Steam a service or marketing rape tool?

Trioxic

Is Steam a handy dandy service for downloading games or a savvy marketing tool for the gaming industry? I have never used Steam but I would like to hear what people think of it. 

[Mod Edit]

heavyhebrew

Handy dandy service, for me. For some, especially people who like holding a box for a game...not so much.

uquipu

Are you walking bowlegged, Trioxic?
.

SevenOmatic

I like to have boxes and manuals... and not pdf manuals...

Trioxic

Originally posted by uquipu

Are you walking bowlegged, Trioxic?

.

They don't call me tripod for nothin.... 

Comnitus

I just got TES: Oblivion + SI expansion + all DLC for $8.50 on sale (no, I actually haven't played Oblivion yet, but now I regret waiting so long... but I don't, because I just got a $40+ value for $8.50) through Steam. Their sales are short, typically only a weekend, but they're more than worth it in my opinion. They were trying to promote the new Fallout Vegas game and also had Fallout 3 (most super elite deluxe edition) on sale for about half the price. Plus they've had free CoD:MW2 and TF2 multiplayer weekends.

Typically sales are for less popular or older games, but they had Dawn of War II Gold Edition (original game + Chaos Rising expansion) for half the price a few weekends ago. In fact, the weekend after I bought the thing for $40. That made me slap myself for not waiting another week.

If it's rape, I like it.

Bait12

Steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming in my opinion. I've purchased all my PC games from Steam since maybe 2008. I like having all my games in one spot where I can download/uninstall them whenever I want. Installing them from the disc may be faster, but I'm not THAT impatient about things. Steam sales are also the greatest thing ever.

noob2Epic

I actually really like Steam. Especially some of the sales they have. I've gotten some big name games for $2-$10 when they were still up in the $20+ range. Mainly The Last Remnant.

I also like having game cases, but I don't mind the sacrifice sometimes.

In my experience I've had no issues with Steam. It has the social aspect, friends, games, deals, achievements, etc... But it may not be for everyone. If anything, at least download it in December, near Christmas, and check into their holiday sales.

steelrain666

Its really nice to have every game in one spot... steam is great to chat with your friends and see who's playing what.

sulthar

But you have it now not tomorow when the shops opens

great deals also .... they have awsome reductions on good games

synn

i personally like steam. You can buy the game thru them or just activate a store bought game thru their app. It also allow me to just download games i already had without needing to reinput cd key(when you buy/build a new comp/laptop) which does save alot of hassle especially if you misplace the game and/or key.

alakram

Originally posted by Trioxic

Is Steam a handy dandy service for downloading games or a savvy marketing rape tool for the gaming industry? I have never used Steam but I would like to hear what people think of it. 

I love steam, I think is one of the best game services right now. Just a matter of opinion of course.

kirawats

I find Steam is pretty handy because it keep all the record of the games I have brought with them, save my configuration of the game in the cloud, you can download and install the game on any computer in the world without the need to carry discs with you, and achievement is kinda fun to collect.

Apart from that, it's kinda annoying when I want to play game I have to run Steam first. It require to check game key online first, but you can play offline afterward. It seem like other DRM from retail games start to do this as well. I feel sorry for people who doesn't have access to the Internet to register their serial number.

There also backup option that it will split the game files into chunks that will fit on multiply DVD.

It's easy to uses, that's what I like about it. Just pay for the game, download, and play. I never used Direct2Drive, though, so I can not compare how these two service doing. Oh, and I find Steam games often cheaper than buy a retail box also.

I still a bit concern what would happen when Steam system goes down, though. Will I still be able to play the games I brought?

Chessack

Originally posted by kirawats

Apart from that, it's kinda annoying when I want to play game I have to run Steam first. It require to check game key online first, but you can play offline afterward. It seem like other DRM from retail games start to do this as well. I feel sorry for people who doesn't have access to the Internet to register their serial number.

This is exactly why I will never use Steam again, nor buy any game that requires me to use it. My one experience with Steam was with Half-Life 2 and Portal (the "orange box"). Steam came with them, and even though I had bought the box offline and had no interest in playing HL2 online, the game still forced me to install Steam, and forced me to run Steam each time I wanted to play it. This meant that once or twice when the 'net went down, even though I bought the disks offline, I could not play the game offline, and I had to wait until the 'net recovered. To play a game offline when I own the disks??

