Like PC Gaming? Don't buy from Steam.

[MrHide-Patten]

Wow, all mad that Vavle tricked you into giving them your lunch money?
Came here expecting a scathing indightment against Steam or something, some form of hard hitting controversy, not this fluff. Join for the Gamergate stuff OP and felt like venting other petty grievances?

 

[verdant monkai]

Steam is a bit of a flea market in some areas. I bought Vampire the masquerade for £10 and it just won't even run. There are no patches or any form of official help. So fuck you Steam.

To be fair tho most of the time Steam is a pretty good service.

 

[SadisticFire]

I'm pretty sure you just pressed the wrong button. My purchase of the fallout collection went through just fine, and I'm now the pride owner of most, If not, all fallout games. Really though, some screenshots of the recipe would be nice. Be sure to blackout the serial number.

Off note:typing on a mobile device takes a lot of patience and is not for long nails >.>

 

[Rattja]

Like many of you out there, I used to love going on to Steam every week to see what sales they were offering. However, I can safely say now that no one should buy from steam. On the 20th of September, Steam offered Fallout Classic Collection for sale on their homepage for $2.49, supposedly including Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics. It's sad to say, but this was simply a ruse to steal money from their customers while not giving the promised product. Indeed, those who purchased the package, believing that they were getting 3 games, instead were charged the full amount and received only Fallout 2. Now, this could just be passed by as a mistake, a simple oversight on Steam's part, however Steam has made no effort to respond to tickets on this issue. Simply criminal. Like PC gaming? Don't buy from Steam till they fix the way they treat customers!

Just because I am in that kind of mood today, I kinda have to ask you some questions.

Fist, is this your general attitude to everything? If so how are you still alive if you stop doing something the moment something goes wrong.

Have you never encountered a technical bug before? Because this is exactly what it looks like.

Do you know for a fact that it was deliberate? You simply don't know that, and since that offer is no longer there it seems to be already fixed, which also indicates that it may have been a mistake/bug.

Has this happened to you multiple times? A one time $2.49 loss hardly seems like a reason to lose your shit over, heck most of us have lost way more that on the street.

I am by no means a "steam fanboy" whatever that means, it's simply the best avilable option at this time for me, and have yet to have any problems with it, and I will keep using it until that changes.
All I want here is for people to stop and think about the situation before going on a tantrum and demanding other people to do what they want.
If you don't want to buy there anymore, by all means, but telling other people to stop because of your little incident is a bit much don't you think?

 

[DoPo]

Steam is a bit of a flea market in some areas. I bought Vampire the masquerade for £10 and it just won't even run. There are no patches or any form of official help. So fuck you Steam.

Activision are in charge of that, not Steam. I'd blame them. And if you say "Oh, but it's Steam who offer the game in their store, it's their responsibility to ensure it works" - no. GameFly was the first DD service to offer Bloodlines. To be precise, it was Direct2Drive before GameFly bough that. At any rate, they don't have official support, nor do any other retailer. The official support is supposed to come from official source, i.e., the developer or publisher. The developer is, thanks to Activision, not available. So it falls to Activision. Guess how much exactly have they done[footnote]0[/footnote]. What they have done is capitalize on the fact that other people do support[footnote]as a bonus, it's completely free for Activision![/footnote] and decided to offer Bloodlines on Steam.

At any rate, did you try installing the Unofficial Patch [http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4647/63013]? I'm guessing the error you're getting is "Less than 15MB of RAM available" (or something to that effect) which the UP fixes.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

Steam is a bit of a flea market in some areas. I bought Vampire the masquerade for £10 and it just won't even run. There are no patches or any form of official help. So fuck you Steam.

