Poll: Steam, how do you feel about it?

[Vault101]

Yes..Steam, as much as I love Valve I'm not too crazy about steam for a few reasons

Some people do not have the luxery of Gigabytes of data at their disposal, internet is expensive and I have limits, and for some reason games need to be "updated" when you buy them retail and install them , F.E.A.R. 2 is the worst example it ate up at least 1.7 gigabyes

and lets not go into the orange box.....theres not much on the cover that indicates you'll have to go through that whole process (download steam make an account then update the fucking thing ect) at least if you don't know about it

so yes I guess steam is great as an oline store and what ever but for some of us its a real inconvenience, I don't mind having to activate stuff online thats fine but I feel sorry for anyone who buys a game without realising all the trouble they have to go through to play it.

So how do you feel about it?

 

[David Bray]

Love it.
Stocks a decent variety of game, no need for product keys and I generally play older games with it so updates aren't an issue. And my experience with updates have been fine. Just standard patches.

 

[HaraDaya]

Since I download with a speed of 1.9mb/s on a good day... It's pretty awesome. I hadn't thought of the people with lousy internet speeds. I think in these days people who actually use the internet for gaming have a decent connection. In Denmark anyways.

 

[khiliani]

I admit i have been a bit taken by steam after i hadto install it for empire:total war, its quite useful as a central point to meet up with friends before working out a game, and the deals are always good

 

[fletch_talon]

Right now I'm pissed because I downloaded the Arcania demo off of them and for some reason cannot play it.
Multiple searches for a fix don't seem to help. In fact, the steam forums keep popping up on google, but the people talking about the demo downloaded it somewhere other than Steam, WTF?

 

[L4hlborg]

Don't really love it, don't really hate it.

Though I did find the installation of Orange box interesting. I recently bought it to play TF2 on pc. There are 2 cds in the package. You use one of them to verify the shit, and the rest of it downloads for 5 or 6 hours. I'm not sure about this, but wouldn't installation from a disc be faster?

 

[anthony87]

Yeah I'm stuck with really shitty bottom-tier internets at the moment so the plethora of updates that come with TF2 and L4D2 piss me off sometimes.

But that's just a consequence of my crap internet, aside from that, I fucking love steam and am looking forward to it hitting the PS3.

 

[Nikolaz72]

Apart from the good deals now and then its a good way to meet people with the same interrests. Valve are really doing something for the community part of steam <_<.

*reads other posts*

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT... WAIT WAIT. Wait...wait.

You people are complaining about getting free stuff through updates and bugfixes worth gigabytes that the companies must have spend thousands of hours making? Wow... simply..wow. -Nikolaz think worlds is getting dumber every day-

 

[Keava]

It makes my spider sense tingle.
I value it as a form of digital distribution however i dislike the fact that in case of some games (more and more each year) it is a required platform to run them. I can understand they would do it for their own titles, but when a third party game forces me to use Steam i feel a bit of my freedom of choice is being taken away.

It's pretty much Windows of digital distribution. You can hate it, but by not using it you are limiting yourself. For now however retail copies are cheaper in my country because Steam asks for those nasty euros as payment. 32.5 euro i pay in shop is a lot less than what Steam wants me to pay.

 

[Tigurus]

I hate their busy servers
But I love there discounts of 75%

Also works better in-game since Xfire is bugging me with graphical issues.

 

[Dana22]

This post is going to be way too offensive, and I'll probably get warned, but people who actually like Steam should be rounded up and shot.

That Avatar fits you well.

Steam is the best thing that happened to gaming since Compact Discs.

 

[random980]

Don't really love it, don't really hate it.

Though I did find the installation of Orange box interesting. I recently bought it to play TF2 on pc. There are 2 cds in the package. You use one of them to verify the shit, and the rest of it downloads for 5 or 6 hours. I'm not sure about this, but wouldn't installation from a disc be faster?

odd when i used the orange box disks to install well... orange box (duh) it only took me about 10 minutes.

as for steam itself i like it but it does have its faults and bugs.

 

[JaysonM]

This post is going to be way too offensive, and I'll probably get warned, but people who actually like Steam should be rounded up and shot.




...sorry.

Agreed, I find Steam glitchy as shit. Those people with slow internet buy games from there retail stores and under the box it says "Internet Connection required". Then you have to jump through hoops installing a game when it also requires you to install 1 gigabyte updates..

It's ridiculous.

 

[Mcupobob]

Love steam, and if you have problems with space stick all your games on a external hardive it's worth the investment.

I have crap Internet so it takes awhile to download but the deals on there make it worth it. I also live 2 hours form the nearest games store and even then the games there are limited so steam becomes even more useful.

 

[Nikolaz72]

This post is going to be way too offensive, and I'll probably get warned, but people who actually like Steam should be rounded up and shot.




...sorry.

Agreed, I find Steam glitchy as shit. Those people with slow internet buy games from there retail stores and under the box it says "Internet Connection required". Then you have to jump through hoops installing a game when it also requires you to install 1 gigabyte updates..

It's ridiculous.

Oh craaap we are getting free content! OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD NO! Get away! We dont want free stuff and your fixes. GO AWAY. HIDE. RUN. DUCK AND COVER!

 

[Vigormortis]

This post is going to be way too offensive, and I'll probably get warned, but people who actually like Steam should be rounded up and shot.
...sorry.

You know. You're right! People that love being able to download their games to any PC at any time (without having to find disks or CD keys), that love being able to play said games online (matchmaking, text/voice chat, hosting) for free, that love getting free timely updates/patches/content, and love getting weekly and even daily sales on great titles SHOULD be dragged outside and shot.

You're avatar seems fitting. Especially as that line of utter illogical drivel is exactly the kind of thing Kim Jung Il would say.

Steam is the best thing that happened to gaming since Compact Discs.

QFT. Pretty much everyone I've ever heard complain about Steam fall into one of two categories;

A: People that have an irrational hate of DRM in any form. No matter the up sides.

or

B: People that have crappy computers, crappy internet connections, or have little to no understanding of the technology involved. The latter being people that don't know how to solve system instabilities that cause issues with Steam or people that can't appreciate the benefits of constant updating and patching.

Is Steam perfect? Hell no. It has issues. The thing is though, Valve is extremely fast at solving known issues. Or, in the very least, providing a very detailed help database to anyone that bothers to look for a fix. I mean, come on, when Left 4 Dead 1 first released, there were a number of significant bugs that impacted gameplay. Within 12 hours, all of those major bugs were fixed. Pretty much every other game dev would take weeks to code and compile a patcher. Even then, you'd have to go online to find that patch and download it.

On a side note. This is...what...the third or fourth Steam related poll in the past week? What gives? I also find it odd (or just stupid) that every poll in these threads so far has consisted of one choice for Steam being great and the rest being some varied degree of how much one hates Steam. There's never an "in-between" option(s).

 

[Dr. Manhattan]

I dunno, it's just evaporated water, what's the big d-...oh that steam.

 

[JaysonM]

This post is going to be way too offensive, and I'll probably get warned, but people who actually like Steam should be rounded up and shot.




...sorry.

Agreed, I find Steam glitchy as shit. Those people with slow internet buy games from there retail stores and under the box it says "Internet Connection required". Then you have to jump through hoops installing a game when it also requires you to install 1 gigabyte updates..

It's ridiculous.

Oh craaap we are getting free content! OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD NO! Get away! We dont want free stuff and your fixes. GO AWAY. HIDE. RUN. DUCK AND COVER!

No, you're wrong. Steam is free in the same way television is free. It's there to advertise products, it gets paid for from the games we purchase. Just like television is paid for by us purchasing products from companies who advertise on television...