owning a copy of it.

I'll quote myself:

it leaves the publisher in control of when or if you are allowed to play the game you've paid for.

and that's why it's renting. If you buy something, you have control over your use of it, for as long as you want or it becomes broken in some way. If someone else has control over your use of the item, they own it and you are renting it off them. It doesn't matter whether it's the copyright on a product or a copy of that product - the point is who controls your use of it.

To continue with your analogy of a book:

If you buy a copy of a book from a publisher (directly or through a bookseller), then you can read the book when you want (unless you lose it or it's damaged too badly or stolen, but that's not the point). You can read that book 50 years later if you like - that particular copy of the book is your property. You own it.

If the publisher says "Give us some money and you can read the book when we allow you to and we can take it back at any time", that copy of the book is not your property. It's still the property of the publisher. Not just the rights to the book, but that particular copy of the book. Since it isn't your property, you have not bought it. You are renting it from the publisher. They are allowing you the temporary use of it in return for money - that's rental.

 

[Angilion]

Basically you either buy a game under a mutual agreement or you don't. It's your choice.

That's how your free to decide you like the agreement you have with GOG, for instance, and buy there, and you don't like the Steam agreement, so you don't buy.

You might complain about it, but you can't get around purchase agreements, not legally anyway. It's your decision to either barter or decline if that's not possible. That's just how it works, and I don't see anything wrong or unfair there, although you might feel aggrieved about it. But, to be honest: so what!

So you managed to utterly miss the point again. You never even read my original post, did you? It's not just that you don't know the answer to my question. You don't even know what the question was.

EDIT: I see from an earlier post that you did read my original post and even went a considerable way towards answering the question. So why did you go off onto the irrelevant tangents aftewards, none of which are connected to anything I've written?

 

[Angilion]

You could always buy it and then pirate it since you have paid for the game and do own it.

That's a point, assuming there is an unsteamed ( ) pirated version of it and I find it and how to download it. I've never pirated a PC game, but I'm sure it requires more than two tape recorders and a lead

 

[Angilion]

Tin foil corner.

That's disinformation from CoIntelPro! Tin foil hats attract and focus the mind rays, making their effects stronger!

Or maybe I'm posting disinformation from CoIntelPro because the tin foil hats are effective and we're trying to stop people using them.




In practical terms, it doesn't matter if Valve rummage through my entire hard drive every hour on the hour. They'd get the impression of an unimportant man who spends most of his free time reading or playing games. That's neither inaccurate nor a secret. It's not like they'd blow my cover as head of SIS or something. At worst, they'd get email address from my address book...which they could get from other places anyway (and no doubt could buy on a mailing list). So my family would get more adverts for penis-growing pills and fake Viagra, maybe.

It's privacy as a matter of principle, which is difficult if not impossible to explain to anyone who doesn't agree with that principle.

 

[Angilion]

If you cannot handle Steam then forget about ever playing Fallout New Vegas - that is a Windows Live game and that is infinitely worse!

Really? It's labelled as Steam (even if you buy the physical media). Steam and Windows Live?

FO3 was GFWL, but it's possible and easy to disable GFWL entirely after installing FO3 and still run FO3. Someone even made a program to do it all for you. First thing I did - GFWL is rubbish and pointless and utterly without redeeming features.

 

[Angilion]

I've a question for the charming and insightful people babbling about tinfoil hats:

Where are my claims of conspiracies and cover-ups?

Where are my claims of wildly implausible things with no evidence to support them?

Where are my claims of things being true even though they're proven false by the available evidence?

If you're really seeing any of this in my posts, then you're not seeing my posts. Perhaps the Illuminati Alien Lizards are feeding you false posts instead?

If I had said that Valve was a front for the Illuminati/New World Order/<insert your conspiracy group of choice here> and that Steam read your mind or controlled it, or something silly like that, that would have been tinfoil hat territory. But I didn't.

Steam gathers data from your PC and sends it to Valve. This is not a secret. It is not a conspiracy. It is not covered up. I just asked what data it gathers.

You are behaving like the most knee-jerk theists, outraged at any perceived slight to your faith in Valve.

 

[Angilion]

I've a question for the charming OP, why so defensive?

You asked a question and most people gave you the best answer they could give, it turned out to be the answer you had come to a conclusion about yourself prior to posting and such is the nature of internet forums you proceeded to get slightly trolled due to an increasingly defensive and may i say slightly rude attitude towards the responders, what exactly did you expect?

At this point you may aswell stop posting here because your just going to get trolled into the ground for been a bit of an arse.

No, I'll get trolled into the ground for not being a fan. Which, of course, fans will see as being a bit of an arse.

But a few people have made actual replies rather than insulting me for not unthinkingly accept the wonder of Steam, hallelujah and praise Steam! One person even answered my question. Well, several did but the others gave answers I know to be untrue.

The insults for not unthinkingly accepting the wonder of Steam was what I expected.

The reasonable posts and the actual answer was what I was hoping for.

Despite the number of people apparently trying to convince me that Steam is a cult for unpleasant people who must lash out at anyone who asks questions, I have got some information from which to make an informed choice. So from my point of view this thread has been at least partially successful.

 

[Angilion]

You going to sign up then? There'll be another sale along in a minute.

Yes, I am. The silly yabbering of the "anyone who asks any questions is a tinfoil hat-wearing paranoid loony" brigade of devout fans is unimportant and expected, so it didn't put me off. They're not Valve's fault.

This sums it up for me, essentially:

I do understand the dislike of DRM on principle. I dont like it either. Steam is the only DRM service which actually adds value, and on-balance, the trade-off is worth it.

Reasoned replies like that, plus the one actual answer to my question, tipped my opinion from "probably will" to "will". On balance the trade-off is worth it because Steam is required for some games I want to play, it is of some use and Valve don't have a history of greed, malice or incompetence.