So Steam is practically Ancient in computer years...

gtrguy said:
For those that like the small, minimalist view with just the list of games, why not just use small mode? After you set it, Steam will always open to just the list of games, no extra crap.

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Oh WOW - thank you for this! All these years and I never knew I could get back to just a nice minimal list of only my games in steam. Once selected steam will always launch in small mode. It’s even smart enough to open friend profiles from the friendlist window in the OS-default web browser. Sweet!
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I use Steam for almost everything as well. I also use GoG.

I don't see where the interface is dated, or even how that matters. It's not like you spend much time in Steam itself anyway. You open steam, and 10 seconds later you are launching your game.

That said, if anyhting, I prefered the old Steam layout before they forced all these game icons on us. I like minimalist interfaces.

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever let EGS onto my machine.

I'm at the point where if something tries to force me to install a launcher/store I don't want or create an account, I just pass on it instead, or if I really want to play it, just use the "community version". This is what I did with everything in the Far Cry series since FC3 when the "Uplay is required" nonsense started. Signing into an account to play a single player game? I don't think so. I own the titles in my steam library for good measure, so I can say I legitimately own them, but I don't have them installed. I play the community editions to bypass UPlay or whatever the new launcher is called now.

I'm happy with my two stores/launchers, and I don't want any others on my machine, and I don't want to create any accounts I don't already have. I made this decision in 2017-2018 some time. No new accounts. If I don't already have an account with a service, I won't create one. Thus far I have stuck to it. I don't even have a Microsoft account, and I will never get one. If they start enforcing it, and not letting me use only local accounts, I'll just stop using Windows.
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I've been grabbing the interesting games posted for free here from Epic (along with the Steam ones) to and really don't want to install their launcher. You can add/install the games from Epic Store in Steam? I have Steam installed for games I've bought through them (and the free ones) but didn't know you could add Epic games bought/claimed on Epic site?
 
I have the 18 year badge myself, and remember the "Olive Drab" UI days and when it was just for Valve's various HalfLife and CounterStrike titles! Glad people are learning about the various UI settings, from Small Mode to Big Picture there's probably something for your use case! If someone would have told me in the early 2000's that Valve would sell a handheld multitouch built-in-control-pad gaming PC, shipping with a full Linux distro w/ custom, enhanced Wine based project is able to play most even most Windows games flawlessly, it would have seemed impossible!

People often don't realize how big an impact Valve an Steam have had on PC gaming and all the things they pioneered for digital distribution, from the technical aspects to how sales are conducted! . Even better, despite a gaming industry that has in many ways become more exploitative, Steam, though not perfect, has remained a bastion of openness and long term thinking; its no doubt Valve being a private company and with GabeN as majority shareholder is important. From Linux support to the massive amount of open source projects they've developed or contributed to, the massive SteamAPI and services , streaming capability like SteamPlay Together that puts both client and server in the player's hands, community services and features from player reviews and ratings to discussions, guides, and Workshop etc, and much much more. Steam is one of the other platform that, through their features and ethos , is preferable to players rather than just being a requirement to play a given game title. The only other I can say similar is Itch, which is nearly exclusively focused on supporting indie developers, has a libre client and many devs include Steam keys for their games there too. Steam has consistently earned my business this entire time and its frustrating to see the behavior of others in the industry pretend as though they're some sort of evil behemoth when competing alternatives fail to measure up in features, openness, or other measures.

