Steam and its DRM

[Skelebob124156]

What's your problem with Steam?

I thought I'd come back to this. The list is long and the reasons are many but I'll pull up a recent event as an example.

About 3 weeks ago I finally upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. So of course I had to wipe my hard drive, only saving a few GB of personal files on an external hard drive.

I decided to give Steam another chance, the internet loves it, it has a bunch of deals I could take advantage of, and my Steam friends list of people I actually speak to grew from 3 to 5.

So I downloaded Steam, installed it all, logged in and got ready for Dawn of War 2 and Empire: Total War.

Don't screw this up Steam, and all is forgotten.

5 minutes into Dawn of War 2 installation, 'The Steam servers are too busy to handle your request right now. Try again later'.

So my disc based copy of Dawn of War 2 can't install because your servers are on the fritz? Oh joy...

Then again with Empire: Total War. Clicked install, a few seconds later. 'Downloading Empire: Total War'. Wait why? Why are you downloading 4GB worth of stuff when the disc is in the tray?

Steam and me obviously do not get along, I'd much prefer to use other platforms or just have my copy run from disc.

Exactly! If you buy a game on disc the game should be on the disc and not on a server i the middle of nowhere. Why can't people buy one of these ridiculous "Steam only" games on disc and not have to suffer Steam? valve will still get money but steam should be purely optional and for those with good internet connections. Steam is annoying gamers with no or bad connections.

Too late now, but you should know - Steam makes your games effectively portable. You can back up all of your games by backing up your entire Steam directory on an external drive, do your format/reinstall/upgrade, reinstall Steam, and copy the saved Steam directory back over the Steam installation.

And Everything Works (save for the game I once had to do a "check local files for errors" on - it redownloaded 1 file and was good to go).

DRM issues aside, that fact that Steam makes your games portable is the reason I use it. I just took my Steam games drive out of my higher-end gaming computer, put it in a USB 3.0 external drive, and packed it along with my gaming-capable laptop so I could play while visiting my family. When I get back, I'll put it back into the gaming machine and neither machine will have the slightest problem with these actions

You could do that with a disc anyway, copy your saves to a external storage drive/ pen drive/ whatever and install the game from disc onto another PC, install any patches to the correct version and away you go. (The only problem would be if a developers patch invalidated previous saves but fortuantly there arne't many games which do that).
OR if you want a downloaded game you can buy it from GOG.Com any just copy the install .exe and your save folder (All GOG games are pre-patched to the latest version).
So you get pretty much the same portability but without the DRM!

 

[w00tage]

What's your problem with Steam?

I thought I'd come back to this. The list is long and the reasons are many but I'll pull up a recent event as an example.

About 3 weeks ago I finally upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. So of course I had to wipe my hard drive, only saving a few GB of personal files on an external hard drive.

I decided to give Steam another chance, the internet loves it, it has a bunch of deals I could take advantage of, and my Steam friends list of people I actually speak to grew from 3 to 5.

So I downloaded Steam, installed it all, logged in and got ready for Dawn of War 2 and Empire: Total War.

Don't screw this up Steam, and all is forgotten.

5 minutes into Dawn of War 2 installation, 'The Steam servers are too busy to handle your request right now. Try again later'.

So my disc based copy of Dawn of War 2 can't install because your servers are on the fritz? Oh joy...

Then again with Empire: Total War. Clicked install, a few seconds later. 'Downloading Empire: Total War'. Wait why? Why are you downloading 4GB worth of stuff when the disc is in the tray?

Steam and me obviously do not get along, I'd much prefer to use other platforms or just have my copy run from disc.

Exactly! If you buy a game on disc the game should be on the disc and not on a server i the middle of nowhere. Why can't people buy one of these ridiculous "Steam only" games on disc and not have to suffer Steam? valve will still get money but steam should be purely optional and for those with good internet connections. Steam is annoying gamers with no or bad connections.

Too late now, but you should know - Steam makes your games effectively portable. You can back up all of your games by backing up your entire Steam directory on an external drive, do your format/reinstall/upgrade, reinstall Steam, and copy the saved Steam directory back over the Steam installation.

And Everything Works (save for the game I once had to do a "check local files for errors" on - it redownloaded 1 file and was good to go).

DRM issues aside, that fact that Steam makes your games portable is the reason I use it. I just took my Steam games drive out of my higher-end gaming computer, put it in a USB 3.0 external drive, and packed it along with my gaming-capable laptop so I could play while visiting my family. When I get back, I'll put it back into the gaming machine and neither machine will have the slightest problem with these actions

You could do that with a disc anyway, copy your saves to a external storage drive/ pen drive/ whatever and install the game from disc onto another PC, install any patches to the correct version and away you go. (The only problem would be if a developers patch invalidated previous saves but fortuantly there arne't many games which do that).
OR if you want a downloaded game you can buy it from GOG.Com any just copy the install .exe and your save folder (All GOG games are pre-patched to the latest version).
So you get pretty much the same portability but without the DRM!