That is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

Look, I get as annoyed as the next guy at having to put the damn CD or DVD into the drive when I own a game, just to have it verify that I own it. But that is a million times more preferable to me than an online verification being required before I can play.  It's not that I don't have the 'net connected most of the time -- I do. But why the heck should I have to online-verify a game every single time I play?  Why should I have to boot up Steam at all, since I bought the game in a box and I did not DL any portion of it? Why should I allow Valve (the makers of Steam) and whoever else they share data with to spy on me?

And beyond that, when I finally got tired of HL2, which I didn't really like that much (I'm not a big FPS fan), and finished Portal, and decided to uninstall them, and uninstall Steam, I found that Steam could not correctly do any of that. It ran the uninstall routine but then crashed and bugged out, and after that it kept saying the software could not be uninstalled because it was not installed. I even tried a full reinstall, but it broke again on the uninstall attempt. After hours trying to unsuccessfully clean it all up by hand, I ended up having to go out and buy a registry cleaner to wipe Steam, HL2, and Portal completely from both the HD and the registry.

That, too, is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

So now... my rule is: if it requires Steam, I don't buy it. Period.

Kind of like my rule that I won't buy or subscribe to SOE games.

C

Trioxic

Originally posted by Chessack

Originally posted by kirawats

Apart from that, it's kinda annoying when I want to play game I have to run Steam first. It require to check game key online first, but you can play offline afterward. It seem like other DRM from retail games start to do this as well. I feel sorry for people who doesn't have access to the Internet to register their serial number.

This is exactly why I will never use Steam again, nor buy any game that requires me to use it. My one experience with Steam was with Half-Life 2 and Portal (the "orange box"). Steam came with them, and even though I had bought the box offline and had no interest in playing HL2 online, the game still forced me to install Steam, and forced me to run Steam each time I wanted to play it. This meant that once or twice when the 'net went down, even though I bought the disks offline, I could not play the game offline, and I had to wait until the 'net recovered. To play a game offline when I own the disks??

That is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

Look, I get as annoyed as the next guy at having to put the damn CD or DVD into the drive when I own a game, just to have it verify that I own it. But that is a million times more preferable to me than an online verification being required before I can play.  It's not that I don't have the 'net connected most of the time -- I do. But why the heck should I have to online-verify a game every single time I play?  Why should I have to boot up Steam at all, since I bought the game in a box and I did not DL any portion of it? Why should I allow Valve (the makers of Steam) and whoever else they share data with to spy on me?

And beyond that, when I finally got tired of HL2, which I didn't really like that much (I'm not a big FPS fan), and finished Portal, and decided to uninstall them, and uninstall Steam, I found that Steam could not correctly do any of that. It ran the uninstall routine but then crashed and bugged out, and after that it kept saying the software could not be uninstalled because it was not installed. I even tried a full reinstall, but it broke again on the uninstall attempt. After hours trying to unsuccessfully clean it all up by hand, I ended up having to go out and buy a registry cleaner to wipe Steam, HL2, and Portal completely from both the HD and the registry.

That, too, is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

So now... my rule is: if it requires Steam, I don't buy it. Period.

Kind of like my rule that I won't buy or subscribe to SOE games.

C

So, what you are saying is I cannot run a game on my pc off line with out  permission from Steam? If Steam servers are down then what do you do? 

 

Comnitus

Originally posted by Trioxic

Originally posted by Chessack

Originally posted by kirawats

Apart from that, it's kinda annoying when I want to play game I have to run Steam first. It require to check game key online first, but you can play offline afterward. It seem like other DRM from retail games start to do this as well. I feel sorry for people who doesn't have access to the Internet to register their serial number.

This is exactly why I will never use Steam again, nor buy any game that requires me to use it. My one experience with Steam was with Half-Life 2 and Portal (the "orange box"). Steam came with them, and even though I had bought the box offline and had no interest in playing HL2 online, the game still forced me to install Steam, and forced me to run Steam each time I wanted to play it. This meant that once or twice when the 'net went down, even though I bought the disks offline, I could not play the game offline, and I had to wait until the 'net recovered. To play a game offline when I own the disks??

