Steam = ? as usual...

[The-Tmann]

OK, we all can say what we want about steam, whether you like/hate it etc...
but this just caps it for me

So, I dl the demo, I repeat the "demo" of Left for Dead
I haven't played it in about a week, so I tried to start the game and get a
"you have a locked copy of the demo...if you'd like to purchase the whole game..blah blah"
WTF?!
Locking a freaking DEMO? I mean c'mon, what the hell are they thinking

I can promise you this, this type of $#$& pretty much guarantees I will NOT be purchasing the game, thank you very much.
they have proved once again (see thread below) why steam sucks AFAIK
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1239513

you don't own the games,
you don't get actual copies of the software/license you paid for
you can't sell the games/software
they can lock "your account" for any reason

valve can bite me,
I used to love their games
they haven't gotten a $ out of me since HL2

 

[Ron FTL]

QQ.

 

[Riftsaw]

If they left the demo unlocked wouldn't ppl just play it instead of the full game? People were using the console to load all sorts of maps from other source games so I'm pretty sure you could just take the maps from the retail release and just load em up in the demo no problem.

Then again I'm not TOTALLY sure of that.

 

[Dion]

QQ.

haha

 

[Wally]

QQ.

Idiot.

 

[RogueTrip]

OK, we all can say what we want about steam, whether you like/hate it etc...
but this just caps it for me

So, I dl the demo, I repeat the "demo" of Left for Dead
I haven't played it in about a week, so I tried to start the game and get a
"you have a locked copy of the demo...if you'd like to purchase the whole game"
WTF?!
Locking a freaking DEMO? I mean c'mon, what the hell are they thinking

I can promise you this, this type of $#$& pretty much guarantees I will NOT be purchasing the game, thank you very much.
they have proved once again (see thread below) why steam sucks AFAIK
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1239513

they haven't gotten a $ out of me since HL2

When did you download the Demo? The Demo was locked since the day LFD was released! I wanted to try it but found it was already locked and couldn't even find a link to D/L the demo.

I still find they charge too much for most titles. I mean $9.99 for Half-life 2: Episode one? I bought it for $10 over a year ago, and even after playing it I felt it wasn't worth more than $5 to me! Episode 2 was better but should be priced at $9.99 for sure unless they would of polished it off like FackFactory does.

 

[Azureth]

OK, we all can say what we want about steam, whether you like/hate it etc...
but this just caps it for me

So, I dl the demo, I repeat the "demo" of Left for Dead
I haven't played it in about a week, so I tried to start the game and get a
"you have a locked copy of the demo...if you'd like to purchase the whole game..blah blah"
WTF?!
Locking a freaking DEMO? I mean c'mon, what the hell are they thinking

I can promise you this, this type of $#$& pretty much guarantees I will NOT be purchasing the game, thank you very much.
they have proved once again (see thread below) why steam sucks AFAIK
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1239513

you don't own the games,
you don't get actual copies of the software/license you paid for
you can't sell the games/software
they can lock "your account" for any reason

valve can bite me,
I used to love their games
they haven't gotten a $ out of me since HL2

You can still play it if you click the l4d.exe (make sure STEAM is running).

 

[rflcptr]

you don't get actual copies of the software/license you paid for

You mean physical media? That's sort what Steam isn't about.

they can lock "your account" for any reason

F-F-F-False!

 

[Drexion]

I haven't played it in about a week, so I tried to start the game and get a ......

Many many games have no demo whatsoever, even many of the big name games. A playable demo for a few days which gets locked, is better than no demo, right ?

The fact that you're trying to replay the demo shows that it has served its purpose, that you think the game is actually worth playing. So just friggin buy it or move on to another game if you don't think its worth the cash, its that simple.

Riftsaw is right, if the demo was not locked it would be very easy for people to port the final game's maps etc into the demo. That's the thing about all the awesome modding tools and documentation Valve has let the community have - it lets anyone do whatever they want. You can't have it both ways.

I disagree with quite a few of Valve's decisions, but in this case you're just whining.

 

[Frostex]

I'd be willing to bet that it's a technical reason it was done, something along the lines of copying the maps from the final game over to the demo would unlock them for playing.

Either way it's typical Valve stupidity, here we have this comapny who can manage to make all this great technology and games and always manage to do these really stupid things.

