Poll: Steam: God's Gift or Piece of S**t

[Dys]

It is only impossible on steam, every other platform manages patches with a more reasonably system. This whole issue is the thing many people (especially people with poor connections) hate most about steam.

Its in part to do with the fact that steam updates as it goes along, installing can make you take a big performance hit, especially if using patchers other than steam. (plus there are ways to persuade steam to d/l while you're playing games other than the one its downloading).

Even with the number of games i own this is an issue so rarely, the fact it keeps everything autoupdated is far more useful to me.

Well, it's an issue that irritates me no end and frequently gets between me and the game I want to play. Installing patches is not a performance hit on any computer capable of playing any game with regular updates on steam, so I don't buy that for a second (the game had to be installed initially at some point, nobody cried about it being a performance whore then). It's poor design, plain and simple, if they must insist on deliberately including such a stupid system, it should be easily disables, much like the windows update, with an option of "download but don't install without first asking" or somesuch.

It's also infuriating when that backups need updating (I know this is a separate topic to that we're arguing, but it's still annoying). I got a new laptop about 3 weeks ago, and to install my fully up to date steam games from my PC using the backup tool, I was required to download 18gb of patches....despite those patches being installed already on the computer where the updates were sourced...stupid system.

A patch these days, using an install shield install like many do, can kill my pcs performance, and thats hard to do to quad core pc.....

You either have a broken hard drive, something whoring your ram or (most likely) some kind of virus. You should probably look into that, my desktop (running a mid range, first gen core2duo) and my fathers computer (running an ancient p4) can both install things, and in the case of my desktop, it can do so while playing crysis, downloading impulse/torrents/firefox client patches and installing steam/impulse actions....Hey, and I might as well throw in a superpi calculation while I'm at it. My point is, that's because there's something horribly wrong with your computer.

 

[tim98042]

personally i think its great and its simple to use. but that's just me.

 

[cyber_andyy]

As far as I'm concerned it's shit.

Care to give us an explanation or are we just taking the minority opinion to look edgy?

Steam revoked my membership stating that I had used something that amounted to cheating online. The thing is I never even play online, I basically only used it for Portal, Halflife 2 and the episodes. Now I can't use any of them. I contacted them about this but they needed information that I don't even have any more (credit card from 4 years ago and/or a receipt) so basically I'm boned because of it.

Thus steam is shit and I refuse to give them a dime more...

Well, obviously you did, or you let someone else use your account. Otherwise they wouldn't have. You get this on the VAC forums, people claiming to never have cheated, but obviously have.

At least, I hope it taught you to keep a hold of receipts and/or credit card details

 

[Ryokai]

I used to HATE it. But then they started making it easy to use and offering games on sale and now I'm hooked.

 

[Antari]

Nuclear power plants use nuclear fuels to heat water, to make steam, to turn turbines and make electricity. Steam is alot more useful than you'd think. Both kinds.

If you deliberately never update, and are pissed off because it wants to update, thats kinda your fault, not Steam's.

You can select in the game properties for it not to update the game, so you will never have to worry about it updating. In the case of a Total War game, as long as you don't play multiplayer this is fine.

When you have 1 game with steam, its a bit of a hassle, when you have over 20. Its extremely handy. And considering the money I've saved on gas by not driving around to stores in the area, as well as the constant sales on Steam. I'd say its the only part of the game community that hasn't been trying to completely screw me over lately. Yes Ubisoft I'm looking at you!

 

[Wolfram23]

I really like Steam. The last game I bought a CD for was BioShock. I do enjoy having a pretty little box to look at and faster installs via CD, but on the other hand, Steam is super convenient and has sales. Plus you can never guarantee finding the game you want at a store, but with digital distribution, bam, it's always there. Also, there's a trend of making shittier and smaller and useless instruction booklets so there's even less reason to buy a physical copy (I used to read manuals... most read being Starcraft and Homeworld).

Not sure why people complain about download speeds, because mine maxes out my 1MB/sec bandwidth. I guess maybe it can't keep up with super duper fast internet... otherwise, people, set your settings properly.

