steam hate, why?

[NuclearKangaroo]

as we all know steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming, and is almost universally loved for being an all around awesome digital distribution platform... and yet theres still people who hate it for some reason


id like to know why some people hate steam, if you hate steam post your reason(s) of why below, is the service subpar? you hate DRM on principle? let me know





also may the all powerful Gaben have mercy on your souls heretics

 

[Elfgore]

First and foremost, haters will find a way to hate things. It's the way they are. Before the past couple months, most complaints about steam were petty and just excuses to hate them. That changed a couple months ago.

The big issue now is quality control, which steam has almost barely to none of. They let almost any shitty game pop up in store, games that should not be sold. Games that do not work on a majority of computers, yet I see no warning sign on the store page. I have to go out of my way to the forums and see if it works. But say I saw Jade Empire, one of my all time favorite games on sale for five bucks. You bet your ass I'm just gonna buy that. It should work right? I've had that game for seven plus months, have sent several tickets to steam support. They then send me links to annoying and tedious things that I have to do, to make the game work. Which is bullshit!

No other place I know of does this. A broken game from Gamestop, go back in and either get a refund or a new copy. Broken TV from BestBuy, go in either receive store credit or a refund. Steam does none of this. I should not have to fix something I bought from you You need to be the one to fix it steam. And if you can't then give me a damn refund.

Also, I don't hate steam. I just bought LIMBO about twenty minutes ago. But this is really started to piss me off. I bought Spore a couple weeks ago. Doesn't work unless you go into your registry and mess with shit. I shouldn't have to do that. Steam needs to do that. I bought it from them, they need to assure that it works. Let's see some quality control and god forbid some kind of refund system.

Edit: Zachary Amarth reminded me of a huge problem that steam has had pretty much forever. If you live in a location with slow or limited internet, steam is your greatest enemy. A single update for an unknown game, can take about two to three hours. Offline mode back in the day was a POS, so that wasn't an option. You were pretty much screwed. Even if you went out of your way to buy a retail copy.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

First and foremost, haters will find a way to hate things. It's the way they are. Before the past couple months, most complaints about steam were petty and just excuses to hate them. That changed a couple months ago.

The big issue now is quality control, which steam has almost barely to none of. They let almost any shitty game pop up in store, games that should not be sold. Games that do not work on a majority of computers, yet I see no warning sign on the store page. I have to go out of my way to the forums and see if it works. But say I saw Jade Empire, one of my all time favorite games on sale for five bucks. You bet your ass I'm just gonna buy that. It should work right? I've had that game for seven plus months, have sent several tickets to steam support. They then send me links to annoying and tedious things that I have to do, to make the game work. Which is bullshit!

No other place I know of does this. A broken game from Gamestop, go back in and either get a refund or a new copy. Broken TV from BestBuy, go in either receive store credit or a refund. Steam does none of this. I should not have to fix something I bought from you You need to be the one to fix it steam. And if you can't then give me a damn refund.

Also, I don't hate steam. I just bought LIMBO about twenty minutes ago. But this is really started to piss me off. I bought Spore a couple weeks ago. Doesn't work unless you go into your registry and mess with shit. I shouldn't have to do that. Steam needs to do that. I bought it from them, they need to assure that it works. Let's see some quality control and god forbid some kind of refund system.

i definitively agree with that, quality control as in making sure the damn game works


so far i think all my games have run perfectly... except for arkham city for some reason i experience some serious FPS drops in that game to the point is completely unplayable, and graphics settings dont seem to do a damn thing, but that one was a gift

and my friend did have to tweak some stuff to get saints row 3 running on directx 10


besides that i havent had a single problem but i wouldnt want to wait until such thing happens to me to start complaining

 

[ShinyCharizard]

My main issues with Steam are:

1. I really don't like the UI, it's ugly, cluttered, slow and poorly organized.

2. Living in Australia, the prices outside of sales are horrendously bad, and even with sales they usually aren't that great.

