Steam

orderoftheflame · 7 May 2009 at 16:07

nex20 said:
Yeah I like steam and having to continously download patch's does get annoying. Steam does it for free and like people have said above I prefere having digital copies and obviously the weekend deals are pretty good.

Only thing that concerns me about steam is what if it goes bankrupt or something? Do I lose all my games?

I don't think valve will go bankrupt soon.

One thing I have noticed with the valve games is updates do seem to get pushed out a lot more regularly than most games (a good thing, I dislike bugs and exploits).

I think without the automatic patching, this would become a nightmare.

biron_w said:
I may be wrong but it seems with games associated with steam you can only play them if you are connected to the internet.How is that fair?I pay for the game,I want to play an offline game but I can't?!
Like I said I MAY be wrong but that's the impression I got the other day.

Incorrect.

As has been noted many times in this thread, you seem incapable of using steam.

Have you tried running steam in offline mode?

iviv · 7 May 2009 at 16:10

The reasons mentioned above are why Impulse is better than Steam.

It still has the fast download speeds, thogh a smaller list of games at the moment. But you don't need it to run the games. You have to use it to activate the games, in a similar method to steam, and you have to use it to patch, but if you want to play a game, you can just double click the game .exe, bypassing Impulse.
They also provide a tool for you to activate your game using a different PC that is connected to the internet, so you can play on non-internet PCs.

So, all the benefits of fast download speeds, as many downloads as you'd like, and cheap games, without being forced to update games. And even when you run impulse, it asks if you want to update, rather than forcing you to.

uv · 7 May 2009 at 16:14

iviv said:
The reasons mentioned above are why Impulse is better than Steam.

But Impulse has (at the moment) a very small library, and currently an utterly pointless 'friends' section. You can't even join a friends game from your friends list.

I can see a bright future for Impulse though, and one day I'll hopefully own more than just one Impulse game

snowdog · 7 May 2009 at 16:32

biron_w said:
The game is dawn of war 2.
I've got the disc,installed,steam says it's downloading updates and then says it's gonna take over a day.
I'm only on sky's very rubbish basic package at the moment but it's still 2 meg download so a day seems a very long time

Could stop living in the stone ages then and get normal internet

.

Anyone who likes games should be ashamed to have only 2 mb internet if it is possible to get more. 2mb would have been acceptable 5 years ago, but not today.

Knubje · 7 May 2009 at 16:33

Tute said:
What if I don't want a "content management system" with my game?

[Edit] To those mentioning that you can stop it patching - that wasn't really my point. My point is that it's far too intrusive as an application.

The forced install is the biggest problem I have with it.

I see your point, some people have the preference not to want automated service for obvious reasons. It's a bit "each to their own" as in most cases, whoreses for courses

However, this whole thing got started when an un-informed user was incorrectly blaming Steam for his issues when it was more likely his shoddy broadband and choice of game (distributed through steam unfortunatley). His words were "I think it's rubbish".

My point about content management was only to highlight that it is far from "rubbish" and is probably a market leader in what it does (at the moment).

snowdog said:
Could stop living in the stone ages then and get normal internet .

Anyone who likes games should be ashamed to have only 2 mb internet if it is possible to get more. 2mb would have been acceptable 5 years ago, but not today.

Oi! Just because you come in here, with your fancy dutch networking and try and abuse us UK folk for having poor broadband services in comparison, doesn't give you the right to go mouthing off about how awesome you are

I'm stuck on 2mb at the moment, considering most intensive online FPS require little more than a 64k connection to the net, I'm alright thanks

(I do remember the days of online gaming with a 28.8k modem and getting p00ned by all my dutchie friends with god damn broadband...****ing LPB's )

orderoftheflame · 7 May 2009 at 16:40

snowdog said:
Anyone who likes games should be ashamed to have only 2 mb internet if it is possible to get more. 2mb would have been acceptable 5 years ago, but not today.

I blame BT.

snowdog · 7 May 2009 at 16:56

Knubje said:
Oi! Just because you come in here, with your fancy dutch networking and try and abuse us UK folk for having poor broadband services in comparison, doesn't give you the right to go mouthing off about how awesome you are

I'm stuck on 2mb at the moment, considering most intensive online FPS require little more than a 64k connection to the net, I'm alright thanks (I do remember the days of online gaming with a 28.8k modem and getting p00ned by all my dutchie friends with god damn broadband...****ing LPB's )

orderoftheflame said:
I blame BT.

Is it really that bad there, that you can't get more than 2 mb in many places ?

It's just boggling me sometimes, why do you guys even go to isp's like BT, sky or virgin with slow speeds or traffic scaping or fair use rubbish or anything else unfriendly, when you have isp's like be unlimited which provide unlimited fast Internet at low prices , I mean I understand that if your line is bad you can't do much about it but why go to the poor isp's and kind of support them by being their customer?

