piscian18
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I feel bad seeing deals on other sites like D2D and impulse and still refusing to buy them because Im too lazy to use anything but steam.
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What's your overall opinion of STEAM
- Thread starter Itchyeyes
- Start date
I feel bad seeing deals on other sites like D2D and impulse and still refusing to buy them because Im too lazy to use anything but steam.
I actually find Steam is the longest part. I reformat when needed, usually every 5-6 months, and usually go from putting the installation disc in the drive and rebooting to being 99% complete and back to normal within 2.5, 3 hours. The last 1% is always the stuff that needs to be downloaded from Steam, and then launched so that it can continue downloading the updates, and then launched again so it can recognise it needs to download some SDK, and then whatever else.
I don't really feel like keeping all of my Steam games backed up on my hard drive. To me one of the main points in digital distribution is saving hard drive space by having games available to download on demand but otherwise having more free disk space. Having them all backed up seems to defeat the point.
HaMMerHeD
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Why do you "need" to reformat every 5 to 6 months?
Lucky you, but the cable (and fibre) are available only in certain towns, only a (quite large) minority have access. The average UK connection speed is 5mbit - not horrendous, but bear in mind that that the average is heavily skewed by all those 20mbit-100mbit services. In reality half the population only have access to something much less than 5mbit. And those wonderful plans to make fibre more widely have been heavily cut back because of the recession and deficit. Across most of my county we don't even have ADSL2+ and there are no plans in place to upgrade the exchanges
I'm lucky to get 2.5-3mbit. That's OK now, but in 2-3 years?I think the situation is poor for the UK, but it's far from the worst in the world, and even the US is having widespread broadband access and cost problems:
24 million Americans don't have broadband access: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2366808,00.asp?
65% broadband adoption rate: http://www.slate.com/id/2252141/pagenum/all/#p2
It's not just the speed, in a lot of countries the download limits are very restricted and the cost per GB is just obscene - how would US users feel if they had to pay $60-$80 for Steam games, didn't get the sales, and had to pay an additional 10%-50% for the cost of the download?To be fair, I don't know quite how bad it is in Australia but I know that many of the folks in the US and EU have connections much better than mine so it can't get much worse.......
Of course none of these access and bandwidth issues are the fault of Steam, but it is a millstone around the neck of digital distribution, and in my opinion Steam is not doing enough to make the service friendly enough for those below average connections.
processing power is ubiquitous, available to everyone with the money, bandwidth is not. clock speeds and memory capacities have definitely raised exponentially in terms of relative cost, where the growth of bandwidth has been much more linear in relation to price and availability.
so for the most part he is right, it's only a very small fraction of densely populated areas in the world with such high bandwidth available to them, compared to those that can afford modern hardware. most of america is still stuck with sub-20mbit downlinks, and speeds even close to that in the areas that do have it cost way more than mainstream connections.
PrincessFrosty
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BT are rolling out their new product "infinity" to basically 98% of all the exchanges in the UK which is FTTC similar to VM but with a last leg over phone lines and not coax, rollout has started and should take a few years.
What you're forgetting is that a lot of people simply do not pay for the top end products, in reality the 50mbit fibre is something like 70,000 customers which is a tiny fraction of the overall connections in the UK. In addition to this most UK customers are stingy sods and the majorety of connections are through providers like talktalk and Tiscali who offer ultra-mega-cheap (often free) broadband but have heavily over subscribed networks and thus actual throughput is way less in speed tests.
This is the fault of the customer for the most part, your free talktalk broadband isn't going to run as fast as £40 per month virgin 50mbit.
The UK is strange, we've had pretty slow speeds for a long time now, but we have exceptional coverage in the 99% of population for broadband, our country is hardly at the forefront of technology, a lot of the EU is better, places like the netherlands and sweeden have way better broadband, places like Japan have had 100mbit to homes for many years now.
Bandwidth is a service not unlike Gas or Electricity, there is a per unit cost for data transfer, the subsidy model has worked for a long time but may be on the way out due to massive difference in data usage between customers. The bandwidth is there you just have to pay for it.
No that's not true at all, the information I posted is NOT a linear growth, the 56k/512k/2mbit/8mbit/24mbit and soon to be FTTC 40mbit are rollouts covering most of the UK, something like 98.5% coverage when complete, which is usually a 2-3 year ordeal.
Some areas it's not financially viable to roll out newer services yet so you have to pay for the connection, for example I have 50mbit at home from Virgin Media because they have a cabinet in my street but 10 minutes walk away at work there is no such thing, we had fibre put to the building recently, it cost a lot (ballpark £17,000), but they put in 24 core fibre which will provide 1Gbit in total to our office.
The bandwidth is there it just costs money depending on what you want and may vary in availability depending where you are, but even if not available you can pay to have a dedicated line installed.