3. Download speeds are slow and inconsistent (this is likely a regional problem)

4. It seems every time I open the damn program it needs to update.

5. No quality control anymore, the floodgates have been opened and now it's drowning in shit. I haven't bothered to browse Steam in quite some time.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

yeah the QC has gotten pretty bad, but I don't really go impulse browsing on a whim, if a game is solid I'll probably have heard of it through some forum/news source, so I typically don't run into this problem of buying things that don't work.

Alas OP, while I do agree that steam has to have some sort of QC to make games work on most computers, every person is gonna have a different experience, and if jade empire isn't working on your setup, there is probably some very small thing that's preventing it (such as running quad core instead of dual core, v sync, admin rights, etc..) there are probably 50+ tricks buried in my head of things I try if a game isn't working and I've yet to have it fail on me.(This isn't me defending steam, just defending the idea that you can't expect every single game to work flawlessly on startup. It sucks, but gotta take the bad with the good.)

While DRM is bad, steam's drm has never prevented me from playing a game whenever and wherever I want to, and I actually like the achievements and all that stuff and don't mind the overlay, it is nice to chat with friends and whatnot mid game or send them screenshots. So I don't seem to have the rabies like fury that some people do with DRM, there are probably other reasons involving this but I'm not going continue into it.

and lastly, and probably the most important reason:

Spoiler

 

[MysticSlayer]

Even as someone who loves Steam, there are certain issues with it:

1. They've pretty much thrown quality control out the window. Occasionally, this goes into rather extreme cases, such as them selling games that are provably unplayable yet having nothing more than a chart hidden away from the store page to tell you no one is playing on the servers anymore.

2. It seems to run some form of update every time I try to boot up a game. Even if there isn't actually any update, it still takes approximately 20-30 seconds for it to get past that stage.

3. Rather clunky UI.

4. Valve titles are exclusive to the platform last I checked. (Note: I'm only adding this because people complain about EA making their games Origin exclusive)

5. You need an online connection to validate games you bought on disc (unless they changed this last I bought a game on disc).

6. Some games can't be taken offline. I've also found that some games seem to have a timer that requires a check-in after a specific amount of time ranging from a few days to a few months. Very few games (that I care to play) in my library actually seem to function offline permanently.

7. I've heard a lot of people complain about a key not working.

8. It does come with DRM, which isn't ideal, and with GOG's growing popularity, this is only becoming a more glaring issue.

Those are the ones I can name either from personal experience or from hearing about it from other people's issues (not counting those already mentioned in this thread). Steam might have a lot going for it, and it clearly is among the best services available to PC gamers. However, it isn't perfect, and it does have plenty of issues. Some people just don't think the good aspects of it are worth the other problems that may come with the service.

 

[Olas]

I think people primarily hate Steam because of how big and popular it is. No really. When things become that big and popular many people will happily turn on them almost just out of annoyance with the popularity. Yes, steam has problems, especially as of late, but to criticize it for not being perfect is absurd considering how much it has done well, especially without any precedent before it.

The complaint I hate the most is that Steam is a monopoly. It's not a monopoly, and even if other services didn't exist it wouldn't be Steam's fault that nobody else can or is willing to provide a competitive service. Fact of the matter is there's a very good chance you wouldn't even HAVE any of these other services, at least in their current form, if Steam hadn't come first.

1. I really don't like the UI, it's ugly, cluttered, slow and poorly organized.

Did you now you can install [a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1161035"]skins[/a]? They won't completely change the layout and everything, but some of them at least look nice. I'm using one called Air that has a very clean windows8 look.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I think people primarily hate Steam because of how big and popular it is. No really. When things become that big and popular many people will happily turn on them almost just out of annoyance with the popularity. Yes, steam has problems, especially as of late, but to criticize it for not being perfect is absurd considering how much it has done well, especially without any precedent before it.

The complaint I hate the most is that Steam is a monopoly. It's not a monopoly, and even if other services didn't exist it wouldn't be Steam's fault that nobody else can or is willing to provide a competitive service. Fact of the matter is there's a very good chance you wouldn't even HAVE any of these other services, at least in their current form, if Steam hadn't come first.

