Tell me about Steam...

orderoftheflame said:
Tin foil corner. :o
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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.
 
The best thing to do is try it with a free to play game & if you don't like it delete you're account.
Personally I'd give steam/valve the benefit of the doubt they have never given me any reason to think that anything in steam is used in anything close to a malicious way & only enhances my gaming experience, plus steam sales are a massive bonus worth any perceived hardships with using the system IMO.
 
If you cannot handle Steam then forget about ever playing Fallout New Vegas - that is a Windows Live game and that is infinitely worse!
 
I'm also a member of the 'Speccy was my first computer', rubber keys, tape recorder and all- although the Atari 2600 was my actual first 'gaming' system so I'm probably as old or older than you (as are many on ocUK forums) and am also a fan of keeping myself safe online.

I do, however, think it's time for you to to take the tin foil hat off - Steam is fine. Give it a try. I actually don't buy (pc games) anywhere else now as it's a handy system that compiles all my games, lets me uninstall them and re-download them whenever I want to and, most importantly, Steam is the home of epic sales.
 
Are you worried that Steam will be snooping around your hard-drive? Or is it more the principle that they could have the potential to if they wanted to? :)
 
I don't mind Steam because its never caused me any issues. I use it because its a convenient way to get games, yes it means sacrificing some personal details to them but unfortunately thats how it is. The only additional thing I'd like to be able to have is an Patch only mode that disables all the social/community side of it to allow only patching/downloading.

As I'd say to anyone regarding security and privacy, if your information is that critical then it needs a standalone computer, or one with heavily locked down and monitored internet access.
Angilion said:
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:

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.
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Buy FO:NV
download, install and activate
go off-line
never go on-line again

Problem?
 
MBennett said:
If you cannot handle Steam then forget about ever playing Fallout New Vegas - that is a Windows Live game and that is infinitely worse!
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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.
 
Really, this is the future. You either accept it and join us or you're going to rapidly run out of games to play.

I appreciate some of your concerns but your posts do come across a little bit tin foil hat conspiracy nut :p
 
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Relative of yours?

(couldn't resist :D)

If you are really this paranoid I feel sorry for you though :(

(Not that you'd believe the answer but have you tried emailing Gabe Newell? Maybe he can enlighten you?) :)
 
The biggest advantage of Steam surely is the regular sales. The only full price game I have ever bought on Steam is FTL, *everything* else has been bought in a sale of some form or another. Join Steam, then you can add even more games to that 100+ pile of retail games you say you have but haven't yet played.
 
Simple answer, dont have anything on your hard drives your worried about others finding?
 
You won't be laughing when we are all crab headed zombies! when they turn on the hypnotic-signal imbedded in Half-life 3, soon after all are base is belong to Valve! it'll happen people mark my words.
 
On one hand, I do respect and appreciate people being cautious about these things sometimes. Some companies, products and services have, in the past, taken it too far and someone needs to be watching out for that.

On the other, it's paranoia. Valve are a company that make and sell games, and Steam is the platform they use for that. They're making plenty of money doing that, so I do wonder why anyone would think they'd be 'spying' for other information on your system.

The fact that Steam periodically asks you to participate in the Steam Hardware Survey (whereby it collects information about your hardware and installed software) suggests that it isn't doing any behind-the-scenes spying. They wouldn't ask for permission to collect that information if it was doing it (and more) in the background anyway.
 
To be honest it sounds like you have your very own strongly held opinions and you didn't really come here open to having them changed, just to slap down anyone who disagrees.

Too much angst about a bloody games delivery platform.
 
The most recent peak of concurrent Steam users was over 6,000,000 people. According to your argument, that is 6,000,000 people that have willingly installed 'spyware' on their system, and are using Steam in the knowledge (or ignorance) that their software could be taken away from them at any minute. That would either make Steam the most ingenious piece of malware ever or, a bit more likely, a convenient and trustworthy solution that has made gaming more secure and convenient for publishers and consumers. Like it or lump it, solutions like Steam are the way forward if you want to play recent games.

As far as what details Steam collects, to my knowledge, and by the wording of the privacy agreement. it's only usage statistics and hardware information.
 
In all fairness I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that if Valve went bust (for whatever reason, however unlikely) we'd all be out of a **** tonne of games...
 
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