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

bloodline76 · 4 Nov 2009 at 18:15

-Laser- said:
It's what 5 years old now? How can they still not have made it half decent? "Steam is already running. You may only run one copy of steam at any one time" No it isn't, and besides, I barely want to run one copy, let alone two! "Unable to connect" --> Retry --> "Exiting" Grrr!!! And wtf is the point in having a "cancel" button on the "exiting" popup? it would never actually cancel it exiting. "Unable to connect" --> Start in offline mode --> "Connecting steam account xxxxx ..." --> "This operation cannot be completed in offline mode" Wtf? Was it programmed by blind monkeys?

Sounds like a flaming troll to me. I would say more people on here like it than hate it. Sounds like user error to me

Antar Bolaeisk · 4 Nov 2009 at 18:23

With regards to multiple instances of Steam running I have noticed sometimes if Steam is not closed properly it can sit running in the background. Go into task manager and make sure the steam process is ended.

With regards to online/offline mode you can set these yourself within the steam client, simply go to file-> go online/offline.

If you're having a problem signing into steam perhaps there is something funky with you router settings but I'm on shakey ground here.

Personally I hated Steam when I first had to use it (whenever the Orange Box came out) because I was on a crap ISDN connection and I perceived it as coming between me and my gaming. Now I swear by it, I think it's the best thing to happen to PC gaming this decade and I firmly believe this and systems like it are the way forward.

.:MBK:. · 4 Nov 2009 at 18:28

the problems steam has these days are fairly minor and trivial affairs, and lets not forget, it trumps every other game download/management platform by a fair margin

LabR@t · 4 Nov 2009 at 18:35

steam is great

Mr.Nick · 4 Nov 2009 at 18:44

Steam is like Marmite, you either love it, or you hate it.

I and love it, just like my Marmite fetish.....

thecremeegg · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:12

Mr.Nick said:
Steam is like Marmite, you either love it, or you hate it.

I and love it, just like my Marmite fetish.....

See I hate steam but lurrvvee marmite

jmc007 · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:14

Steam is going to take over the Universe.

Beerbaron · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:16

steam is quality

Raumarik · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:16

ScarySquirrel said:
I think Steam is awesome.

^^ This, I rarely have problems with steam.

CaptainRAVE · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:27

I like Steam. Didn't like it when HL2 was first released, but never had any problems with it since.

Drukk · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:36

Occasionally had it come up with the steam already running message , only lately though, maybe they broke something in last update............

Anyway , I think its pretty good , has its uses and its great for the multiplayer side of gaming. Some of the weekend deals are good value to.

paulh · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:41

I've used it for ages, my steam folder is about 150gb and i never have any problems with it.

Kearney_1988 · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:43

Go try EA downloader and you will be pratically worshiping Steam

Seriously downloads are a nightmare from them

Thomss · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:45

Love Steam, never had a single problem with it and I have about 40 games on there.

sorn21 · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:49

Steam has worked well for me over the past year. Only had one hiccup with it, but think that was due to my dieing install of windows.
I buy nearly all of my games from there.

I personally like the simplicity of;
"oh, I'll just click this button and play"

as opposed to;
"oh think I will have a game of COD, lets just find the box.. now lets find the cd which ofcourse isn't in the box, then load it up only to find I havent installed it yet...."

Hurrah for Steam!

Mahnsikir · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:56

Only 'major' problem Ive had is if you've got quite a large games list, have reinstalled steam and have pasted in your steamapps backup folder (think it happens without it as well but not as bad) it just freaks out the first time you click on the mygames tab and can freeze for a few minutes and even crash. Though its better than using the steam backup tools for more than one or two games as thats just takes slow to a new level.

Aside from that, steams been great for me, the only thing I dont like is when the steam servers just get swamped for major releases and updates, but thats not a big problem.

EDIT: Most annoying thing, partly because of steam I didn't realise that my laptop DVD drive was semi broken for a whole year, the one time I tried to install something on it last December, I dismissed it as a faulty disc and because of steam and other downloadable laptop stuff (Mount & Blade, Peggle etc) it wasn't until a few weeks ago I tried another few dvds and found out it was broken.