 

[darkunitzero]

you don't own the games,
go buy it in the store.

you don't get actual copies of the software/license you paid for
again go buy it in the store. i mean, i bought mine for 34 dollars on amazon which i personally feel was worth it.

you can't sell the games/software
they do this to protect their profits. they dont make money on used games. does it suck? yea, but it seems like game companies in general are starting to look into these kind of things.

they can lock "your account" for any reason
i dont know about that one. ive had my steam account since it came out, and so far i havent been locked.

remember, steam isn't about physical media, if you wanted something tangible you can get that at the store. steam is a electronic distribution service that gives end users the choice to buy what they want and when they want at the comfort of their pc while keeping them connected to the gaming community.

like what rflcptr said, dont fault them because you were too lazy go to a local game shop to get your dvd.

 

[Silus]

F-F-F-False!

That's what you get when you don't read Steam terms of service

13. TERM AND TERMINATION

Either you or Valve has the right to terminate or cancel your Account or a particular Subscription at any time. You understand and agree that the cancellation of your Account or a particular Subscription is your sole right and remedy with respect to any dispute with Valve.

...

C. Termination by Valve.

1. In the case of a recurring payment Subscription (e.g., a monthly subscription), in the event that Valve terminates or cancels your Account or a particular Subscription for convenience, Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide a prorated refund of any prepaid Subscription fees paid to Valve.
2. In the case of a one-time purchase of a product license (e.g., purchase of a single game) from Valve, Valve may choose to terminate or cancel your Subscription in its entirety or may terminate or cancel only a portion of the Subscription (e.g., access to the software via Steam) and Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide access (for a limited period of time) to the download of a stand-alone version of the software and content associated with such one-time purchase.
3. In the case of a free Subscription, Valve may choose to terminate or amend the terms of the Subscription as provided in the "Amendments to this Agreement" section above.

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

So yeah, it's true.

 

[Silus]

OK, we all can say what we want about steam, whether you like/hate it etc...
but this just caps it for me

So, I dl the demo, I repeat the "demo" of Left for Dead
I haven't played it in about a week, so I tried to start the game and get a
"you have a locked copy of the demo...if you'd like to purchase the whole game..blah blah"
WTF?!
Locking a freaking DEMO? I mean c'mon, what the hell are they thinking

I was in a similar situation, though I didn't even try the demo once. It seems I had to be available to try the demo, at the time Valve chooses or I simply can't try it anymore. If they don't let me try their game with a "proper" demo, then I won't buy it. It's that simple.

 

[necrophile]

You got shot down over this in that other thread, why start one using the same bad points as before?

 

[ihira]

ahh the usual Steam h8rs that pop up every now and so.

I love Valve games and havnt had any major problems with Steam so sux to be u.

 

[Hulk]

yeah steam sucks...that's why they are offering REFUNDS for gta...................................

 

[Silus]

yeah steam sucks...that's why they are offering REFUNDS for gta...................................

They are not exactly offering refunds because the game worked perfectly fine...

You get a refund or a new product, for everything you buy that simply doesn't work. It's only fair that people that bought it through Steam, get a refund from Valve.

 

[TheNuker]

QQ.

ಠ_ಠ

 

[g1xx3r]

Either way it's typical Valve stupidity, here we have this comapny who can manage to make all this great technology and games and always manage to do these really stupid things.

Yeah,like keeping their games of the"Most Pirated List"..

 

[techminster]

ಠ_ಠ

Ah, never seen that one.

Anyway I just get my stuff on direct2drive.

Cheers

 

[Frostex]

Yeah,like keeping their games of the"Most Pirated List"..

I think you'll find the biggest factor for number of copies pirated is the popularity of the game to begin with, which makes the above statement somewhat amusing to me.

 

[necrophile]

Are you suggesting valve's games are not popular?

That would false.

 

[bonsai]

Give people free ice cream, and they'll bitch it's too cold.

 

[g1xx3r]

Frostex
I think you'll find the biggest factor for number of copies pirated is the popularity of the game to begin with, which makes the above statement somewhat amusing to me.

Uh huh..HL2 wasnt popular..Not as amusing as your statement..

Are you suggesting valve's games are not popular?

That would be pirate sour grapes.

I thought one of the"reasons"games got pirated was because the sucked and wasnt worth paying for..

Good job Valve..Keep the pirates @ bay..

 

[DimFilter]

The guberment took meh baby!

