TheFrozenOne wrote:


The second category applies mostly to 30+ gamers and the nontechnical. The former hate steam because it is new and a rather big change in gaming.

Hey Im 30+ and I love steam!



Been using it since 2004 or something. I see it more as a service than a program tbh, its very convenient and easy to use.

And I agree with you, most of the steam hate is really unfounded and usually based on ignorance.

TheFrozenOne wrote:
Where do you live? Steam games are always sold at retail price unless they are having a sale (which they ALWAYS have). Not only that but there is no tax. lol

Crusader Kings 2 - £18 via Amazon, £30 via Steam is the one that I noticed recently, and I have generally noticed that games cost a lot more on Steam than getting them from Amazon or Ebay

Fenrakk101 wrote:


Again, I don't see this happening in the foreseeable future. Steam's business is booming and growing every day. A service like Steam doesn't just disappear overnight - if they ever do go away, there's going to be a massive buildup up to that point. By 'massive,' I mean you'll hear about it years ahead of time. And by that I mean, you'll hear that Steam is going to vanish in a few months, but then they'll continue to exist for years. Games for Windows Live would have vanished years ago if it would know when to go away, and you can't seriously believe a service like Steam to fail to exist when even GFWL pulled that off.

I basically agree, I wasn't saying it's going to be soon but it'll happen.

Fenrakk101 wrote:


I really don't know what point you're trying to make here... how is the offline mode broken? If you didn't have to sign in at first, then it would mean it's possible for someone to hack into your account. All they would have to do is download your Steam files. Right now, if someone managed to do that, the files would be useless, since they're still protected by your account and password. If they removed the required sign-in, your account would be in jeopardy. And besides, what's the bother in signing in and then going offline? It's not like you find Steam on a disk; you have to download it. And as people love saying on these forums: "It's 2012!"

Please re read what I'm saying, or maybe I didn't make myself clear (again, not native english speaker). I have no problem with having steam connected but when I'm on a train for instance, or wherever I want there's no internet connection, I should be able to play the games already installed and declared on my pc, and playable offline by nature. Currently, the only way to ensure you'll be able to access those game in those condiion is to have put your steam in offline mode BEFORE losing the internet connection... which is non sense. And currently, it's I think the only point I really have against Steam.

The only things i hate about the steam i



) Offline mode

) Price changes for different countries

Aiseant wrote:
Please re read what I'm saying, or maybe I didn't make myself clear (again, not native english speaker). I have no problem with having steam connected but when I'm on a train for instance, or wherever I want there's no internet connection, I should be able to play the games already installed and declared on my pc, and playable offline by nature. Currently, the only way to ensure you'll be able to access those game in those condiion is to have put your steam in offline mode BEFORE losing the internet connection... which is non sense. And currently, it's I think the only point I really have against Steam.

I did get that, but my point was that you can't blame Steam for this. Security comes before convenience here. If you know you're going to be on a train ride without internet (and I assume you're planning on using a laptop) you should be able to just close the laptop and when you open it again you should be able to play. As long as you don't sign out or shut the computer off (which would sign you out) you should be good.

keda009 wrote:
) Price changes for different countries

I wasn't aware Steam did this. I assume it has something to do with laws in different countries - I wouldn't be surprised if some countries required Mature games to be marked up, for example. Still, do you have any links/refs?

Aiseant wrote:


- what when Stem will fall ? Because nothing last forever.

Steam won't just disappear. If it does collapse, it will most likely be sold off or you will be able to download your games without steam. Not only that, but if Steam did just go poof, it would create a multi-billion dollar legal maelstrom of lawsuits and public/developer anger.



Millions of people use steam to play hundreds of games. That hundreds of millions of games worth billions of dollars. If users were suddenly not able to play their games, publishes/developers reliant on steam would no longer have customers. That would be billions of dollars of lost revenue. There isn't a court system in the world that wouldn't eat Valve (or whats left of it) alive.

keda009 wrote:
The only things i hate about the steam i



) Offline mode

I'm curious to know why people are still having trouble with offline mode. I use offline steam on my laptop all the time.

nats wrote:
Crusader Kings 2 - £18 via Amazon, £30 via Steam is the one that I noticed recently, and I have generally noticed that games cost a lot more on Steam than getting them from Amazon or Ebay

Ah, I assumed you meant brick and mortar stores. Yeah, its pretty hard to compete with Amazon.