That is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

Look, I get as annoyed as the next guy at having to put the damn CD or DVD into the drive when I own a game, just to have it verify that I own it. But that is a million times more preferable to me than an online verification being required before I can play.  It's not that I don't have the 'net connected most of the time -- I do. But why the heck should I have to online-verify a game every single time I play?  Why should I have to boot up Steam at all, since I bought the game in a box and I did not DL any portion of it? Why should I allow Valve (the makers of Steam) and whoever else they share data with to spy on me?

And beyond that, when I finally got tired of HL2, which I didn't really like that much (I'm not a big FPS fan), and finished Portal, and decided to uninstall them, and uninstall Steam, I found that Steam could not correctly do any of that. It ran the uninstall routine but then crashed and bugged out, and after that it kept saying the software could not be uninstalled because it was not installed. I even tried a full reinstall, but it broke again on the uninstall attempt. After hours trying to unsuccessfully clean it all up by hand, I ended up having to go out and buy a registry cleaner to wipe Steam, HL2, and Portal completely from both the HD and the registry.

That, too, is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

So now... my rule is: if it requires Steam, I don't buy it. Period.

Kind of like my rule that I won't buy or subscribe to SOE games.

C

So, what you are saying is I cannot run a game on my pc off line with out  permission from Steam? If Steam servers are down then what do you do? 

 

When you launch a game bought through Steam, you launch it through Steam. Steam connects to your account (through the Internet) to access the data. I assume you can play the game offline once it's launched, but I have my Internet connected all the time so I'm not 100% sure on that. Sounds like Chessack used an earlier version of Steam (buggy and broken) because I've never had the problems he described with any Steam game. I'm sure he won't play Assassin's Creed II for PC or any other game with similar DRM, and it looks like the newer Total War games are going through Steam.

His loss.

As for the servers,  they haven't gone down yet; I've seen them support 2.5 million people at once (Valve added a concurrent user tracker when they overhauled the UI).

No service is perfect, but I think Steam is worth it. I'm just waiting for it to break down on me so I can have a horror story as well.

lornphoenix

Back when I got Half Life 2, I hated Steam... An hour install from a disc, another for to unlock.

I live on the East Coast, bought the game at mid-night, so iirc I had to wait until 3am for it to start the unlock process.

It wasn't fun experience... I pretty much then was about never use steam or buy a vavle game again.

I've warmed up to Steam, over time, as the service got better.

Nice being able just re-download my game without having to find the disc, or having re-enter the cd-key.

Tho there are some get you still have to input the cd-key manually, and usually those are Game of Windows live titles.

 

 

drkoracle

Steam is amazing, auto-updates and no dvd's to break or loose + after a reinstall just login and install what you like and they have some amazing specials.

Im going to go one step further and say that steam and services like it are the future of PC gaming, as consoles push our games off store shelves developers need a place to sell there wares, and steam delivers. Also a gr8 platform if your a small indy developer and need a place to introduce your game.

PC Gaming needs to evolve, and steam is a step in the right direction, most stores put PC games at the back with little to no shelf space, catering to the console masses instead and tbh thats fine, they need to make money but we need games too and where the stores have failed us, steam steps up.

Its not  perfect, you need a broadband connection thats always on, and a decently fast one doesn't hurt, but you have to take the bad with the good, Im on a 50mbit line so its fantastic, never buy a boxed game anymore unless its not available on steam or D2D.

Trioxic

Originally posted by drkoracle

Steam is amazing, auto-updates and no dvd's to break or loose + after a reinstall just login and install what you like and they have some amazing specials.

Im going to go one step further and say that steam and services like it are the future of PC gaming, as consoles push our games off store shelves developers need a place to sell there wares, and steam delivers. Also a gr8 platform if your a small indy developer and need a place to introduce your game.

PC Gaming needs to evolve, and steam is a step in the right direction, most stores put PC games at the back with little to no shelf space, catering to the console masses instead and tbh thats fine, they need to make money but we need games too and where the stores have failed us, steam steps up.

Its not  perfect, you need a broadband connection thats always on, and a decently fast one doesn't hurt, but you have to take the bad with the good, Im on a 50mbit line so its fantastic, never buy a boxed game anymore unless its not available on steam or D2D.