Activision are in charge of that, not Steam. I'd blame them. And if you say "Oh, but it's Steam who offer the game in their store, it's their responsibility to ensure it works" - no. GameFly was the first DD service to offer Bloodlines. To be precise, it was Direct2Drive before GameFly bough that. At any rate, they don't have official support, nor do any other retailer. The official support is supposed to come from official source, i.e., the developer or publisher. The developer is, thanks to Activision, not available. So it falls to Activision. Guess how much exactly have they done. What they have done is capitalize on the fact that other people do support as a bonus, it's completely free for Activision! and decided to offer Bloodlines on Steam.

Ugh. When did consumers become such willing victims?

Steam are the middle-man retailer, hence can we at least agree that they have a passing responsibility to make sure the items they are selling actually work, as advertised on their own Steam Store pages? Yeah, it's totally Activision's fault for discontinuing needed support of a product while they still continue to sell it, but that does not absolve Steam of blame in the process.

 

[verdant monkai]

Steam is a bit of a flea market in some areas. I bought Vampire the masquerade for £10 and it just won't even run. There are no patches or any form of official help. So fuck you Steam.

Activision are in charge of that, not Steam. I'd blame them. And if you say "Oh, but it's Steam who offer the game in their store, it's their responsibility to ensure it works" - no. GameFly was the first DD service to offer Bloodlines. To be precise, it was Direct2Drive before GameFly bough that. At any rate, they don't have official support, nor do any other retailer. The official support is supposed to come from official source, i.e., the developer or publisher. The developer is, thanks to Activision, not available. So it falls to Activision. Guess how much exactly have they done[footnote]0[/footnote]. What they have done is capitalize on the fact that other people do support[footnote]as a bonus, it's completely free for Activision![/footnote] and decided to offer Bloodlines on Steam.

At any rate, did you try installing the Unofficial Patch [http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4647/63013]? I'm guessing the error you're getting is "Less than 15MB of RAM available" (or something to that effect) which the UP fixes.

Hey thanks man! I'll give it a go.

To be fair though Steam could do something like link the patch up or something, I left a complaint about it and they've done fuck all.

 

[DoPo]

hence can we at least agree that they have a passing responsibility to make sure the items they are selling actually work, as advertised on their own Steam Store pages?

Actually, it works exactly as advertised on their own store page. Exactly. Yes, it doesn't say you can't run it with more than 3 gig RAM[footnote]If you go over the threshold where you need 64 bit addressing, then the game can't handle it and that's when you get the "Less than 15MB of RAM" error.[/footnote] but it doesn't say you can either. In fact, the supported operating systems are

Microsoft® Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP*

* Does not support Windows XP 64

Taken straight from the, oh so misleading page that actually states right there that there is no support for more system RAM it can handle. Yes, the very store page you claim is misleading you is...not.

Oh, but of course the page doesn't say that if you have an Intel chipset you may as well roll a die to find out if it'd work or not...but an Intel chipset is not listed as a requirement. The requirement clearly states

3D hardware accelerator card required - 100% DirectX® 9.0c-compatible 64MB video card and drivers

and the Intel chipsets are notorious for missing features and thus being unqualified.

The game does work when presented with the correct conditions. Trouble is, it's really damn picky if you deviate away and we're not in 2004 any more.

At any rate, there is no misinformation presented on the store page. Or maybe you have something we call "evidence" or maybe "not lying"? Didn't think so.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

hence can we at least agree that they have a passing responsibility to make sure the items they are selling actually work, as advertised on their own Steam Store pages?

Actually, it works exactly as advertised on their own store page. Exactly. Yes, it doesn't say you can't run it with more than 3 gig RAMIf you go over the threshold where you need 64 bit addressing, then the game can't handle it and that's when you get the "Less than 15MB of RAM" error. but it doesn't say you can either. In fact, the supported operating systems are

Microsoft® Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP*

* Does not support Windows XP 64

Taken straight from the, oh so misleading page that actually states right there that there is no support for more system RAM it can handle. Yes, the very store page you claim is misleading you is...not.

