Where is STEAM headed?

div0 · 16 Aug 2007 at 11:31

mulpsmebeauty said:
Well you probably still legally 'own' the rights to use a game you've purchased if you happen to lose the medium upon which it was stored.

My point was in relation to Energize's reply.

He said (slightly paraphrased):

'Steam encourages piracy because some people can't use Steam, or don't want to use Steam.'

My reply was:

'That's like saying - CD's encourage piracy because some people are worried about how easy it is to lose them. So they don't bother and just pirate the game.'

Both are poor arguments for 'encouraging' piracy imo.

Energize · 16 Aug 2007 at 11:44

div0 said:
I've run Steam on an old Athlon 800MHz system and not seen any noticable drop in performance due to any resources used by Steam. Not an issue imo. Not sure what you mean by 'dubious things'.

Well by dubious, we had starforce which was impossible to uninstall. Then $ony's rootkit which secretly installed itself and opened the door for viruses. Punkbuster which falsely recognises legitimate programs as cheats. WGA sending data about your pc to micro$haft on a daily basis. Who knows what steam could be doing or made to do.

weringo · 16 Aug 2007 at 11:49

div0 said:
But your Steam account is only going to get banned if you are either cheating, or sharing an account. It's not in Valve's interest to ban an account unnecessarily.

If you are cheating on countersrike you deserve to have all your single player games taken away?

div0 · 16 Aug 2007 at 11:52

Energize said:
Who knows what steam could be doing or made to do.

*Reaches for tin-foil hat*

I take your point, but isn't the same true with pretty much anything you install on your comp? Online games, installed from a CD, could potentially be doing the same things.

div0 · 16 Aug 2007 at 11:55

weringo said:
If you are cheating on countersrike you deserve to have all your single player games taken away?

Yes

(but I don't believe this actually happens - VAC bans only prevent you playing on VAC secure servers, not offline games)

But even if it was the case and you are determined to cheat on CS, you can always have a seperate account that only has CS on it. Then you will only lose that account and that one game.

Why would you want to cheat on an account that is full of many games, when you know that you are likely to lose them all if caught? It seems like a good deterent to me.

SpaghettiOs · 16 Aug 2007 at 12:04

Steam will never ban your account for cheating. They only ever ban you with VAC, meaning you can't get on VAC enabled servers. You won't lose any single-player games.

As for the whole point of this thread, I find Steam to be a mixed bag. On one side, you have the convenience of not having to leave the house to buy a game, and no more CDs. You also have all your games together, and its easy to find new ones you like.

However, Steam also raises problems. If the Steam servers go down, even for a few hours like a few months ago, no one can log onto, and therefore play any Steam games, if they don't have the offline mode on their PC. And offline mode seems to, or at least used to be terrible unless you had started up offline mode, while you had a connection to the steam servers.

Also, I can't pay for stuff on Steam with a credit card due to the incredibly secure checks they do, even though I can pay for things on any other major retailer on the web. And then, if your credit card doesn't work the first time, you get accused of fraud for trying it again. Therefore, I'm forced to use PayPal, which is a godsend.

It seems that Valve has more bugs with steam than with a large majority of its games, and these can ruin the experience. Despite all this, I still use Steam and will continue to do so. I just hope that buying a game in the shops will never die. Steam makes it so impersonal, and the simplicity of getting a game seems to make it less rewarding. I love to have a shiny new box to look at, and a manual to look through, and Steam is taking that away from me.

Tombo · 16 Aug 2007 at 12:38

Energize said:
I avoid it when I can, insane amounts of bandwidth required to download games, if you've just reformatted then your doomed. Had problems with the client saying something in the registry has been damaged or some bs like that and it wouldn't start. Plus you can't sell second hand games or get refunds. Then there is the slow servers...

Which is why you backup your games to disk, and the slow servers can be fixed in a matter of seconds.

Energize said:
It's also possible they could ban your steam account.

They will only ban you from VAC secured servers on the online games that use them if you are using cheats, you still keep all your games and the only ways to get your account completely disabled are by attempting fraud or phishing over Steam friends.

weringo said:
If you are cheating on countersrike you deserve to have all your single player games taken away?

No you don't, and that's exactly why they aren't.

Also I've had few problems with steam really, I've had the odd one with was solved by deleting the clientregistry.blob and some other problems caused by error on my part. Apart from that it's been nothing but reliable to me.

Energize · 16 Aug 2007 at 12:54

Tombo said:
Which is why you backup your games to disk, and the slow servers can be fixed in a matter of seconds.

In which case I may as well have bought the cd's in the 1st place, at 22MB/s for a 16x dvd and having to use loads of them it takes a while to backup games.

furnace · 16 Aug 2007 at 12:57

I think some sort of open platform needs to be developed, which has the same 'centerpiece', but each publisher can write their own client - well, even hobbyists could write a client - and each publisher can connect their server(s) to the network and distribute their games.

