STEAM can kiss my ....

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Frosteh said:
When you buy some software, what you're actually buying is a licence to use a copy of that software, the licence isn't a material thing, but for years now we've traded material floppys/cds/dvds so we're kind of used to thinking that what we own is a copy of the software to do whatever we want with. We don't, legally speaking.
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It didn't used to be that way, strictly speaking. But thanks to the corporate lobby takeover, it is now. The U.S. government is paid by corporate lobbyists to work for the corporations and to create fascist laws that rape the consumer in the name of capitalism. Capitalism is great in an open market, but not great for use in dictating government policy and corrupting lawmakers.
 
UrielDagda said:
It didn't used to be that way, strictly speaking. But thanks to the corporate lobby takeover, it is now. The U.S. government is paid by corporate lobbyists to work for the corporations and to create fascist laws that rape the consumer in the name of capitalism. Capitalism is great in an open market, but not great for use in dictating government policy and corrupting lawmakers.
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Do you even know what fascism is? Because your lack of knowledge really demeans your whole post.

"Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers the individual subordinate to the interests of the state, party or society as a whole."

This has NOTHING to do with fascism.

Honestly, "T-Man", we are all people here and capable of forming our own OPINIONS about Steam. The proponents of Steam here all understand and many even sympathize with your concerns. However, we simply don't agree with you. That doesn't make us "wrong" as you so tactfully put it. If you can't stand the service don't use it. If you want, all you have to do is register the game when you get it. Just set it up to play in offline mode and don't worry about it. Is it really that big of a deal that you can't resell the software?

And no, software use is not indicative of the American consumerism. It is plagued by a whole different set of standards and problems. The fact that software can be copied exactly, for example. Also, if you're worried about the way we dispose of things you should be happy about online-delivery. No box, no manual, less waste. It's not like I ever opened the manual or saved the damn box anyway.

If you choose to have the opinion that Steam is evil, fine, but stop trying to force your opinions on others and accept that they are that: OPINIONS.
 
So long as Steam continues to provide a means to back up content so that it can be reinstalled without downloading and provide an "offline mode" to allow the use of single-player games without connecting to the internet, I really don't see where the problem with Steam is.

I'm a lot more confident in the lifespan of my hard drive-based Steam backups than I am the DVD media I bought at the store. I also keep several versions of the Steam installer along with those backups so that I know I have something that supports offline mode in the event Steam ever disappears or radically changes its service model in a way that would prevent me from playing my games.

Steam provides an excellent service, good download speeds, and community support that every game should have. So long as they continue to provide that, I can't really find much to complain about. It was a different story in the early days when we all had Steam forced on us before it was ready, but now if I had the choice between independent installs and Steam, I'd use Steam.

edit: as for the initial complaint, that's a difficult matter to resolve. I think Valve needs to do a few things here, in the interest of satisfying customers like the OP:

1) Allow people to install the game without registering with Steam. This would only affect single-player games. You could install the Steam application but use a dummy account that allowed single-player games to work without ever touching the Steam server. Yes, this would enable piracy to a degree, but I'm sure an alternative method of registering CD keys could be implemented...Valve is full of smart people, they could iron out the details if they wanted to.

2) Create a "Valve marketplace" allowing users to resell games, with Valve getting a percentage (and possibly setting a minimum price for each title to ensure they get something). This could actually work well for them: You buy HL:Ep2 for $20 or whatever it is, resell it for $10 and get $5 credit with the Steam store to purchase another game. It wouldn't be the ideal solution for the person selling, but it's a good compromise that prevents Valve from watching the same copy of a great game be resold a dozen times with them only profiting off one person playing it.

3) Allow whole accounts to be sold and transferred legitimately.
 
T-Man, I'm in complete resonance with you on this one. All these STEAM lovers are out of their minds thinking that the slight convenience is worth the additional element of control and limitation.

People, guess why consoles are so popular. You put the disc in the slot, you play the game. It works EVERY time, with or without an internet connection. The fact is that companies like Valve are just emulating MS with their whole authentication/activation/registration BS. To me this is a change for the worse.