bluestang said:
I've been grabbing the interesting games posted for free here from Epic (along with the Steam ones) to and really don't want to install their launcher. You can add/install the games from Epic Store in Steam? I have Steam installed for games I've bought through them (and the free ones) but didn't know you could add Epic games bought/claimed on Epic site?
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Steam has the ability to launch almost anything, most with the Steam overlay, if you add it as a 3rd-party game/program. However, you still need to actually have it on your computer and if it requires another launcher like Epic, Steam will launch that too as part of the link. I don't blame you not wanting to install Epic's launcher for a variety of reasons from privacy, to limited features/OS support, to it being "yet another launcher" but this is the entire point of them giving away those free games - to get you on their site, with an account, downloading their launcher, and maybe purchasing something down the line; they can also monetize your info for advertisers of course. Of equal or perhaps even more importance, is that if they get you downloading those free games they can claim you're an "active user" of their launcher, when they're trying to convince some developer/publisher to enter into an exclusivity deal ! While it doesn't entirely get around the issue, if you want to take advantage of their free games and the like but not download the launcher, I recommend using something like Legendary ( https://github.com/derrod/legendary ) an open source alternative to the EGS launcher. Alternately Heroic Games Launcher which does EGS + GOG (https://heroicgameslauncher.com/) or PlayNite which is sort of a meta-launcher ( https://playnite.link/ ) . All of which are open source and let you download/launch EGS games directly and/or at least get them onto your PC if you want Steam to launch them as 3rd party apps.

Good luck!
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
I'd argue that even Steam got too bloated when it introduced the new interface with all the large game icons.

I liked it better when it was just a simple side bar.
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I actually find the large game icons useful as the games you played last are always on the top of the list. I don't have to look for them on the sidebar to play.
 
bluestang said:
I've been grabbing the interesting games posted for free here from Epic (along with the Steam ones) to and really don't want to install their launcher. You can add/install the games from Epic Store in Steam? I have Steam installed for games I've bought through them (and the free ones) but didn't know you could add Epic games bought/claimed on Epic site?
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I'm pretty sure you could add installed games from EGS to steam, but steam will only act as a shortcut to launch EGS and EGS itself will launch the game. There is no way to bypass EGS entirely, but a lot of games that don't launch with an online profile created through EGS can be sidestepped somewhat to avoid launching EGS once EGS installs the game. It doesn't work on every game though, so it's very hit and miss.

Here's a basic rundown:

1. Download and install your game using EGS and run the game once, then exit the game.

2. Open "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\EpicGamesLauncher\Saved\Logs\EpicGamesLauncher.log" in your favorite text editor.

3. Find the line similar to the following: [2022.09.17-12.11.11:431][415]FCommunityPortalLaunchAppTask: Preparing to launch app 'C:/Epic Games/PillarsOfEternity/win/PillarsOfEternity.exe' with commandline ' -AUTH_LOGIN=unused -AUTH_PASSWORD=<encryptedhash> -AUTH_TYPE=exchangecode -epicapp=<encryptedhash> -epicenv=Prod -EpicPortal -epicusername="<username>" -epicuserid=<encryptedhash> -epiclocale=en -epicsandboxid=<encryptedhash>'

4. Use the info there to build the command line for your new game shortcut. It should look something like this: "C:/Epic Games/PillarsOfEternity/win/PillarsOfEternity.exe" -AUTH_LOGIN=unused -AUTH_PASSWORD=<encryptedhash> -AUTH_TYPE=exchangecode -epicapp=<encryptedhash> -epicenv=Prod -EpicPortal -epicusername="<username>" -epicuserid=<encryptedhash>

There are a few games that only really need -EpicPortal in the shortcut, so I recommend trying that first.
 
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Not as old as some people, but there ya go.
 
Only thing this thread reminds me of, is how much I miss the classic unbloated steam with the green interface.
 
Dan_D said:
Steam looks its age too.
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Honestly one of my biggest pet peeves is when software is update in order to "streamline" it and as a long time user of said software you dont have any idea where anything is anymore, and even worse trying to Google a solution will often show you how to do it on the old version
 
sfsuphysics said:
Honestly one of my biggest pet peeves is when software is update in order to "streamline" it and as a long time user of said software you dont have any idea where anything is anymore, and even worse trying to Google a solution will often show you how to do it on the old version
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Agreed.

Arbitrary UI updates just for UI fashion purposes are the worst. I'd rather my shit look old.

I'm not opposed to an update it it actually is a usability imporvement, but most aren't.
 