Oh, but of course the page doesn't say that if you have an Intel chipset you may as well roll a die to find out if it'd work or not...but an Intel chipset is not listed as a requirement. The requirement clearly states

3D hardware accelerator card required - 100% DirectX® 9.0c-compatible 64MB video card and drivers

and the Intel chipsets are notorious for missing features and thus being unqualified.

The game does work when presented with the correct conditions. Trouble is, it's really damn picky if you deviate away and we're not in 2004 any more.

At any rate, there is no misinformation presented on the store page. Or maybe you have something we call "evidence" or maybe "not lying"? Didn't think so.

And yet some people with systems that meet the stated requirements to run the game can't run it at all without the fan patch. You're welcome to go browse a wide variety of forums for proof if you don't believe me. At the very least, Valve should be forcing Activision to list the fan patch as a "possibly required" component in order to play Vampire.

My point still stands.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

I find it extremely funny that most, if not all, of you were up in arms and extremely angry over the Xbox One always online DRM thing.... While Steam does this (though they offer that offline mode for more than 24 hours) and you all laugh and let them continue it. Steam can Take Games directly from your steam library. They've done so in the past.

People tend to praise Steam as this great thing. I call it the Great Steam DRM Machine. There have always been reasons to not use steam... but what happened was a bug and isn't one of those reasons.

"steam and xbox one are exactly the same! except they arent but my argument still stands"

seriously? are you comparing a console that had to call home every 24 hours unless you want a $500 brick, to a service that can function offline indifinitely?

not to mention "They've done so in the past"? when? ive yet to find an unjustified case of valve deleting games from someone's library

also for all the "hassle" steam DRM brings (which is next to none), the service provides a shit ton of benefits, like achivements, matchmaking, trading, trading cards, badges, community features, screenshots, easy modding, cloud saving, deep sales, free 2 play games and even free games sometimes

also its free and it doesnt have ads

finally Steamworks IS NOT MANDATORY, is up to the dev to include DRM or not, there are many games being sold on steam that, once bought, can be played without opening steam

your comparison is beyond flawed

 

[Trude]

383 purchases without a single error, misstep or wrongful charge. I think I'll take my chances.

 

[DoPo]

You're welcome to go browse a wide variety of forums for proof if you don't believe me.

You're welcome to actually provide that proof. Burden and all that. I've been troubleshooting problems people have had with Bloodlines for years now, and I've yet to see anybody who has the exact recommended specs and can't run the game. The problem is that people don't have the exact specs as it's a really narrow window in a really wide range of options. As I said, Bloodlines is really damn picky when it comes to environment.

Also, I find your claim that there are really that many people who are, apparently, using machines still running 32bit XP rather hard to believe. Do you have any, you know, proof? Because, you know, burden again.

 

[Dragonbums]

Unfortunately OP I would like to see some proof of this fraud taking place ala screenshots or links to threads showcasing such screenshots because I'm pretty damn sure that if something like that were to happen on Steam people would blow the fuck up over it and it would certainly make headline news.


AS for the last part, avoiding Steam is hard. It's not like computer game CD's are even a thing anymore outside of like Walmart and Target and according to some people- even THEN you need to register it on Steam to play. Yeah you got alternatives, but make no mistake that Steam has a vice grip on the PC market. Until people stop falling for Steam sales and support alternative stores en masse what your hoping for isn't going to happen OP.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I bought Gothic 3 a few months back for a similar price and couldn't get it working at all, but for that small amount of cash - barely half a lager in the pub -, and the fact that it's very rare it happens too (if it is indeed Steam's fault at all), then I don't think it's worth worrying about tbh.

 

[MercurySteam]

Has one bad experience, vows to never use Steam again and tells everyone to do the same - seems legit. I think some people just should just avoid PC gaming altogether.

 

[Ratty]

Given the option I always go with Gog. Steam has had crappy tech support for a long time, and unlike Gog they don't ensure that all their games will actually work before releasing them. Sometimes there's little choice though as some of the small obscure games you can find on steam are very difficult to find elsewhere at a reasonable price. Time to get a desura account maybe?