How difficult is it to actually SAVE a jewel case with a CD key on it? Even if you can't do this, surely everyone has a CD wallet for their discs. Just write it on a piece of paper and slip it in the liner notes section people! It's not difficult. And those people who's discs are unplayable because of scratches, you take VERY poor care of your discs. I have an ORIGINAL Starcraft disc from 1998 that has seen literally thousands of hours of use during my college days from 1998-2000 that STILL WORKS. And oddly enough, I still have the jewel case for it too! And how often do you feel that irresistable itch to play games while away from home on someone else's PC? If so, BRING THE DISC. It's not difficult, and not like you're going to need your whole collection. But wait, bringing the disc to play on another PC is slowly becoming impossible (and illegal). And to the guy that thought downloading and installing a 6+ GB file is EASIER than installing from a disc, please... Even with today's fastest connections, that's HOURS of time instead of <10 mins.
 
UrielDagda said:
It didn't used to be that way, strictly speaking. But thanks to the corporate lobby takeover, it is now. The U.S. government is paid by corporate lobbyists to work for the corporations and to create fascist laws that rape the consumer in the name of capitalism. Capitalism is great in an open market, but not great for use in dictating government policy and corrupting lawmakers.
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It's always been like this.

Because software can be installed on multiple machines, and because its so easily copied it's not possible to cover it with the same laws as you would for other material goods.

You're not buying software like you would buy an apple, you're buying a licence to use that software, this is limited in its functionality so you cannot reproduce your copy and sell it on. Like it or not you don't have that many rights over the licence you have.

You cannot for example buy a game, and then go into production copying that game and selling it to other people, you don't own the game, you own a licence to use a copy of it.
 
PopeKevinI said:
So long as Steam continues to provide a means to back up content so that it can be reinstalled without downloading and provide an "offline mode" to allow the use of single-player games without connecting to the internet, I really don't see where the problem with Steam is.
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The problem is how they can sell the games the same price when they don't have to make cd,box and manual? I don't think the server cost can match the price of box,manual,cds.

Things I don't like with steam:
1- It start at windowsstartup without asking if we want this or not in the installation.
2- The default settings make steam an ads system.



PopeKevinI said:
Steam provides an excellent service, good download speeds, and community support that every game should have. So long as they continue to provide that, I can't really find much to complain about.
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Good download speeds? I don't think so. Their download speeds are poor and not stable. Last time I've downloaded hf2, I think my speed was something like an average of 120Kb/sec.




At long term, I don't understand what valve is going to do. Are they going to let people reload all their games each time they re-install their os? Maybe they are going to surprise us with some hiden contract bs line inside the tos. Just like LINK of ea, you can't download your games at much as you want.
 
Frosteh said:
It's always been like this.

Because software can be installed on multiple machines, and because its so easily copied it's not possible to cover it with the same laws as you would for other material goods.

You're not buying software like you would buy an apple, you're buying a licence to use that software, this is limited in its functionality so you cannot reproduce your copy and sell it on. Like it or not you don't have that many rights over the licence you have.

You cannot for example buy a game, and then go into production copying that game and selling it to other people, you don't own the game, you own a licence to use a copy of it.
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Because the current laws do not prevent drivers to respect the speed limit, we will let the police use radar. Now because the radar does not work too, we will install a bot connected to a satellite that prevent speeding for good. I accept the first one, it is correct, but the second one is unacceptable.

Perhaps here, in my example, we can see the difference between authoritarian and fascism.
Remember that police at his root is supposed to act on call or complaint. Not as a spy.


Look what is happening : http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1711972,00.html
Photo radar, talking camera....


What next? Judge dread become reality?


The problem right now is that some government(like mine) educate much more the people than some other government. Because some government pretend it is not the "reason of the state".
What happed is some society get better in many aspect because of governmental action. And the only way for some other government to achieve the same evolution is by "tougher laws"
 
Its not that hard to go into steam setting and uncheck the options for steam to start w/windows and to show ads for new games. Hell, i don't like my computer automatically downloading windows updates, but im not going to start saying oh i don't like the whole OS because it comes with that option on as a default setting. Get a grip.