Furthermore the cost argument also doesn't hold up, bandwidth on 56k modems was incredibly expensive, anyone who did a lot of surfing back on a 56k modem knows just how harsh the inital costs were, phone bills were HUGE, broadband prices are very low in comparison and more to the point stay low year on year, my 50Mbit price actually started at £50 per month and dropped to £40, we get exponential growth and we get cheaper services.
Rubbish. Infinity 40mbit will be available to 40% of the population only, that's it! completed in 2012. Everyone else will still be subject to the governments 1Mbit minimum requirement for 99% of the population
There were plans to levy £0.50 monthly on all broadband subscriptions to help subsidise an increase to 2mbit for the whole country - this plan was scrapped in April by the new budget.Until an alternative plan is announced the future for widespread broadband in the UK looks pretty bleak.
I took my speed numbers from the OFCOM annual survey of actual possible speeds, not the products advertised as available (actual speeds are typically 40% slower than advertised)
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Comparing apples and oranges. My point is that having your Steam folder on a separate HD is the fastest way to be back up and running.
I can do a fresh install of Windows 7, drivers and Steam and be playing a game on my system in under an hour. I actually did that just five weeks ago. Having to install from a download or optical media will greatly lengthen this time, so your point was also my point.
But my Steam folder is 1TB and growing as I purchase more games. You format every five months. As I said, it would take me two months to re-download all of this. So, half of the time inbetween formats, my computer would be re-downloading my Steam folder, just to blow it away all over again?
HDs are damn dirt cheap these days. So, I have my Steam folder on a separate drive.
Also allows me to transfer Steam to a new computer in a snap, too!
If you're buying hundreds of games on Steam, you can afford a separate ~$65 1.5TB HD for your Steam folder...
Doesn't know how to save HD space? Doesn't know you can delete.
HD's full, gotta format and start over!
PrincessFrosty
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Rubbish. Infinity 40mbit will be available to 40% of the population only, that's it! completed in 2012. Everyone else will still be subject to the governments 1Mbit minimum requirement for 99% of the population
Almost all exchanges are 21CN enabled which is an up to 24mbit connection which is rate adaptive, speed depends on distance from exchange and bottlenecks at the ISPs end. As far as I know the FTTC rollout is being done in stages with plans to continue rollout, i don't think they're just doing a tiny fraction of the country then stopping, but it will be a while before we have significant rollout, same for the 8mbit max products and 21CN products.
As a percentage of population very few people are limited 2mbit or slower, there are a massive number of people who simply chose to have slower products and when average line speed tests are done it skews the average.
Again if you don't have a very fast internet connection you can have one put to your building, it just costs. If you can't afford FTTH then there are other options, many ISPs offer bonding, our work connection is actually 4x8mbit bonded together from Entanet and we've had that a long time providing realistic download speeds of 25Mbit way before the 21CN was available.
Some LLU providers offer bonded ADSL2+ connections which can hit 50mbit over 2 lines and I'm sure if you approach an ISP about it, you can get bespoke packages for more lines, that's exactly what I did for our business line.
I think VM's coverage is something like 56% of the population and their whole network is getting an overahaul to 100mbit availability.
Bandwidth is readily available, ISPs are tripping over themselves to offer cheaper and faster services especially to businesses. You just have to pay for the premium services.
*edit*
processing power is no different either, you can build a super computer if you throw enough money at it, the technology is there for both, it's just a case of what you decide to spend.
I think you have a very rose tinted view of "almost all." Plans were for 75% coverage for 21CN by Sping 2011, http://www.btplc.com/21CN/Theroadto21CN/Keymilestones/Keymilestones.htm but that's unlikely to happen, they missed the 2008 deadline for 50% coverage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_21CN
BT infinity rollout complete in 2012 with 40% availability http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/bt-infinity-fibre-optic-broadband.html Cable coverage will mostly overlap with the area getting fibre so that still leaves >40% of the population stuck with basic ADSL. Of those 15% will get ADSL+ eventually, but by the time it happens, will it be fast enough?
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jonneymendoza
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steam have fucked up the release of f1 2010. anyone who pre ordered it cannot unlock it while the people who bought it from today can happily play it. what a farce
PrincessFrosty
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The plans are almost complete rollout like the max products were, obviously it takes time to upgrade the entire country, it will be years and probably more delays but it's coming, a private company can only work so fast at upgrading the entire country especially where a lot of them areas wont see ROI for extremely long periods of time.
eh, bandwidth availability IMO will often depend on the size of the country. It is easy to support super high speed internet in europe and some asian countries because they are densely populated and geographically small. Here in the US there are lots of rural areas that are pretty much stuck on dialup and will always be because the cost to provide broadband is too high.