I have bought games from Direct 2 Drive but I don't have to log in to there service every time I want to play the game, it makes me wonder what tracking stats Steam is collecting? Time played, type of games you like, how many games a year you play and buy? And if I want to play an off line game can I play it or do I have to ask Steam for permission first ? 

lornphoenix

Originally posted by Trioxic

Originally posted by Chessack

Originally posted by kirawats

Apart from that, it's kinda annoying when I want to play game I have to run Steam first. It require to check game key online first, but you can play offline afterward. It seem like other DRM from retail games start to do this as well. I feel sorry for people who doesn't have access to the Internet to register their serial number.

This is exactly why I will never use Steam again, nor buy any game that requires me to use it. My one experience with Steam was with Half-Life 2 and Portal (the "orange box"). Steam came with them, and even though I had bought the box offline and had no interest in playing HL2 online, the game still forced me to install Steam, and forced me to run Steam each time I wanted to play it. This meant that once or twice when the 'net went down, even though I bought the disks offline, I could not play the game offline, and I had to wait until the 'net recovered. To play a game offline when I own the disks??

That is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

Look, I get as annoyed as the next guy at having to put the damn CD or DVD into the drive when I own a game, just to have it verify that I own it. But that is a million times more preferable to me than an online verification being required before I can play.  It's not that I don't have the 'net connected most of the time -- I do. But why the heck should I have to online-verify a game every single time I play?  Why should I have to boot up Steam at all, since I bought the game in a box and I did not DL any portion of it? Why should I allow Valve (the makers of Steam) and whoever else they share data with to spy on me?

And beyond that, when I finally got tired of HL2, which I didn't really like that much (I'm not a big FPS fan), and finished Portal, and decided to uninstall them, and uninstall Steam, I found that Steam could not correctly do any of that. It ran the uninstall routine but then crashed and bugged out, and after that it kept saying the software could not be uninstalled because it was not installed. I even tried a full reinstall, but it broke again on the uninstall attempt. After hours trying to unsuccessfully clean it all up by hand, I ended up having to go out and buy a registry cleaner to wipe Steam, HL2, and Portal completely from both the HD and the registry.

That, too, is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

So now... my rule is: if it requires Steam, I don't buy it. Period.

Kind of like my rule that I won't buy or subscribe to SOE games.

C

So, what you are saying is I cannot run a game on my pc off line with out  permission from Steam? If Steam servers are down then what do you do? 

 

Once you have signed into steam while you computer is online and downloaded or installed you game, if you internet drops or the steam servers are down, you can restart steam in offline mode.

As long as you were signed in to steam you can restart your account... doesn't matter if you computer was turned off, if there is not internet connection or steam is down. you can restart in offline mode.

Before you had to switch to offline mode before hand, but not anymore.

I still take issue with the fact steam has to running,to run the game, but that is minor compared to benefits it gives.

Professor78

With increasing broadband speeds Steam is a godsend for me. I used to like collecting boxes and having something physical. But my attention span with games is not the greatest, so I tend to install them for a day or 2 and not play for months, so they get uninstalled.

So Steam lists the games you have, installed or not, and if i fancy playing one, it will download and be installed much faster than I can rummage through and finding the box and changing dvd's cd's. Rarely use dvd drive nowadays.

Just wish all my collection could be on steam.

As a second for me, knowing what games friends have and play is great.

Oh,  third, great puchasable cheap collection packs of games at times on the steam offers!

xaldraxius

Originally posted by Trioxic

Originally posted by drkoracle

Steam is amazing, auto-updates and no dvd's to break or loose + after a reinstall just login and install what you like and they have some amazing specials.

Im going to go one step further and say that steam and services like it are the future of PC gaming, as consoles push our games off store shelves developers need a place to sell there wares, and steam delivers. Also a gr8 platform if your a small indy developer and need a place to introduce your game.

PC Gaming needs to evolve, and steam is a step in the right direction, most stores put PC games at the back with little to no shelf space, catering to the console masses instead and tbh thats fine, they need to make money but we need games too and where the stores have failed us, steam steps up.

Its not  perfect, you need a broadband connection thats always on, and a decently fast one doesn't hurt, but you have to take the bad with the good, Im on a 50mbit line so its fantastic, never buy a boxed game anymore unless its not available on steam or D2D.

I have bought games from Direct 2 Drive but I don't have to log in to there service every time I want to play the game, it makes me wonder what tracking stats Steam is collecting? Time played, type of games you like, how many games a year you play and buy? And if I want to play an off line game can I play it or do I have to ask Steam for permission first ? 