 

[Crapster]

I've been enjoying Steam quite a bit lately, though that could be because the games I play on it tend to be older, and don't need as much updating. The community aspect is kind of fun, as it really makes joining friends in game a good deal easier, and the fact that there are occasional sales and older games means that I'm able to play games that would be difficult to find normally.

 

[Wolfram23]

It is only impossible on steam, every other platform manages patches with a more reasonably system. This whole issue is the thing many people (especially people with poor connections) hate most about steam.

Its in part to do with the fact that steam updates as it goes along, installing can make you take a big performance hit, especially if using patchers other than steam. (plus there are ways to persuade steam to d/l while you're playing games other than the one its downloading).

Even with the number of games i own this is an issue so rarely, the fact it keeps everything autoupdated is far more useful to me.

Well, it's an issue that irritates me no end and frequently gets between me and the game I want to play. Installing patches is not a performance hit on any computer capable of playing any game with regular updates on steam, so I don't buy that for a second (the game had to be installed initially at some point, nobody cried about it being a performance whore then). It's poor design, plain and simple, if they must insist on deliberately including such a stupid system, it should be easily disables, much like the windows update, with an option of "download but don't install without first asking" or somesuch.

It's also infuriating when that backups need updating (I know this is a separate topic to that we're arguing, but it's still annoying). I got a new laptop about 3 weeks ago, and to install my fully up to date steam games from my PC using the backup tool, I was required to download 18gb of patches....despite those patches being installed already on the computer where the updates were sourced...stupid system.

A patch these days, using an install shield install like many do, can kill my pcs performance, and thats hard to do to quad core pc.....

You either have a broken hard drive, something whoring your ram or (most likely) some kind of virus. You should probably look into that, my desktop (running a mid range, first gen core2duo) and my fathers computer (running an ancient p4) can both install things, and in the case of my desktop, it can do so while playing crysis, downloading impulse/torrents/firefox client patches and installing steam/impulse actions....Hey, and I might as well throw in a superpi calculation while I'm at it. My point is, that's because there's something horribly wrong with your computer.

And, you can disable automatic updates. Imagine that.

 

[jpoon]

As far as I'm concerned it's shit.

Care to give us an explanation or are we just taking the minority opinion to look edgy?

Steam revoked my membership stating that I had used something that amounted to cheating online. The thing is I never even play online, I basically only used it for Portal, Halflife 2 and the episodes. Now I can't use any of them. I contacted them about this but they needed information that I don't even have any more (credit card from 4 years ago and/or a receipt) so basically I'm boned because of it.

Thus steam is shit and I refuse to give them a dime more...

Well, obviously you did, or you let someone else use your account. Otherwise they wouldn't have. You get this on the VAC forums, people claiming to never have cheated, but obviously have.

At least, I hope it taught you to keep a hold of receipts and/or credit card details

Think what you want bud, I know I didn't cheat because I just don't do that shit. They simply made the mistake of blaming the wrong guy. The lesson I learned was to simply not use Steam. It's really their loss, not mine.

 

[Dys]

And, you can disable automatic updates. Imagine that.

You most certainly can, and in an amazing "fuck you" to the user that doesn't want or need updates, that option gets reset whenever a steam platform update is required. I'm pretty confident I've already made this point in this thread. Again, fantastic if steam works for you, but even if it did work properly (like impulse, for example), there's absolutely no excuse for it to be a mandatory part of so many games

Please don't patronise me, I assure you I've been using steam just as long (if not longer) than you have, and I'm very, very aware of it's functionality. Which is exactly why I despise the love so many people have for it. It is generally inferior to it's direct competition (in terms of performance, ease of use and general bugginess), yet everyone jumps to defend it. It's undeserved, and very annoying.

 

[Taekwondude]

I like it as it let's me play portal for free on the mac

 

[Riobux]

I find it very good personally. Sure the prices are a bit messed up in the conversion (nice going with the $1 = £1 thing idiots! It never was like that and it wouldn't ever be in the near future), but the convenience is fantastic and it's exposed me to games that otherwise I would of never touched. Oh, and the deals are amazing.