TheWeazmeister
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Bad browsing habits would tend to lead this to happen IMO
That, and just the overall residue from online computer use. Not to say that you need to reformat, but trying to find and fix 8 million changes versus just a reformat and reinstall of everything is pointless. I mean, I keep my computer pretty much clean and trim as possible.
When I installed Windows originally 3 months ago, the Windows Directory was 4 GB in space. It's now over 22 GB. All that's installed on this machine? Adobe Master Suite, Visual Studio 2010, MS Office, Corel Painter 11, Steam, my hardware drivers and software, and what's installed with Windows. My cache is on drive E, Steam is on drive D, my user folder (My Docs, etc), is on drive E, and my downloads, projects, etc are on drive F. Outside of 10-15 websites, I don't browse on this PC. So how did it become so bloated?
Yes, there are restore points, but those tend not to be that great either.
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Rofl-Mic-Lofl
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Must still be on XP!
TheSandman21
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Amazon's community is just a little overly paranoid. It's not the first time they've trashed a game's ratings just because of Steam. Look at some of the reviewers' prior game reviews. It's almost always the same band of whiners every time. In 2003, I could have understood their qualms since back then, Steam was pretty bad.... Nowadays though, not so much.
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I don't think a large majority of Amazon reviewers have used Steam since 2003 considering how they all think it's the worst thing ever.
Lateralus
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Cache and temp files can accumulate if not cleaned out every so often, but that much? I don't know. Files don't magically appear to take up space unless they're put there by browsers, installing programs, etc. When you delete a program, the space should be returned to you minus maybe a few niggling registry entries (a gripe of mine; it's only convenient when you reinstall and settings are restored because they were kept in the registry but that's normally not a big deal, and typically I want it completely removed from my system when I uninstall because I either don't plan on reinstalling it or I want to install with a clean slate).
I've also heard of the Winsxs folder becoming quite large. Multiple .dll files, shadow copies, etc. could also cause your installation to grow.
I also try to keep as clean a system as possible, and with Windows 7 I don't see a need to reformat & reinstall nearly as often as I did with XP. I might every couple of years just to clean out junk from old programs that didn't completely remove themselves, but every 5-6 months? That's just a PITA to me in my old age. If there was a need to, I would, but there's not, so I don't.
Blackstone
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I buy games on Steam wherever possible. The streamlined installation process, total lack of CD's to fuss with, portability, community integration, no fuss patching. There is simply no advantage to having the media.
Games that aren't on Steam don't even get installed or played anymore.
Games that aren't on Steam don't even get installed or played anymore.
lies and slander. the classic "halp my windows is out of control!" and "I'm a dev so my opinion is valid!", all you're missing now is the "other os" plug. but this is a steam thread, and that would be off topic now wouldn't it.
bore_u2_death
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I like Steam alot. So much in fact that if a game I see is on sale at an online game vender and it's not a triple A title, I wait, knowing that it will eventually hit Steam.
Things I like about Steam:
All games on Steam centralized to one menu. This is huge. Extreme convenience.
Most recent update automatically applied.
More recently, AMD users get Steam integrated GPU driver updates, Very Convenient.
Occasional sales, most of which make buying the not-bad games a no brainer. Serious Sam Episode 1 and 2 remastered for $7.50? Yes, please.
+1 Steam, for making digitally distributed gaming possible in a sweet way.
Things I like about Steam:
All games on Steam centralized to one menu. This is huge. Extreme convenience.
Most recent update automatically applied.
More recently, AMD users get Steam integrated GPU driver updates, Very Convenient.
Occasional sales, most of which make buying the not-bad games a no brainer. Serious Sam Episode 1 and 2 remastered for $7.50? Yes, please.
+1 Steam, for making digitally distributed gaming possible in a sweet way.
Jimi_Shuffler
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+1 for steam.
They got their sales going on which I love, most of my friends are on steam (joining their games or sending invites are a big plus),it supports instant messaging in and out of the game, voice chat, group chat, they've also got steam achievements, I get pretty good download speeds from steam, the steam client's interface is great. I pretty much love everything about Steam. had my account since 2007, and steam has been getting better over time.
They got their sales going on which I love, most of my friends are on steam (joining their games or sending invites are a big plus),it supports instant messaging in and out of the game, voice chat, group chat, they've also got steam achievements, I get pretty good download speeds from steam, the steam client's interface is great. I pretty much love everything about Steam. had my account since 2007, and steam has been getting better over time.
Steam is good now. When it first came out I hated the idea of running a large bulky program in the background of my games. Now its pretty convenient.
Even if you don't buy your games from steam, you can mount them to steam so you can still chat to your friends while playing your game. Nice feature.
Even if you don't buy your games from steam, you can mount them to steam so you can still chat to your friends while playing your game. Nice feature.
I love it. However, I recently got switched from a unlimited data plan to a 20gb monthly allowance, so that is going to be very, very annoying.
