Why is Steam still such a steaming pile of leper excement?

[Goldfingers]

Steam used to be terrible, it used to make everything so much more of a hassle and gave little/no benifit. Now it works great for the most part, and has some great functions.


The only reason I don't buy more games on there is I prefer to have the physical copy of something.

 

[KNiVES]

Steam is good because it reduces piracy for the games involved, and that means a better PC gaming industry. It's literally the backbone of PC gaming now. Without it, a lot of those games currently on it wouldn't be anywhere near as successful.

Valve has saved the industry in a hell of a lot of ways.

 

[Treebiter]

I think some of the haters here have had unlucky experiences. The friends list being down for a year part is news to me.

As a further point of love, Steam has saved me loads in phone bills as so many people I know are on it. All I have to do is send them a message like 'pub' and viola, half a dozen saved texts. Huzzah!

 

[geekyEd]

I was having major issues yesterday, same as the op steam was attempting to restart following an update but just wouldn't, I had to kill the process and restart it myself. As well as it killing my internet yesterday while I was attempting to download batman AA that was free with my new graphics, it really needs the ability to throttle the bandwidth its using so you can do other things at the same time .

 

[DampCat]

viola

?

But in seriousness, the friends feature is great. Being able to overlay it onto your steam games is super helpful... and using it to connect straight to their games whilst you're in one already is really useful.

 

[Keltik THC]

i had problems with Steam on vista, and it drove me nuts... i think you'll probably find a thread by me from a couple of years ago with the same sort of sentiment towards steam.

But since i got steam working its been a dream, i mean if it works its great it is a great tool, you don't have to hunt down patches on filefront or anywhere else and then wonder what version you have installed and why the patch wont work etc...etc..

I even installed Tales of Valour yesterday, i already have CoH and Opposing Fronts which i bought the retail versions, i thought steam wouldn't be able to understand that i had two non-steam versions and a steam version.... but amazingly when i start Tales of Valour i can also play CoH or OF.

i used to hate steam when it didn't work, but now when i log on and they offer me the opportunity to play through all the half-life games for cheap or Mass Effect for £6, and they include all patches and fixes? i cant knock it.

It took me a while to get over the loss of actually having the box of the game, because i like collecting stuff... but when you are constantly changing your system and re-installing games regularly, shifting through all those DVDs and then having to type ion each CD key is a big pain in the butt, again Steam takes care of all of this.

so i understand your frustration if it has conflicts on your system, but in general Steam is pure amazingness.

 

[Xelene]

Works great for me, and given that the high street has pretty much given up on stocking PC games it's where I get all my games from.

 

[Gimpymoo]

I love STEAM.

Any problems I do have are easily resolved, delete a file and restart Steam at worst.

 

[xiphrex]

Steam is awesome.

 

[Treebiter]

Voila!

...Typo

 

[matt0r]

The friends list being down for a year part is news to me.

I'm guessing ur wern't around when the move was made from WON to steam ... it had a mass of issues. Friends was indeed down for a very long time indeed, to the point when i didnt even consider opening it. To be fair now steam is essential software for me. I havent had a problem with it for a couple of years now.

 

[Gimpymoo]

I bought PES 2010 on disc the other week as it was not available via digital distribution.

A few days after receiving it, the disc gets scratched and is unreadable. My fault yes, but wouldnt have happened were it a digital copy

 

[Beasty]

I don't like it anymore, I liked it when it was just their games but could tell that was going to change obviously, they make a lot of money this way.

The game overlay ****es me off to no end, the final straw was GTA IV for me even though most of that was r* **** poor port.

 

[Dark_Angel]

I think Steam is awesome.

This.

It used to have a huge amount of issues, but now I think it is pretty damn great.

 

[KNiVES]

Friends was down for a couple of years for me too, when it first came out. It never bothered me, because a lot of us used xfire instead at the time.

 

[procrastinator]

It used to be a bit of an annoyance when it first launched, but I'd say its pretty awesome now. It still has some hiccups now and then, such as rubbish download/login speeds when theres a big release out, but a apart from that I love it.

The steam special offers are just too damned tempting though.

 

[mame]

It's the prices that let it down. I've had steam for years from my boxed half life 2 but only bought games off it in the past week. Team Fortress 2 for £2.50 and Mass Effect for £6.49 about 15 minutes ago. I might keep an eye out for other bargains but no way I'd pay £30 for a download of a game I could probably find for £16.99 if I looked about.

 

[Destination]

hmm quick query on steam
if i have just installed w7 ona new drive, and then installed the basic steam app, but haven't downloaded anythign yet
can i attach up the old hd to the comp and copy files across, if so what directories?
entire steam and entire savegame stuff?
or do i need to use an alternate process?

 

[Tefal]

hmm quick query on steam
if i have just installed w7 ona new drive, and then installed the basic steam app, but haven't downloaded anythign yet
can i attach up the old hd to the comp and copy files across, if so what directories?
entire steam and entire savegame stuff?
or do i need to use an alternate process?

copy the whole steam folder over to the correct program files folder (ie the x86 on if you have 64 bit).

some games may store saves else where thoguh (COh, and other non valve games) so find them and put them in teh same place they where before.

 

[Destination]

superb thx

wonder is this going to mess things up as i know i've 2 copies of fallout 3 now, one GOTY and one will be reinstalled with steam, should prove interesting