Honestly, what the heck is the point of Steam?

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GORANKAR said:
You need to be aware of just what it is you are buying.. Most people these days, it seems, are not....

Like I said, it does suck if you don't have broadband.. I have activated the cd version of hl2 while on dialup.. It does take a while, but it is doable..
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I don't argue basic awareness is necessary. However, ask the average person who buys computer games if they checked to see if their offline, single player game required an internet connection, and they would definitely say no, out of plain common sense. Steam's system does not rely on common sense. It relies on as much tracking and information gathering as possible.
 
What I got from the original post is, "Hey I like to cry about everything look at me cry Im an attention whore"



STANDARD BOTTOM LINE: if you odntl ike it dont buy their product. :eek:
 
psychoace said:
My friend you are just a terrible awful poor consumer your parents should be ashamed. You had the option of buying it on cd's in the store but yet you were the one that decided to go with the online option so it's your fault you chose not to have actual cd's. I mean you knowinly paid for for a download only service yet your complaining that you bought it. You are even given the option to make cd's but yet you wont take advantage of it. Stop being a lazy little girl and live with your ignorance
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wow, someone's got some anger management issues to work out. did you ever see me insulting you or your family? i was just trying to start a dialogue about steam (notice how i asked for other opinions at the end in case there was something great about it that i've overlooked? yes, there were things that i've overlooked, and people have graciously pointed them out a lot more politely than you)

unfortunately, i didn't have the option of buying it in the store because i was in college at the time, and my car was sitting hundreds of miles away at home, and i didn't feel like sitting on a bus for an hour just to go to best buy.

i'm not complaining that i bought the download only service, i'm more concerned with what i got out of it and where the download only service is going. from the way game publishers talk, online content distribution is the future, but what if every publisher switched to a system like steam, stopped giving you everything you're accustomed to getting with a game, and still charged you the same price? if that was the only option for getting your games, you'd have no choice but to accept it.
 
Shakezilla said:
What I got from the original post is, "Hey I like to cry about everything look at me cry Im an attention whore"

STANDARD BOTTOM LINE: if you odntl ike it dont buy their product. :eek:
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well if you had kept reading, you would have seen that i wanted other people's opinions regarding steam.

HL2 was my first experience with steam. how was i supposed to "not buy it" if i didn't even know if i liked it yet?
 
ScotteusMaximus said:
the announcement that HL2 is switching to episodic got me thinking about valve's little experiment in content distribution, and apart from being able to showcase the work of independent devs and offer episodic content more easily, i honestly don't see the benefit of steam to us as gamers. i remember when i first read about steam, i got all excited about the prospect of never having to drive to the store, never having to wait in line, and best of all, cheaper games. too bad it never (at least for me) lived up to the hype.

1. steam is horribly inconvenient-after i reformatted to x64, i had to reinstall all of my applications. no big deal, i always set aside time for that, and i've got a folder full of CDs, DVDs, and backup images in case i ever need them. then it came time to reinstall HL2. i bought the steam version just so i could preload the game and play it at midnight (HA! i couldn't activate it until the next day), but lo and behold, i forgot my damn password. it took me 15 minutes just to figure it out, and after that, i had to redownload all 4+ gigs of HL2 before i could play. had i not remembered my password, i would've been fucked. people bitch about having to swap CDs when installing a game, but i'd rather swap CDs than have to download the whole game off of valve's slow ass servers. hell, i could've driven to best buy and bought a new copy in the time it took me to download.

edit: i know that you can make backups of your games, but if i'm going to be paying the same amount of money as someone who buys a boxed copy, i'm going to drive to the store and get a professionally stamped copy, complete with box and manual.

edit: i know forgetting my password was my bad, but that really wasn't my big beef with steam. the biggest problem i have is that it hasn't translated into cheaper games for us like they said it would. publishers bitch about having to pay to manufacture and distribute games, but if steam is getting rid of all of that, why are games still the same price as before? people complain when they pay the same price for a new video card but only get a .pdf manual, so how is that different than paying the same price for a game, but not getting anything at all?

2. it's an unnecessary program that takes up unnecessary system resources-unless you want to use workarounds, you have to run steam to play your games. valve has really lowered the amount of memory it takes up, but i remember when it used to take up 40+ megs just by itself. it's not a big deal if you have 2+ gigs of memory, but what about people who only have 512 MB or 1 gig? that's just a waste of resources to have steam running in the background when it's not doing anything.

