Steam. Hating over?

ic1male said:
Mine doesn't.

*pats lovely Be*box*
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It says no download limits for my 10meg Virgin connection & in effect its true, I can download round the clock 24/7 but in the small print it has a fair use policy which cuts the speed down to 2 meg or 1 meg if I exceed the set limit.
One by one all the ISP's are going down this route & Be will no doubt follow as they get more subscribers

Edit: Be* already has warnings in their terms & conditions



If it’s felt that any Be member’s Internet activities are so excessive that other members are detrimentally affected, Be may give the member generating the excessive web traffic a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, should the levels of activity not immediately decrease after the warning, Be may terminate that member’s services.
What happens if the Policy is breached?

If any member’s use of these services constitute a breach of this Policy, Be may, at its option and discretion, either give the member notice to stop the unacceptable use(s) or terminate that member’s services (with or without notice as Be considers appropriate).

To report any illegal or unacceptable use of Be services, please send an email to [email protected].
 
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neoboy said:
Only gripe I have with steam is that despite a separate store from US everything is still priced in dollars. Would be nice if they just did it in Pounds or Euros.
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would rather dollars than euros, as dollar is still roughly double the pound, so is easier to convert. Pounds would be a lot better than both dollar and euro though.
 
First time I ever used it was to register my boxed copy of HL2. Worked flawlessly and then when I switched PCs and found I'd lost the disk ( :rolleyes: ) it let me redownload everything despite buying a boxed one.

Never had a single problem with it :)
 
Gerard said:
Probably also contributing something to bandwidth costs to keep steam running.
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Andrew_McP said:
It's probably a combination of...

1) Developers & publishers striking deals which protect the value of high street/mainstream sales. If Steam prices undercut physical prices at launch, software retailers might suffer. Ok, nobody's here's going to get their violins out, but most titles are still sold through standard retail means, and new releases ar eimportant for sales targets. So it's probably only fair (in commercial terms) to try and keep the playing field level.

2) More importantly... the convenience premium! I've bought several things via Steam on impulse, not because they were a great price. You also get to pre-load most releases and play them the day/moment they're released. So Steam has to be seen as a premium service for impatient gamers. Clearly that's working, because the service is growing.

The only way to encourage lower prices is for everyone to stop using it. :-)

Andrew McP
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I would agree with that except for one thing. You can go into a shop and buy, say, Half Life Generations, then register it on Steam (and this is going to happen more and more). You can then download it, auto-patch it, etc.



M.
 
I really like steam and have been using it since my pre-order of HL2. The thing is it's so easy to use from a gamers and developers point of view. Who would have thought it, a company making something that everybody gains from.

Lots of good special offers on there so you can pick up some classics at a really good price. Prey for $5.00 springs to mind along with Company of Heroes and Opposing fronts for just over £15.00.

At first I was in two minds about the whole hard media vs digital downloads. I know a lot of people still like the tectile feel of having, disks, manuals etc. Personally, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if my entire game collection was on Steam.

My only gripe was a few years ago when there was an issue with credit/debit cards but other than that, it's all been good
 
My only worry is what happens when Steam shutsdown or they go bankrupt? I can see it In 20years I want to go play some old classics and not being able to as Steam is dead.

That’s the main reason why I nearly always go for disk copies.
 
Pottsey said:
My only worry is what happens when Steam shutsdown or they go bankrupt? I can see it In 20years I want to go play some old classics and not being able to as Steam is dead.

That’s the main reason why I nearly always go for disk copies.
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They'll probably release a get-out patch or something.

Or alternatively, the leet haxx0r groups could sort it.
 
Pottsey said:
My only worry is what happens when Steam shutsdown or they go bankrupt? I can see it In 20years I want to go play some old classics and not being able to as Steam is dead.

That’s the main reason why I nearly always go for disk copies.
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I doubt it seeing as Valve own it and will probably never go out of business since millions of people buy and play the CS and HL series everyday.
 
Werewolf said:
I used to quite dislike steam when it first came out, it was buggy, slow and caused a lot of problems on my brothers machine.

However over the past few years they're got it pretty well polished, much more reliable and have done a lot to prove that their drm isn't too bad (largely by making it so easy to use on different machines - linking the games to an account rather than specific machine is the way to go imo).
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Agreed and after what happened/is going to happen to EA games, steam looks better and better
 
only problem i have with steam is that the store and community runs so sluggish

but aside from that if all games was on steam i would never buy a boxed game again
 
Loki said:
Prey for $5.00 springs to mind along with Company of Heroes and Opposing fronts for just over £15.00.
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Just bought the CoH pack, and having a nightmare downloading it. It keeps stopping, saying its done, with about 300Mb downloaded. So you have to try and launch it, and it'll go 'Oi, its not all downloaded, you can't play!' and continue downloading. Meaning I can't leave it going overnight as it'll just stop ¬_¬

Edit: It just told me the steam servers are too busy to handle my request!
 
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Nymins said "I doubt it seeing as Valve own it and will probably never go out of business since millions of people buy and play the CS and HL series everyday."
Just look at how many people said that about all the old massive players. Pretty much none of the old big names which people said will never go out of business are still alive. Game company's don't tend to last long. A lot of the big name developers form over 12 years ago are dead after people said they will never go out of business. Valve could mess up badly in a few years and go the way of 3DFX.

I don't think Valve will die anytime soon but who knows about 5 or 10 years from now. People will stop playing CS and HL in large numbers in years to come.

I hope not but it's a possibility.
 
Pottsey said:
Nymins said "I doubt it seeing as Valve own it and will probably never go out of business since millions of people buy and play the CS and HL series everyday."
Just look at how many people said that about all the old massive players. Pretty much none of the old big names which people said will never go out of business are still alive. Game company's don't tend to last long. A lot of the big name developers form over 12 years ago are dead after people said they will never go out of business. Valve could mess up badly in a few years and go the way of 3DFX.

I don't think Valve will die anytime soon but who knows about 5 or 10 years from now. People will stop playing CS and HL in large numbers in years to come.

I hope not but it's a possibility.
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And if they do, they'll still be making millions publishing 3rd party games over Steam.
 
I never really hated it, but I did use to really dislike it due to the huge amount of crashed I use to get, but a large amount of crashes were down to problems with my computer and not stream ( I just blamed steam as it only seemed to that that crashed ) after i managed to fix the problem steams been running great.
 
I love it for single player games. People can come online and chat to me on the friends list while im playing. Much better than alt-tabbing to MSN or something.
 
Steam is fantastic. The only things I don't like are the stupid overpricing of games and the look of the interface. Can't find many skins for it either. :[
 
Unlike ea downloader theres no time limit on the downloads. I almost bought crysis on there when it came out till I read that. Steer well clear of it now. If I buy a game I expect to own it forever or there abouts!
 
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