Sheesh. Valve is a for profit company and of all the ways to protect their IP I find Steam to usually be the least intrusive. *Cough* securom *cough*. And the fact that you are whining about a time-bomb L4D demo shows that you should spend your money on food and gas rather than entertainment.

 

[MrGuvernment]

You got shot down over this in that other thread, why start one using the same bad points as before?

+infinity.

dont like it dont use it, simple as that.

 

[WhiteZero]

QQ.

qft

I've been using Steam since Beta. Not a single major problem. And all minor problems were solved by either using support tickets or the forum.

 

[Wally]

The fact that you're trying to replay the demo shows that it has served its purpose, that you think the game is actually worth playing. So just friggin buy it or move on to another game if you don't think its worth the cash, its that simple.

No it doesn't. It shows that he wants to find out if the game is worth playing. That's what demos are for; to play and see whether you like it, not to download as a gesture to indicate that you are willing to pay for the game. How did that even make any sense to you?

 

[WhiteZero]

No it doesn't. It shows that he wants to find out if the game is worth playing. That's what demos are for; to play and see whether you like it, not to download as a gesture to indicate that you are willing to pay for the game. How did that even make any sense to you?

Sort of the reverse of the psychology of the matter. If he did in fact play through all the demo had to offer the first time and wants to again, it shows he has a yearning to play the game. The demo has served it's purpose to entice the player to buy the product.

 

[Wally]

All I got from his post was that he hadn't played it in a week. For all we know that might have been for a duration of nothing more than five minutes. It might have crashed, or he might have had to go out, or maybe he played for longer but his team were dickheaded. It could mean anything. I don't think wanting to play a demo more than once necessarily confirms that he wants to buy the full game, it just tells me that he wants to play it again to get a better idea of it.

I played the demo quite a lot, and bought the game because of it. I wish I hadn't; and if hours upon hours on the demo gave me the wrong impression, I can see why he's not happy about the demo being locked.

Personally, I don't see why they did lock it. It's not even a full level from the game. It's different in the full release, and about twice as long at least. It's not like they need to worry about half of their potential playerbase only playing the demo and not buying the game, it's about fifteen minutes long and the same each time through.

 

[Met-AL]

All I got from his post was that he hadn't played it in a week. For all we know that might have been for a duration of nothing more than five minutes. It might have crashed, or he might have had to go out, or maybe he played for longer but his team were dickheaded. It could mean anything. I don't think wanting to play a demo more than once necessarily confirms that he wants to buy the full game, it just tells me that he wants to play it again to get a better idea of it.

I played the demo quite a lot, and bought the game because of it. I wish I hadn't; and if hours upon hours on the demo gave me the wrong impression, I can see why he's not happy about the demo being locked.

Personally, I don't see why they did lock it. It's not even a full level from the game. It's different in the full release, and about twice as long at least. It's not like they need to worry about half of their potential playerbase only playing the demo and not buying the game, it's about fifteen minutes long and the same each time through.

They locked it because it was the full game engine. You can take the demo, and using console commands, actually load all the maps from the retail release and custom maps as well. So, if the demo was still out, we would just all use the demo to play custom maps (which are now becoming more popular as the stock maps are getting played out) online and not bother buying the actual game.

..and it wasn't like ti was a secret.. if had a countdown timer on the page at Steam x days left on the L4D demo, etc.

 

[-=PESTILENCE=-]

All I got from his post was that he hadn't played it in a week. For all we know that might have been for a duration of nothing more than five minutes. It might have crashed, or he might have had to go out, or maybe he played for longer but his team were dickheaded. It could mean anything. I don't think wanting to play a demo more than once necessarily confirms that he wants to buy the full game, it just tells me that he wants to play it again to get a better idea of it.

I played the demo quite a lot, and bought the game because of it. I wish I hadn't; and if hours upon hours on the demo gave me the wrong impression, I can see why he's not happy about the demo being locked.

Personally, I don't see why they did lock it. It's not even a full level from the game. It's different in the full release, and about twice as long at least. It's not like they need to worry about half of their potential playerbase only playing the demo and not buying the game, it's about fifteen minutes long and the same each time through.

they locked it because within 1 day of the demos release people had already modded it to play TF2 and HL2 levels, meaning they'd be getting infinite replayability if the demo was left open to everyone. Why pay for a game when someone would take all the levels from the real game and just put them up for download and you could just plug them into your "demo"?

 

[rflcptr]

That's what you get when you don't read Steam terms of service

They're not going to disable your account for any reason. They can disable it at any time, with reason. See the difference?