1. I really don't like the UI, it's ugly, cluttered, slow and poorly organized.

Did you now you can install [a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1161035"]skins[/a]? They won't completely change the layout and everything, but some of them at least look nice. I'm using one called Air that has a very clean windows8 look.

Hey now that I did not know. Thank you kind sir.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

For me, it's because I'm a retail buyer. As such, I expect to install and play the damn game without requiring an internet connection or some account to a DRM service. Once upon a time, I could buy a game, put in the disk, install and then play it off the pop. Now there's all this DRM shit to sift through, like Steam, Origin, Uplay and GFWL. True, it's a minor annoyance at best, and I don't really hate it as I've learned to put up with it, but I certainly have no love for it and wish the compulsory nature would just go away. If they gave people a choice to use these services, it'd be fine, but now many games, retail or not, require them to run. That's what pisses me off the most.

 

[Signa]

Some people don't like being forced into using things. I also prefer to buy my products as physical copies if I can.

Thankfully, DD has brought games to such an affordable price, I don't mind "renting" them for the pittance that I pay.

 

[Something Amyss]

as we all know steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming

Wait, what? Surely you're taking the piss.

Before the past couple months, most complaints about steam were petty and just excuses to hate them.

Wait, so broken games (which predated the past couple of months, as has the quality control issue), DRM (sometimes multiple layers of unlisted/extra DRM), control of media, monopolistic behaviour, and a no-refunds-ever* policy were just petty? Because those were most of the reasons.

Oh, and the fact that so many games require you to use Steam for physical copies. But then, I see retail fans get attacked for their preference of purchase venue by Steam fans, so this may be considered "petty" after all.

This does seem representative of the overall attitude shift towards Steam, though. A year ago when people complained about broken games it was "so what? MY games work." Now it seems like it's "this suddenly affects me....Steam has a new problem!"

3. Download speeds are slow and inconsistent (this is likely a regional problem)

No, Yanks and Europeans have complained a lot about the same. I usually don't care when I'm DLing a game because I've never bought a game that I absolutely had to play NOW!!!!!!!!!! so I have limited frame of reference, but my Xbox downloads games faster (when talking about similar-sized games).

 

[DementedSheep]

I love the sales on steam and like not having to screw about with a disk or worry about it getting scratched.
I don't like having my games linked to one account that could potentially be terminated or lost, how much of the DD market they have, having it running in the background when playing, having to log into multiple things if something is sold on steam plus tied into something else and I don't like feeling like I'm being monitored even for stuff like playtime. Quality control for games is a bit shit especially since greenlight came in and the community severs are shit. Whether or not its lets you stay in offline when you don't have internet or requires you to connect first can be a bit finicky. If I bought a physical copy I don't like being forced to link it to steam.

Note: I still like steam. I get games on it cheap enough that its worth the drawbacks. It's just not all great.

 

[Sarge034]

as we all know steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming, and is almost universally loved for being an all around awesome digital distribution platform... and yet theres still people who hate it for some reason


id like to know why some people hate steam, if you hate steam post your reason(s) of why below, is the service subpar? you hate DRM on principle? let me know





also may the all powerful Gaben have mercy on your souls heretics

As someone who actually hates steam I might be of more use than those trying to speak for me.

It boils down to five main parts.

1) Required for hard copies- Not too hard to understand that if I have physically bought a disk then why the fuck do I have to download a third party DRM service to play it?

2) The issue of ownership- You don't own anything you buy through steam or use steam to run (see above). They can take everything away if you get banned, if the servers were to crash, or if Valve went out of business.

3) The fucking hypocrisy- You'll see PC gamers be the first ones to rub DRM practices in console users faces (mostly the pre-180 Xbone) but steam does many of the things the pre-180 Xbone wanted to do. They will ***** incessantly about Origin/UPlay/GFWL/ and then go on to rant and rave about how good steam is. Steam is DRM like the rest.

4) Steam is resource sucking spyware- Steam has to be task managered to death and is used to data mine all types of information from your rig, peripherals, and programs you have running.

5) Steam has no respect for their customers- Just look at the broken shit they sell or better yet, how much power they give to developers on the game's steam page. Remember when the devs went through and were deleting bad reviews for what ever the latest shit game was?