Rybo89 · 7 May 2009 at 16:59

steam threads are almost as good as 9/11 threads

so easy to wind people up haha

biron_w · 7 May 2009 at 17:03

snowdog said:
Could stop living in the stone ages then and get normal internet .

Anyone who likes games should be ashamed to have only 2 mb internet if it is possible to get more. 2mb would have been acceptable 5 years ago, but not today.

I've just moved house and i'm currently just waiting to switch my ISP.Which will be sorted on tues.Should be on around 15meg then :cool:

orderoftheflame · 7 May 2009 at 17:03

snowdog said:
Is it really that bad there, that you can't get more than 2 mb in many places ?

It's just boggling me sometimes, why do you guys even go to isp's like BT, sky or virgin with slow speeds or traffic scaping or fair use rubbish or anything else unfriendly, when you have isp's like be unlimited which provide unlimited fast Internet at low prices , I mean I understand that if your line is bad you can't do much about it but why go to the poor isp's and kind of support them by being their customer?

It's not bad, it's just the best that's available in many places here.

I'm with a good provider, but we get limited by the speed of the line, which isn't controlled by the ISP.

2mb is more than enough for me tbh, I've never had a problem with it. It's more than fast enough to play online, and I've never had problems downloading items fast enough, I either stick it on overnight or when I'm at work.

If faster broadband was available, I'd look into it, but it's not the end of the world as far as I'm concerned.

snowdog · 7 May 2009 at 17:10

Heh, one of the first things I'd look for when I get my own home is to get a house with fast internet

. Definitely goign to try to live somewhere with fiber

. Or if that's impossible, as close as possible to an exchange so I can get a full 24 mb

.

It's actually one of my main requirements, when I move out I'll want:

1: Car friendly bit of town.
2: Fast internet.
3: No excessive crime.

That's all really, I could care rubbish all about stuff like how quiet or how green an area is or if it looks like I'm living instanbul

. As long as my pc is satisfied with fast Internet and I can keep my motor safely and without worries

.

biron_w · 7 May 2009 at 17:10

Snowdog - sometimes you can't go with the best providers.It depends who is set up at the exchange you use.I'm lucky in that I can use o2/be on my exchange which is why i'm going with o2.

Tute · 7 May 2009 at 17:36

Knubje said:
My point about content management was only to highlight that it is far from "rubbish" and is probably a market leader in what it does (at the moment).

Yeah, but I could offer a service taking a dump in women's handbags and claim i'm the market leader!

It's all a bit redundant when there's no good competitor.

I have come round a bit with regards to Steam now anyway. I promised myself i'd never play HL2 as I wasn't happy with Steam but I caved. Then this morning I was toying with the idea of buying L4D off it as well. But i'm going to wait and try to shop around for that.

In related news, whose idea was it to take the L4D demo off? What a class A, up there with the worst, complete and utter, ****head. :rolleyes:

D D Danneh · 7 May 2009 at 17:45

I get really fast downloads on steam. I'm on an 8Mb package, and I downloaded the Orange Box two days ago. I got about 500-600 KB/s on each download, so about 3MB/s total (which is weird, I should technically never get more than 1MB/s on an 8Mb line).

Really pleased with steam so far. All my games updated in about 10 minutes, and everything works flawlessly.

Knubje · 7 May 2009 at 17:50

Tute said:
Yeah, but I could offer a service taking a dump in women's handbags and claim i'm the market leader!

I believe EA are proving that service, with their "Downloadable Content Manager"

Kenai · 7 May 2009 at 17:59

The only issue i've ever had with Steam is the offline mode can be tetchy. I lost my net connection for a week a while back and Steam wouldn't let me play anything bar Audiosurf without connecting to the net.

sid · 7 May 2009 at 18:38

I have used steam extensively but my main worry is that one day, some spyware or something will result in the account getting hacked and thats the end of hundreds of pounds of games.

Above is also true with a physical copy of the game as well which is very annoying.

sid

uv · 7 May 2009 at 20:54

Kenai said:
The only issue i've ever had with Steam is the offline mode can be tetchy.

I've used Steam in offline mode on my g/f's PC for about a year now without issue, and on a laptop for a few months without issue.

A few years back when we held our first Lan, Steam's offline mode was horrendous, but it seems to work flawlessly now

Kenai · 7 May 2009 at 22:45

uv said:
I've used Steam in offline mode on my g/f's PC for about a year now without issue, and on a laptop for a few months without issue.

A few years back when we held our first Lan, Steam's offline mode was horrendous, but it seems to work flawlessly now

This was about 6 months ago.

It works flawlessly for me if I test it whilst actually having a connection. When I was actually forced into needing it though, it wouldn't have any of it just kept saying I needed to go online and verify or something before I could play.