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I made my Steam account when I got HL2 like many others

Something I did years ago when started card farming (when it was in its prime) and being inundated with games, I categorized all my Steam games (before farming - I had like ~50 games after 10 years on Steam - went to ~350 4 years later - not including all the crap indie games they give you to farm - with that the total is ~1K+ but I hid all the crap games from account view after they were farmed). Luckily this is all cloud based so it carries over between reinstalls. Now I only have to do new games as they're added.

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I've had a Steam account ever since it went online, but for some reason, the password got changed, and when I tried to request a password reset, the customer service folks said "sorry, we can't do that until you provide a proof of purchase."

I haven't had my Half-Life CD ever since about 2003, so I'm simply writing off that Steam account.

It's a shame, since I had many good memories of the games at the time, especially when Team Fortress Classic came over. I still preferred WON-based TFC, though. I used that account for many a league match in TFC, in STA, OGL, and TFL.

Maybe one day, I'll sign up for a new Steam account, but since I don't have much time for gaming, it's simply not in the cards.
 
13 years on my main account, I think I have a older one I never used, but don't want to logout of my main to see.
 
only 11 years on my account July 2011, but to be honest I use it so infrequently that literally every time I open it (including this time) it has an update to the launcher software.
 
staknhalo said:
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I made my Steam account when I got HL2 like many others

Something I did years ago when started card farming (when it was in its prime) and being inundated with games, I categorized all my Steam games (before farming - I had like ~50 games after 10 years on Steam - went to ~350 4 years later - not including all the crap indie games they give you to farm - with that the total is ~1K+ but I hid all the crap games from account view after they were farmed). Luckily this is all cloud based so it carries over between reinstalls. Now I only have to do new games as they're added.

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What is card farming?
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
What is card farming?
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All those shitty literal asset flip/no effort indie games would add Steam cards to their games and then generate thousands of keys to give away for people and/or bot Steam accounts to then farm the cards (using an app like ArchieSteamFarm to idle in the background and log hours 'playing' the games on Steam - without the game actually running - for the card drops - because cards only drop when playing the game/after a set amount of playtime).

And seeing as devs get a cut of Steam card sales, they'd just reap massive profits from this for no work. The people like me they gave keys to (there's a subreddit freegamefindings where they put keys up/I got all my keys from) acted as just additional bots to generate cards they'd get a cut of sales from, and cover I guess as some (many) actual users instead of just their own multitude of bot Steam accounts they themselves had farming.

Some people just farmed the cards to level up their Steam accounts/get the profile badges from crafting the badge from a full set of cards, others like me farmed them and sold them on the Steam Market for my own cut of the money (which would just add funds to your Steam wallet). The ones who just crafted badges generated no additional income for the devs but I guess acted as more cover for 'actual users' (I never got why anyone wouldn't do it just for the free Steam money - but you'd be surprised how many badge hunters/achievement completionists there are).

I was getting $120 a year there in Steam wallet money for free just for idling/farming/doing nothing. And I only spent it during Steam sales to maximize what I could get with the free money - plus every $10 spent during Steam sales gives you another Steam card drop I would then turn around and sell lol.

Valve realized what was going on and shut it down after a couple years (it was really the devs they were trying to stop, the users like me even though in the thousands I'm sure, were nothing compared to the number of bots the devs themselves had farming, and the cut users like me got out of the scheme was nothing compared to what the devs got with the developer cut + their bots).

It basically lasted full force from 2014-2016 and then Valve implemented things like 'only games with a certain amount of actual Steam Store purchases could add cards to their game' - and then 'no game gotten for free can drop cards, even if the game itself has cards'. And then from 2016-2018 it basically declined in revenue for me in half to about $60 a year until 2018 there was no more free money coming in really.
 
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staknhalo said:
All those shitty literal asset flip/no effort indie games would add Steam cards to their games and then generate thousands of keys to give away for people and/or bot Steam accounts to then farm the cards (using an app like ArchieSteamFarm to idle in the background and log hours 'playing' the games on Steam - without the game actually running - for the card drops - because cards only drop when playing the game/after a set amount of playtime).