Re the first part, yeah but the problem is with all the installs, time, DRM license activations (or failure to activate) - the method I described has none of those problems. So you are FREE from all of the problems of DRM, installs, etc. I friggin love how easy it is.

On the GOG thing, I haven't checked it out, but I like how you say it works. But... I've already bought games from Steam. Does GOG do like Steam does and allow you to import your games into their system?

 

[Skelebob124156]

What's your problem with Steam?

I thought I'd come back to this. The list is long and the reasons are many but I'll pull up a recent event as an example.

About 3 weeks ago I finally upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. So of course I had to wipe my hard drive, only saving a few GB of personal files on an external hard drive.

I decided to give Steam another chance, the internet loves it, it has a bunch of deals I could take advantage of, and my Steam friends list of people I actually speak to grew from 3 to 5.

So I downloaded Steam, installed it all, logged in and got ready for Dawn of War 2 and Empire: Total War.

Don't screw this up Steam, and all is forgotten.

5 minutes into Dawn of War 2 installation, 'The Steam servers are too busy to handle your request right now. Try again later'.

So my disc based copy of Dawn of War 2 can't install because your servers are on the fritz? Oh joy...

Then again with Empire: Total War. Clicked install, a few seconds later. 'Downloading Empire: Total War'. Wait why? Why are you downloading 4GB worth of stuff when the disc is in the tray?

Steam and me obviously do not get along, I'd much prefer to use other platforms or just have my copy run from disc.

Exactly! If you buy a game on disc the game should be on the disc and not on a server i the middle of nowhere. Why can't people buy one of these ridiculous "Steam only" games on disc and not have to suffer Steam? valve will still get money but steam should be purely optional and for those with good internet connections. Steam is annoying gamers with no or bad connections.

Too late now, but you should know - Steam makes your games effectively portable. You can back up all of your games by backing up your entire Steam directory on an external drive, do your format/reinstall/upgrade, reinstall Steam, and copy the saved Steam directory back over the Steam installation.

And Everything Works (save for the game I once had to do a "check local files for errors" on - it redownloaded 1 file and was good to go).

DRM issues aside, that fact that Steam makes your games portable is the reason I use it. I just took my Steam games drive out of my higher-end gaming computer, put it in a USB 3.0 external drive, and packed it along with my gaming-capable laptop so I could play while visiting my family. When I get back, I'll put it back into the gaming machine and neither machine will have the slightest problem with these actions

You could do that with a disc anyway, copy your saves to a external storage drive/ pen drive/ whatever and install the game from disc onto another PC, install any patches to the correct version and away you go. (The only problem would be if a developers patch invalidated previous saves but fortuantly there arne't many games which do that).
OR if you want a downloaded game you can buy it from GOG.Com any just copy the install .exe and your save folder (All GOG games are pre-patched to the latest version).
So you get pretty much the same portability but without the DRM!

Re the first part, yeah but the problem is with all the installs, time, DRM license activations (or failure to activate) - the method I described has none of those problems. So you are FREE from all of the problems of DRM, installs, etc. I friggin love how easy it is.

On the GOG thing, I haven't checked it out, but I like how you say it works. But... I've already bought games from Steam. Does GOG do like Steam does and allow you to import your games into their system?

No, but like Steam you can redownload all your games as many times as you wish and nearly all GOG games include bonuses such as soundtracks, wallpapers, avatars etc (in fact with Broken Sword 1 they used the Directors Cut edition, which some Users did not like, GOG responded by adding the original version in as a bonus!) and I forgot to mention they also have, like Steam, regular sales in which whole catalogues can be reduced by 50% (or 30% off an individual game) these sales happen usually every week or so. You really should check it out, they have 4 free games on offer so yo can try out their system. (Beneath a Steel Sky, Lure of the Temprtress, Teenagent and Tyrian 2000)

And for the former part of your reply, the only disc install time problem I have had is with Company of Heroes (almost 3/4 of an hour) and as long as you have cracks for games which have DRM (this can also mean you don't have to insert the disc each time you play(I have bought these games legally and only crack them so I don't ruin my disc)) you can beat DRM much more easily. And Steam still uses DRM so unfortunatly you are never free of DRM from them.(Which is why I don't like Steam, the only part of Steam I trually like is the multiplayer service which is exceptional).