I don't think one distribution system owned by a single company is the way forward..

HangTime · 16 Aug 2007 at 13:12

Gimpymoo said:
It really annoyed me when HL2 was released when loads of people were complaining about having to have an internet connection to play the game. DAMMIT - I know some may not agree, but if you dont have an internet connection, why the hell do you have a PC with the intention of playing games?

Moved house and broaband connection not been activated yet? I have a dialup modem, but as it's ISA it won't fit in modern motherboards.

Stuck behind a firewall you don't have control over?

Internet connection gone down?

Internet connection extortionately priced? (e.g. some uni halls using dialup access with pricey tariffs).

I appreciate that for most people these won't be issues, but also you need to remember that for people who DON'T have internet access, AAA singleplayer titles like Halflife2 are a very appealing way of passing the time until they are back online.

As an example, a few years ago before the days of seemless ADSL migrations, in order to change ISP - or even change between BT Wholesale product with your existing ISP - you had to go through a complete cease-and-reprovide process. This meant a typical downtime of around 5-10 days, but I was offline for 2.5weeks when upgrading from 512kbit to 2mbit. Obviously due to not having an internet connection, singleplayer gaming was a good way of passing the time until then.

Gimpymoo · 16 Aug 2007 at 13:58

HangTime said:
I have a dialup modem, but as it's ISA it won't fit in modern motherboards.

Buy a new dial up modem for 50 pence?

HangTime said:
Stuck behind a firewall you don't have control over?

Contact the Admin of the computer to adjust the firewall settings. If its not your PC to be installing games on in the first place, thats hardly VALVES fault is it?

Im not trying to be argumentative, but ive not heard ONE valid complaint about STEAM yet.

The only ones I do hear are simply from "nOOb" PIRATES who see their leeching days as coming to an end.

STEAM doesnt require you to be online to play the game EVERY time you play.

This is apart of the problem that soo many people misunderstand STEAM.

When Half Life 2 was released, I heard many people say:

"You cant play Half Life 2 unless you have a broadband internet connection which is allways on"

Thats just WRONG.

There is an "Offline" mode in STEAM which works VERY well.

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi...2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9b2ZmbGluZQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

Its never failed me yet.

SpaghettiOs · 16 Aug 2007 at 14:06

Yes, all well and good, but many people did not have access to broadband internet at all when Half Life 2 was first released, and unless you can fully update Half Life 2, Steam won't let you play it in offline mode, or at least this is how it used to be.

div0 · 16 Aug 2007 at 14:14

You didn't need broadband internet - just internet access. Dial-up would have done.

If you bought HL2 on DVD, then the required updates were small. Most of the content was on the DVD.

waso_dude · 16 Aug 2007 at 14:32

Pros:

No need to go to the shop to buy a game, or wait for it to be delivered.
Good range of games
Growing List of usefull features - Community is awsome!

Problems:

Slow download speeds of games. Max 1mb

common! 2mb min please

Friends regular downtime
Sometimes dodgy connection to steam servers in game. - random disconnects.

My 2p

Margaret · 16 Aug 2007 at 17:28

BioShock is on Steam!

JoeBoi · 16 Aug 2007 at 17:47

lol I see bioshock and thought you was joking

UFX · 16 Aug 2007 at 19:23

Jihad said:
BioShock is on Steam!

Thats 1 extra sale for bioshock, would probally not have "bought" it, its all about whatever is the quickest & least hassel tbh.

v0n · 17 Aug 2007 at 01:54

My main beef with Steam is that as a media-less solution it was supposed to be cheaper than DVD/CD equivalent. Meanwhile it is just simply expensive. Case and point - Lost Planet costs $54 for "virtual copy" via Steam or $32 on DVD via Amazon merchands. Prey, effectively now a $9.99 game all over the net still costs $49.99 on Steam...

Dwbreeze1982 · 17 Aug 2007 at 04:07

if you have been on steam lately they have just put the full range of id softyware on ther, you can buy the whole bundle ( Apart from quak 4 ), this includes all the add ons and eberything for £35 GBP or $69. That my friend is a steal. :eek:

I am also a member of a clan and ocuk steam comunity and it is brilliant, looking good for steam keep up the god work.

Squink · 17 Aug 2007 at 09:25

v0n said:
My main beef with Steam is that as a media-less solution it was supposed to be cheaper than DVD/CD equivalent

Exactly - there are no real bargains on Steam. I don't class the ID pack as a bargain - it's a load of mostly old games (classics admittedly) that before their release on Steam would not have been bringing in any revenue. Bung em on Steam for 35 quid +VAT and suddenly everyone who played them to death 5 years ago (and probably has most of them boxed in the attic) is giving you cash to play them again.

I like the service, but I'd like to see a bit more pricing realism. At the moment it seems to be luring in new publishers by offering them a chance to sell games that have passed their initial shop-based sales rush, at a high price.