Steam on release - "this will never take off"
- Thread starter House
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I swear that happened throughout the entirety of CSs lifespan!
Soldato
Steam was horrible back in the day, I remember being really annoyed at the whole experience (still being on an ISDN line didn't help matters). One of the major problems of course was internet access, back then internet speeds and access were only decent if you lived in a major centre of population otherwise you were relegated to the likes of dial-up (over here anyway).
Remember Steam only as I had to install it to get HL2 up and running. It was trouble free for me, only used it to get HL2 working, forgot about it for years after that, started to use Steam to buy games in 2010, before that it was used to register Steam enabled games, to me Steam was a bit meh, Ive only got it as I need it for a single game, but its grown so much I use it daily now if I want to play PC games..
its a real success story, considering how it came about really. essential application nowadays for serious gamers, heck even my alienware came pre installed with Steam, the only application I didn't remove when I got my new laptop..
From such small beginnings.
its a real success story, considering how it came about really. essential application nowadays for serious gamers, heck even my alienware came pre installed with Steam, the only application I didn't remove when I got my new laptop..
From such small beginnings.
Associate
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- 21 Jun 2011
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- 1,426
Bummer that it doesn't work for BF3 - never bought it so can't help you there.
In case anyone searching the forums turns up here, it's worth mentioning that you can back up all installed STEAM games, patches and all copying the 'steamapps' folder. As someone who, like you, would need multiple days of not doing anything else to get a 34Gb game downloaded, this is a blessed relief.
some games may keep their save games in My Documents, and other silly things, but that's true of any game you're backing up/reinstalling.
And yes, OP, I remember when STEAM arrived the vocal portion of t'interwebs hated everything about it.
Well technically, it was one of the reasons why we GOT greater speeds. People wanted faster download times, we got them.
Same for me - the price you pay for living in a rural area. I am not complaining I'd rather have slow speeds that are only an inconvenience over living in the city any day.
I remember it at the time being bad mostly because hardware was still waiting patiently for the athlon 64 to be released... (the main limit to steam along with the high price of ram, no one would have enjoyed hl2 on the bbc's test system as it sounds just like my old dell).
That and having to decrypt hl2 on 56k dialup (with tesco that only allowed me online for 2 hours at a time) was a bit of a killer, second time I had to do it for my new pc I walked it round to a mates house (who was the first to get broadband) and did the whole thing in about 10 mins.
It was only bad because of that realisation that really we have to pay for games if we want to play them properly and this was going to be the future of playing them, just computing growing up a little bit. Just nice steam has sort of gone the right way as a distribution model.
One thing that surprised me is that HL2 works on win 98 and ME!!!
That and having to decrypt hl2 on 56k dialup (with tesco that only allowed me online for 2 hours at a time) was a bit of a killer, second time I had to do it for my new pc I walked it round to a mates house (who was the first to get broadband) and did the whole thing in about 10 mins.
It was only bad because of that realisation that really we have to pay for games if we want to play them properly and this was going to be the future of playing them, just computing growing up a little bit. Just nice steam has sort of gone the right way as a distribution model.
One thing that surprised me is that HL2 works on win 98 and ME!!!
Associate
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- 24 Jan 2010
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- 2,141
Install GFWL for a good idea of what steam was like on release.
I don't see the comparison really, the original Steam had far fewer features.
Its like comparing an Abram's to a WW1 tank.
Steam was the first/one of the first inclusive community DD platform to be developed, of course its going to suck, but at least they worked on it and gave us one of the best things about PC gaming nowadays.
Steam was the first/one of the first inclusive community DD platform to be developed, of course its going to suck, but at least they worked on it and gave us one of the best things about PC gaming nowadays.
Steam was annoying for a few reasons:
-Slow downloads (hence the Skeleton 'Updating....' gif)
-General anti-bloat sentiment
-Automatic patching i.e. there was a delay before patches would hit Steam and you couldn't manually update
-Inefficient patching i.e. you had to download more than necessary
-No UK pricing i.e. all in dollars
-Poor catalogue of titles (didn't bother me as I never wanted to use Steam anyway but no doubt was an issue to the 'one stop shop' brigade)
-Makes launching games slower because you have to have Steam running
-Slow downloads (hence the Skeleton 'Updating....' gif)
-General anti-bloat sentiment
-Automatic patching i.e. there was a delay before patches would hit Steam and you couldn't manually update
-Inefficient patching i.e. you had to download more than necessary
-No UK pricing i.e. all in dollars
-Poor catalogue of titles (didn't bother me as I never wanted to use Steam anyway but no doubt was an issue to the 'one stop shop' brigade)
-Makes launching games slower because you have to have Steam running
I used to use All seeing eye to do that. Don't know if it still works nowadays though.
Soldato
You don't even need to back them up or reinstall.
For example, on steam I have all my games stored on a seperate drive away from the OS. If I reinstall my OS, all steam needs to do is update a few files and registry locations and it's good to go. You don't touch it, you don't reinstall, or need to patch it, nothing. (However when they put saved games outside the game folders, such as C:\user\.. then it's an issue, I hate when games don't put their saves in the game's folder to make it easier to find, some do, some don't.
Origin is a little different, however you can backup install files to a specific place and then if you wish onto other media but origin is worse in my opinion, rather than detect the folder it's installing to has the files already it will re-download and overwrite, last checked about 6 months ago though. Again, I don't mean this the wrong way but maybe you just missed a few features. This is from someone who weekly downloads games on steam and then shares it with another user in the house for his steam so we don't have to double our bandwidth, origin is bad at it, or was.
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Soldato
I can remember Steam being a pain in the rear when it came out and I first had to use it for Half Life 2. Like others have said, I had slow internet at the time, it took ages to download everything and had a habit of crashing over an over. The automatic patching annoyed me, and still does sometimes, due to occasionally wanted to just quickly spend 10 minutes playing something, only for the game to update instead!
Good thing is has really turned around!
Origin isn't as good as Steam, but when it came out it was a huge amount better than Steam on it's release. We just expected more.
Good thing is has really turned around!
Origin isn't as good as Steam, but when it came out it was a huge amount better than Steam on it's release. We just expected more.
Associate
Surprised more aren't mentioning Steam before HL2. I used it in the beta stages and then on the day it went live (STEAM_0:0:3178, my Steam e-penis!). Then it was just a game hub for HL, CS, TFC etc.
There's some Steam gif somewhere out there that despite taking the mick was pretty much what people were seeing. Possibly the first online launch failure; today this is what happens on major launches.
Ah found it...
There's some Steam gif somewhere out there that despite taking the mick was pretty much what people were seeing. Possibly the first online launch failure; today this is what happens on major launches.
Ah found it...
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