3. steam isn't lowering the cost of games-the big promise of steam was that valve could cut out the middle man, save money on packaging and distribution, and pass those savings directly onto us, the customers. really now? is that why i paid 60 freaking bucks for HL2? granted, i didn't have to get the silver package, but even the bronze was 50 bucks, the same price as a boxed copy. what did i get for my 60 bucks? a bunch of code that sits on valve's servers, and not a damn thing that physically exists in the real world. i don't know, call me greedy or something, but if i'm paying the same amount of money for less product, something is seriously fucked. where is that money that valve is saving? i sure as hell haven't seen it.

what are your thoughts on steam and other similar forms of content distribution?
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Yeah, I kinda agree with you to a degree. I haven't had to do the whole reinstall thing yet, thank god, but I wouldn't look forward to it. I'd probably have the same gripes as you. I'll probably forget the password--fair enough....haven't had to use it since I originally signed up a zillion years ago. ANd backing up. I think I did back up my files once when I built a new rig and moved them over. But it didn't matter because I ended up reinstalling the game anywhere by downloading during some game troubleshooting. But the downloading part itself wasn't that lengthy, so I don't have a beef with that.
 
Steam is junk, always will be. What happens if those servers crash and get corrupted then we lose all our games or something happens on their end. What happens if they go bankrupt and what will happen to the servers. Most likely you won't be able to play the game ever again. What if u want to play the game later on valve is gone. I like having the physical disc with the game on it without some junk it has to depend on to work from some server online. What it should be like is like cs 1.5 with wonid like before like what Call of duty is(no strings attached). No hastle of all this bloated steam wasting resources. Their connections are slow to when trying to download something. Much rather have patches online where i could get them at blazing speeds. I bet if there wasn't a steam your framerates would be way higher. The cheat protection on Vac2 is really crappy also. The friends list never works unless u use the beta version. Xfire is way better with voice chat also.

If you played counter strike 1.5 and lower back then...you'd understand what i am talking about.
 
Conker said:
Steam is junk, always will be. What happens if those servers crash and get corrupted then we lose all our games or something happens on their end. What happens if they go bankrupt and what will happen to the servers. Most likely you won't be able to play the game ever again. What if u want to play the game later on valve is gone.
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I've used steam for over 2 years now... and nothing has happened to make me fear any of these things.

So far, I love steam. No crashes for me, and it's terribly convenient to me. No more looking for cd's, or forgetting them at home (i'm at college).

And since I'll never NOT have broadband again, so help me god, downloading the games will never be an issue for me. One time when the college internet was down, I had a craving to play HL2. "start in offline mode"... and i was playing in 1 minute.

It's awesome, IMO
 
fodder0 said:
i like steam. helps my sinus problems!
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lol, nothing like a hot shower or something to clear the old sinuses. you can also try tabasco in some tomato juice. chug some of that, and it'll clear your nose, it not put some hair on your chest.

mdameron said:
It's awesome, IMO
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one of the best responses yet. you outline why you like steam, give your views, and even state that it's your opinion, without insulting people who disagree with you.
 
Shakezilla said:
Use the search button no reason to make another pointless steam thread, ohh wait you wanted to feel special.

Heres for you buddy http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting.php
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dude, what do you know about what i wanted to do with the thread? did you ever stop to consider that maybe some people have other things to do than sift through the dozens, if not hundreds, of threads that come up when you search for steam?

if you have nothing to contribute, then don't. there happen to be people who are willing to share their opinions about the topic, and there are even more who, like you, see it as another pointless steam thread and don't bother clicking on it.

honestly man, there's nothing deceptive about the thread title, but you chose to come in here and thread crap. if you didn't like it, don't read it. why do you keep coming back to the thread and bumping it to the top of the pile if it bothers you so much? why not just let it die? oh wait, it must be you who wants to feel special.
 
ScotteusMaximus said:
wow, someone's got some anger management issues to work out. did you ever see me insulting you or your family? i was just trying to start a dialogue about steam (notice how i asked for other opinions at the end in case there was something great about it that i've overlooked? yes, there were things that i've overlooked, and people have graciously pointed them out a lot more politely than you)

unfortunately, i didn't have the option of buying it in the store because i was in college at the time, and my car was sitting hundreds of miles away at home, and i didn't feel like sitting on a bus for an hour just to go to best buy.

i'm not complaining that i bought the download only service, i'm more concerned with what i got out of it and where the download only service is going. from the way game publishers talk, online content distribution is the future, but what if every publisher switched to a system like steam, stopped giving you everything you're accustomed to getting with a game, and still charged you the same price? if that was the only option for getting your games, you'd have no choice but to accept it.
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I don't think that game publishers will ever go for a download only distribution method. It sounds nice and all but they will always get sales in retail. When you have such a market where impulse buying is the norm and where you can be very direct in your advertising (for games you would have to just hopefully see a banner or check out some website like ign or gamespot or ve3d). Retail always brings in the idiot consumer who just see's the pretty pictures cool box and think "i am sure my son/daughter/nephew/neice" will enjoy this for xmas/birthday/Hannakah (i don't know how to spell stuff). When all retail stores are dead then we might only get our games online. Anyhow bestbuy.com ships games.
 