I personally like steam a lot.

Aiseant wrote:
Yep, you can have refund, under certain conditions ... but I'm often afraid to ask, since the number of examples of people having their account blocked for sometimes a long time when they're in "negociation" with steam.

In all fairness, I don't think people are going to post their "success" stories. If only 1% of people have trouble getting a refund, but they're the only people who share their experience, how would you know those other 99% of people existed?

Aiseant wrote:
- what when Stem will fall ? Because nothing last forever.

Again, I don't see this happening in the foreseeable future. Steam's business is booming and growing every day. A service like Steam doesn't just disappear overnight - if they ever do go away, there's going to be a massive buildup up to that point. By 'massive,' I mean you'll hear about it years ahead of time. And by that I mean, you'll hear that Steam is going to vanish in a few months, but then they'll continue to exist for years. Games for Windows Live would have vanished years ago if it would know when to go away, and you can't seriously believe a service like Steam to fail to exist when even GFWL pulled that off.

Aiseant wrote:
- we cannot really use our games offline. Yes, somes games just need an internet connection to work, I agree. But a lot doesn't, and it's just Steam which is a pain in ... The so-called offline mode is broken since the beginning and no-one at valve is even trying to fix it. You can play offline only if you switched your account to the offline mode when you were online ... lolwut. Even though, sometimes it doesn't work and you can't know why.

I really don't know what point you're trying to make here... how is the offline mode broken? If you didn't have to sign in at first, then it would mean it's possible for someone to hack into your account. All they would have to do is download your Steam files. Right now, if someone managed to do that, the files would be useless, since they're still protected by your account and password. If they removed the required sign-in, your account would be in jeopardy. And besides, what's the bother in signing in and then going offline? It's not like you find Steam on a disk; you have to download it. And as people love saying on these forums: "It's 2012!"

Aiseant wrote:
- about re-selling your games ... I don't like not having this possibility. But I've to admit I never actually did it before, not with pc games.

Like TheFrozenOne said, you can't blame Steam for this. In his words: It's the nature of the beast. Trying to say Steam is bad because you can't trade in your games is like saying PSN is bad because you can't play with Xbox Live players. It's the only way for things to work, and you can't complain if it inconveniences you - plus, it's a pretty small price to pay, considering the immense conveniences Steam offers.

Aiseant wrote:
On the other side :

- I don't find it more expensive, specially because I buy a lot of game way after their release and steam makes a lot of sales

- I appreciate not having to go through all the troubles of patching and stuff by myself

- I love playing oldies (and without OS problems etc)

- Steam was and is a really good thing for all indies studios, and for the video-game economy in general. It wasn't possible before to have the relation we have now with dev studios, all updates for more materials, all the modding etc. GéG is a good example of that, in fact. Even if there's some excesses with unfinished games, games empty with hundred of charged DLC etc

Steam has made PC gaming easier, and some people love to exaggerate the cost. You can't trade in games, but point me to a store that gives out such frequent and grand sales. Point me to a store that still sells older PC games without marking them up insanely, like sometimes Amazon or Ebay will do. Point me to a service that does these things, and also allows you to play a variety of games without having to open your disk tray, swap disks, close the tray, EVERY time you want to play something else. I understand for some people it sounds like a petty gripe, but when you could play 12 different games in a single day, it really takes you out of the swing of things. Plus, you don't ever risk losing your game disks or installation keys when you buy through Steam.

Aiseant wrote:
I definitively wouldn't say that I hate Steam.



And I've to say ... it's profondly stupid and so, but Steam success is just icing on the cake (even if it's a lie)

The REAPER came today,

An ANGEL walked this gray path,

And took the cube away...

Steam guzzles 200 MB of RAM and 5-10% of my quad core's computing power, and you may not play any games locked to Steam without steam running ... that's memory and CPU power that could instead make your game that much faster and smoother. I much prefer buying through, say, Impulse ... yes, you download through Impulse but after that, you run the game as the game, not an 'app of Impulse' the way every steam game is a 'steam app' that can only be run while steam is running.



Steam also goes through rickety phases, it seems. I've gone through days where I can stream 1080p video on youtube or hulu, no problem, my telnet and instant messaging connections are completely flawless and uninterrupted, but steam disconnects every 10-20 minutes, making playing Endless Space multiplayer inviable some days. Of course its always /my/ connection that gets blamed by steam tech support, despite the fact I have no problem with any other site, and doing speedtest and pingtest shows no problems.