That was a pretty shitty deal they gave you. But if you're going to get mad at Steam though I suggest you do it for their fostering of the "early access" model.

 

[communist gamer]

I dont get you guys, Steam gives you two gigantic sales a year, hundreds minor sales through out the year. You have a library that you can install on any PC and have instant access to all your games. Not only that, but it also gives you access to mods FOR FREE, all you got to do is enter the workshop. You have a forum system, a friend system, and a group system which allows you to play online game with your friends easily. Games are pached automatically, and instead of running to your nearest game shop which might by a minute away from you or if you are like me takes around 30-40 minutes to get to. I know that it has crapy customer support and supports the whole "early access" thing but by god if not for steam i would of had given up on PC gaming a long time ego, and look at me now, im a proud member of the PC master race. The only games that i had problems with were V:TMB, some free to play games, and TAoVH. And you know how i fixed those? Googled it, found a forum, downloaded a patch and installed the patch. Wuala, game fixed. In fact if not for Steam the Indie game market would never become what it is today. Origin and Uplay are and never will be as good as Steam. GoG has far less games, but indeed i use GoG from time to time. Stop bitching and crying that Steam has destroyed PC gaming when you apparently have no idea how much of a problem PC gaming was even 7 year ego, at a time when if you saw a game that needed steam support you kept the fuck away from it because Steam was useless and extremely instable

 

[Snotnarok]

Ah, well there ya go thank you for clearing that up. I've never had issue with offline mode and such. Seems steam ..and Origin are full of myths that haven't been right.

Yeah. Unfortunately, there are near constant smear campaigns running throughout the gaming community that perpetuate misinformation on Steam, Origin, Uplay, GoG, etc. I personally know some people that still think Steam requires a constant internet connection to function at all.

It seems, as is often the case with the internet, it's easier to just assume the worse and preach it as true rather than do the research and see how things actually are. Such a shame so many still think such patently false things about any one of those platforms. Even this very forum sees the same old half-truths and untruths being perpetuated.

Glad I could clear it up a bit for you, though.

The one thing that baffles me is steam is free, free chat, free online play, free etc etc. My friend who has a bunch of consoles keeps trying to rope me into PS+ saying "You get free games!" ...when you don't, you get basic features that others get free and then the games? You pay for them with the subscription. It's like saying Netflix has free movies and shows, they don't it's a thing you pay for.

There's a LOT of misunderstandings with digital rights. There really needs to be better communication, better laws and better representation of what you're offered, getting and paying for.

If that makes any sense.

 

[A.K.B.]

unfortunately I don't think you can escape steam

unless its EA or Ubisoft a lot of physical PC games come with steam

you can always buy from GOG ....
and even if _ as of now _ not all the games that must be available are so ....
constant support can change that .....
STEAM currently is unrivaled, and as long as that goes it could plant dildos in your chairs and probably everyone would keep their mouths shut because it is the only _ and arguably, the most pocket-friendly _ option ....
this could only be changed if there was a competitor service to steam .....

 

[Vigormortis]

The one thing that baffles me is steam is free, free chat, free online play, free etc etc. My friend who has a bunch of consoles keeps trying to rope me into PS+ saying "You get free games!" ...when you don't, you get basic features that others get free and then the games? You pay for them with the subscription. It's like saying Netflix has free movies and shows, they don't it's a thing you pay for.

There's a LOT of misunderstandings with digital rights. There really needs to be better communication, better laws and better representation of what you're offered, getting and paying for.

If that makes any sense.

Oh, it does. It makes plenty of sense.

Truth is, even here in the States, digital, trademark, and copyright laws are a mess. There's really not much else to it. They're muddled, confusing, and even contradictory.

Almost all aspects of law in reference to those three are in desperate need of an overhaul.