...even when I was on dial up , I had no issues with steam

initial setup took a bit is all

playing CS:S online , if my ping would stay under 300 then I was rocken'!
:p
 
I wish EA games would patch games through an online system like Steam.
I just downloaded the BF2 1.2 patch and now my game no longer works.
Same crap happened with the 1.12 patch when BF2:SF came out. wasted 3 days installing and uninstalling BF2 and BF2:SF over and over and over and EA games couldn't figure it out.
And it wasn't my machine as my other machine had the exact same problem and the hardware was different.
the error is "Memory does not seem sane" wtf does that mean?
 
As far as I'm concerned Steam is brilliant, especialy now it s out fo the buggy stage. It allows for easy organisation and management of my games and updating them but the big plus is cost. I must of paid about £40-50 by buying HL2 silver package online and with that I got: HL2, CS:S, DoD:S and HL's original catalogue of expansions (opposing force and blue shift) and even got CS:CZ. That is a lot of games for the price I paid. I can go to the shops right now and buy DoD:S alone for about £15. So yes, steam does make games cheaper. But it's also nice to know that most (if not all) my money went to valve, the people who made the game.
 
the announcement that ScotteusMaximus is not happy with steam got me thinking about his little experiment in WAH distribution, and apart from being able to showcase his aching vagina more easily, i honestly don't see the benefit of this post to us as gamers. i remember when i first read this post, i got mildly intrigued by the prospect of explaining the benefits of steam to someone who might have been thinking of wasting time driving to the store to buy the same game on a disc wrapped in a wasteful cardboard box. too bad this post only (at least for me) wasted my time.


edit: what follows is my initial rant (rant=bitchy. look it up ;) ) about this post. read it if you want, but it's not necessary. what i really wanted was a post with merit that amounted to more than the incessant whining of someone who can't figure out how to backup their software and write their password on the disc. if you disagree with my rant, then your mother is fat. please keep it civil, and just provide why you like/dislike this post.


1. your post was horribly lacking any real substance-after i read this post, i had to go and watch that movie Road House with Patrick Swayze in it because I needed to counterbalance the overdose of estrogen I recieved while reading it. no big deal, i always set aside time for that, and i've got a binder full of Steven Segal and Bruce Willis movies in case Patrick doesn't do the trick. then it came time to respond to this post. i bought a bottle of Jagermeister last night and I drank it before replying and well, long story short, i forgot the whole non-existant point of what you were saying. it took me another 2 hours or so just to figure it out and then go watch Die Hard 2, and after that, i had to pee. had i not read your post over again, i would've probably gotten something productive done, like playing some counter-strike. people bitch about having to remember their passwords and redownload a game, but i'd rather spend my time AFTER doing all that PLAYING THE GAME instead of whining about the whole experience on hardforums. hell, i could've just watched Dr. Phil or paid attention to my wife if I really wanted to hear whining and crying.

edit: i know that you can just ignore people's posts, but if someone is going to waste my time like I outlined, then dammit I'm going to waste theirs in return. BTW your mom is fat.

edit: i know i'm not really editing this, but it just goes to prove how pointless this original post was. you had to come back and edit it with more pointlessness just to make it seem like it had some redeeming qualities.. the biggest problem i have is that it hasn't translated into anything more than you trying to justify your hissyfit over having a carrier pigeon internet connection and not enough foresight to backup your games and keep passwords and other important information in a safe place. You might bitch about having to pay for something that doesn't come on a cd or in a box, but I bet if you drove to EB or wherever to buy the game, you would probably bitch about the copy protection just because your mangina hurts.

2. it's an unnecessary post that takes up unnecessary space on hardforums servers-unless you want to use workarounds, you have to look at the title of this post when browsing the forum, at least for the next couple days. At least you didn't give us any pictures or put forth the effort of bitching in a powerpoint presentation (although you probably thought about it). broadband internet has really lowered the amount of time it takes to download crap like this, but i remember when I was on fidonet and something like this would have taken late night calls across state lines with expensive long distance charges just to download this crap at 2400 bps. Nevermind the waste of time restoring my manhood by watching some movies with testosterone in it. And anyhow, what about people who only have 56k modems and rusty copper phone lines? that's just a waste of resources to post whiny stuff like this.

3. your post wasn't raising the intelligence or entertainment value of this forum-the big promise of your post was to provoke intelligent discussion. really now? is that why i'm sitting here listening to pantera and writing this incomprehensible satirical response? granted, i didn't have to put in far beyond driven, but steven segal talks so low that i had to heighten my hearing sense and after i turned off the movie i could hear my neighbor watching some stupid womanly daytime tv show, i think montell. that pussy. anyway i didn't want to upset my newly restored balance of testosterone, so i did what i had to.. what did i get for my troubles? the cops came and wanted to give me a noise citation! so I invited them in and had them read your post and they ended up saying something about really needing to get to walmart so they could buy some melissa etheridge cd's i don't know, call me loony but I think your post made them closet lesbians or something.

what are your thoughts on my response to your whining posed as a question about steam and online content delivery? btw your mom is fat.

edit (for real): this is supposed to be funny. don't get all butt-hurt over it
 
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