And seeing as devs get a cut of Steam card sales, they'd just reap massive profits from this for no work. The people like me they gave keys to (there's a subreddit freegamefindings where they put keys up/I got all my keys from) acted as just additional bots to generate cards they'd get a cut of sales from, and cover I guess as some (many) actual users instead of just their own multitude of bot Steam accounts they themselves had farming.

Some people just farmed the cards to level up their Steam accounts/get the profile badges from crafting the badge from a full set of cards, others like me farmed them and sold them on the Steam Market for my own cut of the money (which would just add funds to your Steam wallet). The ones who just crafted badges generated no additional income for the devs but I guess acted as more cover for 'actual users' (I never got why anyone wouldn't do it just for the free Steam money - but you'd be surprised how many badge hunters/achievement completionists there are).

I was getting $120 a year there in Steam wallet money for free just for idling/farming/doing nothing. And I only spent it during Steam sales to maximize what I could get with the free money - plus every $10 spent during Steam sales gives you another Steam card drop I would then turn around and sell lol.

Valve realized what was going on and shut it down after a couple years (it was really the devs they were trying to stop, the users like me even though in the thousands I'm sure, were nothing compared to the number of bots the devs themselves had farming, and the cut users like me got out of the scheme was nothing compared to what the devs got with the developer cut + their bots).

It basically lasted full force from 2014-2016 and then Valve implemented things like 'only games with a certain amount of actual Steam Store purchases could add cards to their game' - and then 'no game gotten for free can drop cards, even if the game itself has cards'. And then from 2016-2018 it basically declined in revenue for me in half to about $60 a year until 2018 there was no more free money coming in really.
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People actually buy those things?

I've noticed getting them after playing some games, and IMHO, when I see that they sell for pennies, it hasn't even been worth learning how to offload them.
I can't imagine why anyone would actually buy them...
 
VF31Tomcatters said:
I just checked my profile, I have 18 years of service. I remember the transition from the old WON servers for CS 1.6 and TFC to Steam, I thought it was a steaming pile of shit at first but Valve eventually ironed out all the bugs.

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Took me forever to adopt steam. Mostly due to being in the military constantly deployed. I was playing games long before steam was even a concept on the toilet while the developer was taking a dump.
 

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Zarathustra[H] said:
People actually buy those things?

I've noticed getting them after playing some games, and IMHO, when I see that they sell for pennies, it hasn't even been worth learning how to offload them.
I can't imagine why anyone would actually buy them...
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Yeah, people who want it for profile badges I guess

Valve invented NFTs before they were NFTs lol 👍
 
I got into steam with a voucher from a 9600xt that was quickly upgraded.

I would have been in a few months earlier but my friend that had used my half life key in the past registered it on steam when it launched and I wasn’t about to rebuy it.
 
Gorankar said:
Remember when Steam had skins?
Steam itself does look dated, but could you imagine the outcry if they tried to update it's appearance, or gasp, UI? Truth be told, I would prolly be one of them complaining. I can find my owned games, my on line gaming friends, and new games to buy, pretty easily. That is about the limit of my expectations.
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I use Steam as a store/launcher, a means to an ends. It's not an 'ends'.
 
mullet said:
It was a magical time, I wish it was like that again.

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It was more than the games too. It was the friends, the lan parties, lugging around your huge steel case and CRT minotor, getting that upgrade so you could play at 1024x768 or whatever...every improvement felt like leaps and bounds ahead of what you had before. Most of all it was this new uncharted territory, its hard to get that feeling again ince you've been in it for a long time.
 
workshop35 said:
It was more than the games too. It was the friends, the lan parties, lugging around your huge steel case and CRT minotor, getting that upgrade so you could play at 1024x768 or whatever...every improvement felt like leaps and bounds ahead of what you had before. Most of all it was this new uncharted territory, its hard to get that feeling again ince you've been in it for a long time.
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But you can, for someone else.