Sure, there's some issues with it like everything, but generally I like it a lot.

 

[TelHybrid]

I like it. It's the only acceptable form of DRM I know of, and the store is handy. Plus the community stuff such as chat and in-game interface and such is very efficient.

 

[cyber_andyy]

this response of course misses the big glaring fucking problem; YOU CAN GET BANNED! No one in their right mind would say it's good that when you buy a game your right to play it can be revoked at any second on the whim of the company. Yet that's exactly what the steam fanboys over look. "But it's not a big deal, it never happens and if it does it'll get resolved" will be the most likely come back, but by the looks of it, jpoon doesn't have his games back now does he? Ignoring that, let's assume for a moment jpoon cheated online, so fucking what? How does that give steam the right to bar him from using software he paid for? Sure they're well within their right to ban him from the server he cheated on, but revoking his online play is wrong, and revoking his single player play is just fucking ridiculous!

Think what you want bud, I know I didn't cheat because I just don't do that shit. They simply made the mistake of blaming the wrong guy. The lesson I learned was to simply not use Steam. It's really their loss, not mine.

haha, your problem is expecting reason from steam fanboys. I find it hilarious that anyone would support such a blatant dick move on Valve's part when they would be screaming bloody fucking murder of MS or Sony or Activision did anything remotely similar. On the bright side, you're now steam free.

What right have you got to cheat and ruin the game for every one? What right do you have to hack their program?

Besides, learn what VAC does. It doesn't ban you from playing online, it bans you from VAC servers You can play online, just good luck finding a non-VAC server. Single player is not affected. People don't like cheaters, it's great they lose their money for cheating.


If your account gets stolen and someone cheats with your account. Then thats your own fault. Valve make it very clear that your account is your responsibility

I'm willing to bet theres more to this story than we know. Or jpoon is exaggerating the details.

Not only that but Valve did give him a chance to clear it up. It would have been sorted. However, jpoon was stupid enough to not keep credit card/receipt details

Go here [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=35] How many of these people didn't cheat huh? Exactly.

Oh and its stupid that they can revoke your games? They can do that with retail In the EULA it says that they have to right to disable the application, or change it and the EULA with out your prior knowledge

If you don't agree with that, stop playing games.

Perfectly reasonable.

 

[tim099]

I dont see how anybody could hate it to be honest.

 

[Baron_Rouge]

How is it possible to hate Steam? Why, just today I got S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl AND Call of Pripyat for the sum total of about $8.50! Amazing!

 

[mad825]

Oh and its stupid that they can revoke your games? They can do that with retail In the EULA it says that they have to right to disable the application, or change it and the EULA with out your prior knowledge

If you don't agree with that, stop playing games.

Perfectly reasonable.

yea, I have always found it fascinating how they would enforce that if the game has no connection to the internet, I thought black magic was the only way.

even then the game can be "refreshed".

 

[blankedboy]

I live in australia, any internet you have pales in comparison to the downright bullcrap that is australias excuse for internet.

And yet, im completely fine with steam updates.

That being said, i dont like the idea of people being forced into steam.

You think Australia's internet is bad, you should see New Zealand.

I'm pretty indifferent about Steam. It used to be good, but now it's so Mac-focused, the new UI is alot more frustrating to get around, it constantly declines my credit card, etc.
But it retains the good ingame chat, community, games, etc. There's not really any need for it when we have Raptr and retail games, though.

 

[Signa]

Steam got knocked off it's high pedestal recently for me with the forced update to Plants Vs Zombies. I set the program to never update and I set a backup, but there still is no way for me to keep my beloved Michael Jackson zombie. I refuse to play the game again until there is a mod/hack that lets me put him back in. I still voted "really good" because with or without forced updates, the program has issues, and it's not 100% flexible. It's just a good 95% flexible, and that's at least 30% more flex than any other service I've seen offer.