TheMagic1an · 4 Nov 2009 at 19:58

I think steam is awesome, I've hardly had any problems with it and used it since it first came out. It makes everything so much easier.

If you're having problems try deleting "ClientRegistry.blob" and "AppUpdateStats.blob" in the main steam directory, then restart steam.

That usually fixes any problems i have.

-Laser- · 4 Nov 2009 at 20:16

bloodline76 said:
Sounds like a flaming troll to me. I would say more people on here like it than hate it. Sounds like user error to me

I actually shocked that people like it! It was rubbish when I first got it when HL2 was out, it was rubbish on my next pc years later, it's just as bad on my current one, and my borther has the same sort of issues. I thought everyone would be in the same boat!!!

Shamikebab said:
Could not be more right, Steam just adds an extra level of pain to installing games. I got the new FM and foolishly decided that adding it to Steam might make things easier, nope it just added 2 1/2 hours to the install process. Even now sometimes I can't play my damn game because Steam has to update or crashes, such a pain.

tefal said:
you've either hammered the start up icon because your pc is slow at initializing it and believe there is only one version running.

or you've just closed it and tried to start it up immediately afterwards when it takes about 5-6 seconds after the exiting dialogue to disappear before the process is shut down.

like 99% of problems this one is BKAC

nearly right. First time it crashed :rolleyes:

and didn't fully close. killing the process in task manager fixed it, but it's due to shoddy programming imo, there's no pebcak involved.

schizo220168 said:
I think there is a lot of people who think steam is good and not so many people dont like it.

if you dont like it then dont use it.

Well that's the thing isn't it? Valve haven't really given us a choice, if I want to play HL2 or CS etc, I have to use it!

n1blo said:
Steam has worked well for me over the past year. Only had one hiccup with it, but think that was due to my dieing install of windows.
I buy nearly all of my games from there.

I personally like the simplicity of;
"oh, I'll just click this button and play"

as opposed to;
"oh think I will have a game of COD, lets just find the box.. now lets find the cd which ofcourse isn't in the box, then load it up only to find I havent installed it yet...."

Hurrah for Steam!

Yeah that's good if you have the HD space. But it's really just the same as firing up a fully installed game from your start menu, although I appreciate it's done for the security implications also. My HD's nearly full though and i really cba to swap it. That's just my laziness really though, I will do when i gets critical!

TheMagic1an said:
I think steam is awesome, I've hardly had any problems with it and used it since it first came out. It makes everything so much easier.

If you're having problems try deleting "ClientRegistry.blob" and "AppUpdateStats.blob" in the main steam directory, then restart steam.

That usually fixes any problems i have.

Thanks for the heads up dude, I'll try that the next time it fails on me big time, atm though it's just trying it's hardest to **** me off!

Antar Bolaeisk · 4 Nov 2009 at 20:48

-Laser- said:
Yeah that's good if you have the HD space. But it's really just the same as firing up a fully installed game from your start menu, although I appreciate it's done for the security implications also. My HD's nearly full though and i really cba to swap it. That's just my laziness really though, I will do when i gets critical!

There's a way to spread your steam games across several partitions or HDDs using the mklink function in the command prompt.

For example, say you have two drives labeled C and D

entering in the command prompt;

mklink /j "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam Apps\Common\HL2" "D:\HL2"

Should create a separate folder on the D drive which will appear and can be accessed from the "Original Folder" on the C drive. It's sort of like a shortcut but with more features. Stick one of these symbolic links in your steam directory, taking care to make it look like the game folder, and you now have greater space potential for storing your games.

Note: I may have the syntax slightly wrong above but it's something similar and, with a little trial and error, you should be able to figure it out.

krooton · 4 Nov 2009 at 20:51

Psypher5 said:
I blame your pc.

This.

Too often I've played games that people have moaned about constant CTDs and the like, and never had any issues myself.