I acquire and donate hardware to less well off families. It's always nice to see the kids get excited about getting quite literally anything when they have nothing; or some old POS held together with bailing wire and electrical tape. Even adults too, lot of them never had any tech because they can't afford it. And unfortunately, many of them have also been scammed by CL or FB Marketplace listings, or the used car salesmen of electronics at Best Buy, Rent-a-Center, pawn shops, etc. because they don't know any better.
 
workshop35 said:
It was more than the games too. It was the friends, the lan parties, lugging around your huge steel case and CRT minotor, getting that upgrade so you could play at 1024x768 or whatever...every improvement felt like leaps and bounds ahead of what you had before. Most of all it was this new uncharted territory, its hard to get that feeling again ince you've been in it for a long time.
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I remember playing quake 2 in GL for the first time with my voodoo2 it was mind blowing. I played till I got sick.

I really really miss those times.
 
mullet said:
I remember playing quake 2 in GL for the first time with my voodoo2 it was mind blowing. I played till I got sick.

I really really miss those times.
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YES. That was the absolute best. Oh man, I wonder if I have a voodoo2 rusting in the garage right now...

HL2 gave me a similar feeling. Looks like my first steam purchase was in 2006 -- HL2: Episode One :)
 
Yeah HL2 (never played HL1) was so awesome to me as well.

I would buy HL3 for $500.00 a copy if they made it.
 
thedream829 said:
I hated Steam when it first came out. But it's an awesome piece of software now. I remember how crap GameSpy was.
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workshop35 said:
I forgot about gamespy lol
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Yeah, gamespy sucked, as did - mostly - the in game browser.

For most of the Counter-Strike era I had my favorite servers and I knew their IP addresses.

I just launched the game, hit "~" to get to the console, and typed "connect <ip address>"

No need for any game browser :p
 
I resisted as long as I could - as far as I was concerned, they were going to have to pry my CD ROMs out of my cold dead fingers.... so much for that.

IIRC it originally shipped with HL2 but was not required. It was a couple years later with Orange Box that Steam became compulsory. I begrudgingly did.

That was 17 years ago... now I'm a full member of the cult of Steam
 
maro said:
I resisted as long as I could - as far as I was concerned, they were going to have to pry my CD ROMs out of my cold dead fingers.... so much for that.

IIRC it originally shipped with HL2 but was not required. It was a couple years later with Orange Box that Steam became compulsory. I begrudgingly did.

That was 17 years ago... now I'm a full member of the cult of Steam
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I didn't like the digital distribution model when it was new, because I didn't trust it, but over time I saw it worn and got used to it.

I still think the industry needs to fix the problems of exclusives and launchers collecting user data, but for now I am OK with using Steam and GoG. It is immensely more convenient to manage updates than with traditional distribution models.

I'm not about to install any other launchers on my machines though. If one gets installed automatically with a game I buy on steam, I'm just going to uninstall that game and request a refund. This has happened, and I have done it.

I am not going to back down on this. Not now, not ever.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm not about to install any other launchers on my machines though. If one gets installed automatically with a game I buy on steam, I'm just going to uninstall that game and request a refund. This has happened, and I have done it.
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I don't mind secondary launchers like Uplay that integrate pretty seamlessly with Steam IMO when you buy a game on Steam with Uplay, but there's a bunch of launchers that come with Steam that don't do it well unfortunately, and I'm also not installing myself anything but Steam anymore as well
 
staknhalo said:
I don't mind secondary launchers like Uplay that integrate pretty seamlessly with Steam IMO when you buy a game on Steam with Uplay, but there's a bunch of launchers that come with Steam that don't do it well unfortunately, and I'm also not installing myself anything but Steam anymore as well
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Yeah, I'm pretty much dead set against being forced to sign into something for a single player offline game.
 
Dark12 said:
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Impressive. What is your steamid? I am rocking a 5 digit and i never see anyone else with 4 or 5 digits. even 6 are rare nowadays.
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I'm kind of interested in the history here.

My join date was in November 2003. Early, but not as early as some of you. I have the 17 digit Steam ID.

I wonder what happened.

I'm guessing they started with sequential Steam ID's for new users, but at some point after September 2003 moved to randomized 17 digit ones?
 
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