I truly became a steam convert when I decided I wanted to install Half Life 2 to my new laptop. So I dug out the discs, tried to install, but my laptop wasn't having any of it. The discs were too damaged to install from. But then steam saved the day since I could just download it! If not for steam I would've had 5 coasters with no game to play, and have to shell out more for another copy but thankfully there was steam
I truly became a steam convert when I decided I wanted to install Half Life 2 to my new laptop. So I dug out the discs, tried to install, but my laptop wasn't having any of it. The discs were too damaged to install from. But then steam saved the day since I could just download it! If not for steam I would've had 5 coasters with no game to play, and have to shell out more for another copy but thankfully there was steam
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Luthorcrow
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Steam is simply the best user experience to date for digital downloads. I have bought a physical disc for a PC game since BF2.
If a game is not on Steam, I might not buy it.
If a game is not on Steam, I might not buy it.
I shouldn't have said need. I basically get OCD and bored with my windows installation, or end up fucking something up when customising and not being able to roll back because my 7 never seems to want to save restore points and so on. I get lazy about defragging the registry and hard drives and spyware scanning and so on, so it gradually gets shittier and shitter but still tolerable. Then I go and balls it up by changing the explorer.exe to something broken and decide it's time to reformat anyway. I don't really mind with my stuff all backed up, it just means doing something else for an hour.
Even with Steam, you risk getting yourself mixed into some of the draconian pub's activation limits... Just saying...
Steam is okay, but I'll NEVER buy a full price game on there. For me Steam isn't value-add, it's value-subtract, so any game will have to be cheap on Steam for me "licensing it" to be worth it.
I'll re-evaluate when publishers stop sucking the dicks of brick and mortar resellers and give us games at the 'nothing physical, lower risk' price that we were promised and deserve.
I'll re-evaluate when publishers stop sucking the dicks of brick and mortar resellers and give us games at the 'nothing physical, lower risk' price that we were promised and deserve.
You'd be right, but I don't buy games that have an installation limit. I'll go as far as something like BC2 which allows for 10 simultaneous installations or something, but if a game's on sale that I would have to activate/buy again after the third installation it isn't something I'll be buying.
Atwooooood
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I personally love using Steam. No discs, steam overlay in-game which i love, saves all my settings and can play from any computer, plus all the great sales they have from time to time. No complaints from this end.
PrincessFrosty
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I thought I'd mention this since I am a long running steam user but had no idea this feature existed, but...
Go to the "Steam" menu and select "Backup and Restore Games", you can save your currently installed games to a backup archive on another drive or different location, it also gives you the ability to split the backup into CD or DVD sized files automatically so you can write them to disc.
I'm just doing this now with my source games (HL2 Ep1/Ep2 Portal, TF2 and L4D) it's about 33Gb and selected a file size of 99999 and it's just creating one large dump of files on my archive drive...neat!
I'm probably just late to the party but I thought I'd let everyone know just to be sure
Go to the "Steam" menu and select "Backup and Restore Games", you can save your currently installed games to a backup archive on another drive or different location, it also gives you the ability to split the backup into CD or DVD sized files automatically so you can write them to disc.
I'm just doing this now with my source games (HL2 Ep1/Ep2 Portal, TF2 and L4D) it's about 33Gb and selected a file size of 99999 and it's just creating one large dump of files on my archive drive...neat!
I'm probably just late to the party but I thought I'd let everyone know just to be sure
HaMMerHeD
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I thought I'd mention this since I am a long running steam user but had no idea this feature existed, but...
Go to the "Steam" menu and select "Backup and Restore Games", you can save your currently installed games to a backup archive on another drive or different location, it also gives you the ability to split the backup into CD or DVD sized files automatically so you can write them to disc.
I'm just doing this now with my source games (HL2 Ep1/Ep2 Portal, TF2 and L4D) it's about 33Gb and selected a file size of 99999 and it's just creating one large dump of files on my archive drive...neat!
I'm probably just late to the party but I thought I'd let everyone know just to be sure
It also includes an installer in the archive. It is a cool feature, especially when things like Metro 2033 happen.
Not being locked out of all of your games when they fuck up a transaction for one, and risking losing access to hundreds of [monetary unit]'s worth of games because of confusion between them and the payment processor.
Not requiring an internet connection to access your game library. You hear lots of people complaining about this when going to university, for example, and Steam is blocked. Or if you're just part of the enormous majority that doesn't have internet access, but would still like to play games.
Being able to sell your own games on or return them if they are unsatisfactory or unplayable.
Not having to run an additional program in the game, consuming system resources, just to play the game.
The box art.
Huffing the booklet.
It depends on your principles, what you value and your circumstances. Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure if I went back and read the thread from the start I could come up with just as many again.