 Information like that is a hot commodity. I imagine they can make some good money selling that info to other software development companies. Saves them from having to do expensive surveys. Plus they've got your name, phone number, address, email... I know my inbox is spamorama, so they must be selling info to somebody.

Trioxic

Originally posted by lornphoenix

Originally posted by Trioxic

Originally posted by Chessack

Originally posted by kirawats

Apart from that, it's kinda annoying when I want to play game I have to run Steam first. It require to check game key online first, but you can play offline afterward. It seem like other DRM from retail games start to do this as well. I feel sorry for people who doesn't have access to the Internet to register their serial number.

This is exactly why I will never use Steam again, nor buy any game that requires me to use it. My one experience with Steam was with Half-Life 2 and Portal (the "orange box"). Steam came with them, and even though I had bought the box offline and had no interest in playing HL2 online, the game still forced me to install Steam, and forced me to run Steam each time I wanted to play it. This meant that once or twice when the 'net went down, even though I bought the disks offline, I could not play the game offline, and I had to wait until the 'net recovered. To play a game offline when I own the disks??

That is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

Look, I get as annoyed as the next guy at having to put the damn CD or DVD into the drive when I own a game, just to have it verify that I own it. But that is a million times more preferable to me than an online verification being required before I can play.  It's not that I don't have the 'net connected most of the time -- I do. But why the heck should I have to online-verify a game every single time I play?  Why should I have to boot up Steam at all, since I bought the game in a box and I did not DL any portion of it? Why should I allow Valve (the makers of Steam) and whoever else they share data with to spy on me?

And beyond that, when I finally got tired of HL2, which I didn't really like that much (I'm not a big FPS fan), and finished Portal, and decided to uninstall them, and uninstall Steam, I found that Steam could not correctly do any of that. It ran the uninstall routine but then crashed and bugged out, and after that it kept saying the software could not be uninstalled because it was not installed. I even tried a full reinstall, but it broke again on the uninstall attempt. After hours trying to unsuccessfully clean it all up by hand, I ended up having to go out and buy a registry cleaner to wipe Steam, HL2, and Portal completely from both the HD and the registry.

That, too, is flat-out unacceptable in my book.

So now... my rule is: if it requires Steam, I don't buy it. Period.

Kind of like my rule that I won't buy or subscribe to SOE games.

C

So, what you are saying is I cannot run a game on my pc off line with out  permission from Steam? If Steam servers are down then what do you do? 

 

Once you have signed into steam while you computer is online and downloaded or installed you game, if you internet drops or the steam servers are down, you can restart steam in offline mode.

As long as you were signed in to steam you can restart your account... doesn't matter if you computer was turned off, if there is not internet connection or steam is down. you can restart in offline mode.

Before you had to switch to offline mode before hand, but not anymore.

I still take issue with the fact steam has to running,to run the game, but that is minor compared to benefits it gives.

You don't feel that Steam is Big Brother looking over your shoulder and watching everything you do while gaming? Has any one watched the packets on there pc to see what Steam is sending or is it that no body cares or are they simply what they say they are a helper in getting games and playing games with no strings attached? I am just curious because I have heard a few things but since I have never installed the app I am not all too sure I need it. 

 

Proson

Steam is great, ive never had any problems with it. I dont think there is any problems playing offline games while offline, but im not 100% sure as im always connected

 

But its great to have all your games in one place, and you have them with you forever when you get a new PC or when your at friends even etc. I got a steam account like 6 months ago, now i have like 20 games on it ^^

NightCloak

I love Steam.

If I am getting screwed then I am willingly grabbing my ankles. Its not rape.

 

Love the sales and love the ability to move computers and play all my games without bringing discs.

drkoracle

The big brother issue doesn't bother me, what is the worst thing they could possibly do ? Tell game developers what I like to play... good maybe then ill get more games I like ^^. Xfire, Xbox Live etc all do the same.

From there Privacy Policy:

"Collection and Use of Information

By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.



"Aggregate information" is information that describes the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of users as a group but does not describe or reveal the identity of any particular user."

So they will tell game developers what users like to play, and how long they play, but they wont give out your personal details, like email etc. I have no problem with that at all, if anything it can only improve future games.