Well i'm sorry to hear about your download speeds, mine have always been great while downloading games on steam. And yes you can just download your games as many times as you want.
 
Read again, I said things I don't like with steam. I didn't said : "I don't like steam because of..."

"And yes you can just download your games as many times as you want."
I didn't said the opposite, I said, in a long term view, is valve going to surprise us?


Ho and last thing, what happen if you don't make physical backup and valve close his door?
 
if it comes down to DL content or discs I can "own" I'll take discs every time
 
presonally i like steam. I mainly only buy games i have no plan on selling in the future though. I hate owning the cds/dvds and entering cd keys. That shit sucks unless your going to sell it. Twice i have bought new games and the cd key was not stamped with the game, try returning that, i had to go through hell both times. I also hate when the game keeps asking for the disc or you damage lose the disc and cant play. Or how about the game has 5 discs, but it will only play with the first disc. Yeah you could mount a image or make backups. To me that is all added hassle. I like being able to install the game on any pc i own easily, and redownload whenever i want. IF you had a fire, your disc was stolen, the dog ate it, you lost it. Thats it, with Steam its no big deal. Do i wish there was some more options with games if i wanted to give them away sure, but big deal.

dont like it, dont buy it. There is no right or wrong, just play by their rules, or dont give them your money.
 
AfterAnn said:
Read again, I said things I don't like with steam. I didn't said : "I don't like steam because of..."

"And yes you can just download your games as many times as you want."
I didn't said the opposite, I said, in a long term view, is valve going to surprise us?


Ho and last thing, what happen if you don't make physical backup and valve close his door?
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The same thing that would happen if you lost your original CD/DVD (the two are functionally equivalent).

Seriously, make a backup, blank media isn't expensive.
 
i think steam should discount their games because there is no resale.

pretty much all of the games they sell are higher priced then anywhere else. 50$ for orange box. few weeks after it came it it was on sale for 30$ same goes for all their shit.
 
gesicht said:
i think steam should discount their games because there is no resale.

pretty much all of the games they sell are higher priced then anywhere else. 50$ for orange box. few weeks after it came it it was on sale for 30$ same goes for all their shit.
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You call 50 dollars too much for hl2, hl2 e1, hl2 e2, portal and tf2? Wow...

I actually like steam, it has a its faults and I agree with how its been said before that they should implement a way to sell off your liscence to games to someone else. I personally though dont buy a game unless I plan to keep it. I download those things called demo's before forking over the money for a coaster.

I dont see whats so wrong about them tieing the game to the user created account, its a great way to make sure you dont rip a copy and then sell the game off. Much like those weird strings of number they put on there, and they give you one of those and wont let two of the same numbers be online at once... strange idea from long ago.

It sucks but its much like the return policy of retailers for software, you opend it and you cannot return it... makes sense, same application to you selling it off. Weather honest or not I do believe you should be able to sell something you have purchased but compairing a string of code to a car is a bit of a stretch. They should make it so that you can unregister your copy of the game from them, in doing so it becomes open to sell, now I suppose you could go grab a keygen off the net and reinstall it plus sell it but if steam would do a transfer game option then it wouldnt be a problem.
 
"Heh" indeed.

And oh btw: Cold war is over for about 20 years now.
Another hint: If everyone is wrong and you're right... Check and recheck wtf you were trying to prove.
 
gesicht said:
i think steam should discount their games because there is no resale.

pretty much all of the games they sell are higher priced then anywhere else. 50$ for orange box. few weeks after it came it it was on sale for 30$ same goes for all their shit.
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i do agree they charge too much. sometimes they have a decent sale on the games, mainly the older titles, but some of the newer ones were around $20. anything brand new is $50 though and thats to much as you dont get the extras out of the box, and many times the stores sell it for less. Less cost for them, but its possible thats part of the deal with the other companies to ask for top dollar.
 
Yeah i heard some stores say they won't put the games on their shelves if valve sells them on steam for a lower price, cause they want it to be fair. And if thats not the reason, well, bandwidth costs money.
 
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