 

[Wally]

they locked it because within 1 day of the demos release people had already modded it to play TF2 and HL2 levels, meaning they'd be getting infinite replayability if the demo was left open to everyone. Why pay for a game when someone would take all the levels from the real game and just put them up for download and you could just plug them into your "demo"?

Fair enough. That just begs the question "why not release a conventional demo"? Surely then all this would've been avoided; if instead of just locking content out, why not just not include it? That seems to make the most sense.

 

[Silus]

They're not going to disable your account for any reason. They can disable it at any time, with reason. See the difference?

Have you read the rest of what I quoted from the steampowered site ?

I'm guessing that you haven't, but there are no specific "reasons" why Valve can terminate your account / Subscription. They just "may choose" to terminate it at any time. Why ? Simply because you don't own your account. They do.

 

[Silus]

Fair enough. That just begs the question "why not release a conventional demo"? Surely then all this would've been avoided; if instead of just locking content out, why not just not include it? That seems to make the most sense.

Precisely. This isn't a demo. It's Valve's concept of "demo", which isn't the same as what we know and every company in the world (when they release one) knows as a demo. But Valve needs to be different for some reason.

 

[Frostex]

Are you suggesting valve's games are not popular?

That would false.

No, I'm suggesting that they're not popular enough to make it into the top 10 pirated games, if it makes you feel any better they're probably quite close.

Uh huh..HL2 wasnt popular..Not as amusing as your statement..

I thought one of the"reasons"games got pirated was because the sucked and wasnt worth paying for..

Good job Valve..Keep the pirates @ bay..

If you think that valves games are pirated any less (in comparison to their popularity) you're wrong, all valves titles have been pirated and available on release day, in fact due to pre loading many of valves titles have been cracked before their official release dates.

One of the reasons IS that games suck and aren't worth paying for, you can have more than one reason, I said that the biggest factor in piracy is the popularity of the game, it only makes sense that the percentage of copies pirated is roughly the same for each game, therefor the game with a high interest will have a proportionally higher amount of piracy.

I checked for first week sales and spore managed over 1 million, near as I can tell HL2 was at about 250,000 in the first week, this is why spore is in the top 10 most pirated games list and none of valves games are...

It's interesting because when I went to wikipedia to try and find these stats I actually stumbled upon this quote from Will Wright as a response to the comments that spore was dumbed down and simple.

We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. Spore has more depth than, let’s say, The Sims did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for Sims 2, which was around ninety, and something like Half-Life, which was ninety-seven, and we decided — quite a while back — that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of Sims 2 than the Metacritic and sales of Half-Life.
—Will Wright

What more can I say...other than lol. :}

 

[rflcptr]

Have you read the rest of what I quoted from the steampowered site ?

I've read it. I've even read it before seeing this thread, too!

I'm guessing that you haven't, but there are no specific "reasons" why Valve can terminate your account / Subscription. They just "may choose" to terminate it at any time. Why ? Simply because you don't own your account. They do.

Can you verify an instance when Valve has done such, without reason? They do outline a few specifc reasons for it, though.

Precisely. This isn't a demo. It's Valve's concept of "demo", which isn't the same as what we know and every company in the world (when they release one) knows as a demo. But Valve needs to be different for some reason.

Have you seen that Steam Subscriber Agreement thing lately?

 

[phide]

you don't own the games

You don't own the games via traditional retail distribution either -- merely a license to use that game and associated media. No difference in this respect.

They are not exactly offering refunds because the game worked perfectly fine...

No, but they're not responsible for the complaints associated with it. Valve's offering refunds because Rockstar produced a poor product and customers are unhappy with it, not because Valve or Steam are responsible for those specific issues customers are encountering with GTA4. That's very atypical behavior in this industry and shows that Valve has at least some concern for customer satisfaction (unlike, say, Rockstar).

Precisely. This isn't a demo. It's Valve's concept of "demo", which isn't the same as what we know and every company in the world (when they release one) knows as a demo.

A demo is, literally, a "demonstration". Whether or not it's time-limited doesn't really change that.

 

[Silus]

Have you seen that Steam Subscriber Agreement thing lately?

And what does that have to do with the "demo" concept ? Because that's precisely what's being complained about.

Since you love it so much, I'm guessing you are ok with every company adopting the retarded Valve demo concept ? Meaning that you'll need to be available to try these "demos", when these companies want it and not when you can...