Chibiabos wrote:
Steam guzzles 200 MB of RAM and 5-10% of my quad core's computing power, and you may not play any games locked to Steam without steam running ... that's memory and CPU power that could instead make your game that much faster and smoother. I much prefer buying through, say, Impulse ... yes, you download through Impulse but after that, you run the game as the game, not an 'app of Impulse' the way every steam game is a 'steam app' that can only be run while steam is running.

Steam is also a chat and communication program, so it kind of has to run games as apps. Also, I have Steam running and I'm in four different chats and it's only taking up less than 25MB of RAM, so I'll be led to believe that your setup is an issue here, not Steam.

Chibiabos wrote:
Steam also goes through rickety phases, it seems. I've gone through days where I can stream 1080p video on youtube or hulu, no problem, my telnet and instant messaging connections are completely flawless and uninterrupted, but steam disconnects every 10-20 minutes, making playing Endless Space multiplayer inviable some days. Of course its always /my/ connection that gets blamed by steam tech support, despite the fact I have no problem with any other site, and doing speedtest and pingtest shows no problems.

Yeah, Steam goes through some dark days once in a while where you'll frequently lose connection, although those are very rare and they've seemed to become less frequent in recent times. Also, how does it make ES multiplayer inviable? The ES multiplayer runs through game servers, not Steam servers. At least, I think it does. You should be able to play ES online even if you set yourself to Offline on Steam.

Whatever servers it runs through, it disconnects me from a game, prevents me from seeing games in progress and won't even let me communicate with players.



I don't know where the 'bloat 25 MB to 200 MB' option was during Steam setup, but its the steam app itself guzzling 200 MB according to Windows Task Manager. I prefer playing games with nothing running in the background, but that is disallowed with any steam game.

Chibiabos wrote:
Whatever servers it runs through, it disconnects me from a game, prevents me from seeing games in progress and won't even let me communicate with players.



I don't know where the 'bloat 25 MB to 200 MB' option was during Steam setup, but its the steam app itself guzzling 200 MB according to Windows Task Manager. I prefer playing games with nothing running in the background, but that is disallowed with any steam game.

Both of these sound like installation issues. Generally Steam should only take ~25,000KB of memory. And if the game itself is separate from Steam (as in, it doesn't use Steam servers), it doesn't make sense that there would be a conflict.

Again, unless there's a 'bloat Steam and generate connectivity errors' option I checked during installation, I am not certain what you mean by 'installation issue.' Its a bloated application demanding to run when it shouldn't need to, an overlay serving as a platform on top of an already bloated platform (Windows).

Chibiabos wrote:
Again, unless there's a 'bloat Steam and generate connectivity errors' option I checked during installation, I am not certain what you mean by 'installation issue.' Its a bloated application demanding to run when it shouldn't need to, an overlay serving as a platform on top of an already bloated platform (Windows).

It's bloated for you. Not for everyone. By "installation issue" I mean that I believe there may have been a problem when installing the game - for example, a file got corrupted or something along those lines.

playing offline is in most cases impossible for steam games. (some paradox titles play great and others as well, yes. yet they all depend on getting steam into offline mode in the first place. also a great flaw of steam. and "i never had any problems with offline mode" is not an argument, as a simple google sweep will tell you.

just so for endless space for example. "cannot contact key servers". great.

even though i do have a broadband connection, once in a while it funks out, - steam DRM: fail.

if i get the offline mode to work at all (standard message: "internet required to start offline mode" . hilarious)

and why do i have re-install MS VS basic runtime (or whatever that is) EVERY time i start endless space`? oh my, it must my computer i guess.

friendlydog wrote:
and why do i have re-install MS VS basic runtime (or whatever that is) EVERY time i start endless space`? oh my, it must my computer i guess.

Solution found here; you need to delete the .vdf files.



As for the Steam hate / love, I am sure everybody has their own opinion, and I am not sure this discussion is going anywhere. As for Endless Space and Amplitude, Steam offered great features, especially for an indie game developer launching their first game.

I wouldn't call myself a hater, but I am worried about the potential monopoly steam is becoming.

A reasonable complaint could be that you are tracked and advertised at but if you didnt want that you just shouldnt be on the internet period.