Capatcha I am here
Yes I know you're on my computer steam and I'm very angry because of it.

 

[Razuli]

Even as someone who loves Steam, there are certain issues with it:

5. You need an online connection to validate games you bought on disc (unless they changed this last I bought a game on disc).

I'm pretty sure they've changed it now so that you enter the product key in when you install and it will validate the next time you have an internet connection (and in online mode, of course.

OT: Like the others above, I'd say it has a lot to do with poor quality control, lack of physical copies, and DRM. I haven't really had a problem with any of these since I don't buy many games, I like not having to worry about CDs, and I've never really had a problem with the DRM steam uses.

 

[FrostyFinn]

1) Required for hard copies- Not too hard to understand that if I have physically bought a disk then why the fuck do I have to download a third party DRM service to play it?

Wait, so if I go to my local retailer, buy a PC game off the shelf, go home and plop it in my disc drive, it won't let me play the game I payed for without installing steam and getting the OK?

Is there a little Steam emblem on the box at least to warn me? How many and what kinds of games have this restriction?

4) Steam is resource sucking spyware- Steam has to be task managered to death and is used to data mine all types of information from your rig, peripherals, and programs you have running.

Could you please elaborate on this? Or post a link so I can read up on this?

 

[Caiphus]

1) Required for hard copies- Not too hard to understand that if I have physically bought a disk then why the fuck do I have to download a third party DRM service to play it?

Wait, so if I go to my local retailer, buy a PC game off the shelf, go home and plop it in my disc drive, it won't let me play the game I payed for without installing steam and getting the OK?

Is there a little Steam emblem on the box at least to warn me? How many and what kinds of games have this restriction?

4) Steam is resource sucking spyware- Steam has to be task managered to death and is used to data mine all types of information from your rig, peripherals, and programs you have running.

Could you please elaborate on this? Or post a link so I can read up on this?

It's actually rather common:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_using_Steam_authentication

I think there usually is a warning on the box somewhere. I never buy physical copies, so I'm not certain. A google image search returns this, though:

Spoiler

And I think Sarge is mainly talking about the Steam Hardware Survey in his second point. Reasonably benign, but some people take issue with it*. I think you can decline to take part? Not sure.

Anyway, I don't particularly have a problem with either of those, since, again, I never buy really buy physical copies to begin with (although I might start now that I've learned about nzgameshop). I've been frustrated by Steam's lack of quality control and punishing refund policy for a while now, though.

*And I'm not judging them; some people take privacy more seriously than I do.

 

[teebeeohh]

How is it steams fault that you have to register physical copies?
It's the devs decision to tie their game to steam, you don't have to do that to sell your game on steam.

I don't mind the lack of QC as much but they have to do something about the store page, early access and rereleases of old shitty games do not belong on the same page as actual new titles.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

As someone who actually hates steam I might be of more use than those trying to speak for me.

It boils down to five main parts.

1) Required for hard copies- Not too hard to understand that if I have physically bought a disk then why the fuck do I have to download a third party DRM service to play it?

2) The issue of ownership- You don't own anything you buy through steam or use steam to run (see above). They can take everything away if you get banned, if the servers were to crash, or if Valve went out of business.

3) The fucking hypocrisy- You'll see PC gamers be the first ones to rub DRM practices in console users faces (mostly the pre-180 Xbone) but steam does many of the things the pre-180 Xbone wanted to do. They will ***** incessantly about Origin/UPlay/GFWL/ and then go on to rant and rave about how good steam is. Steam is DRM like the rest.

4) Steam is resource sucking spyware- Steam has to be task managered to death and is used to data mine all types of information from your rig, peripherals, and programs you have running.

5) Steam has no respect for their customers- Just look at the broken shit they sell or better yet, how much power they give to developers on the game's steam page. Remember when the devs went through and were deleting bad reviews for what ever the latest shit game was?

Capatcha I am here
Yes I know you're on my computer steam and I'm very angry because of it.

Jim Sterling made a video about why PC gaming gets away with DRM charmingly called "why PC gaming gets away with it"

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7586-Why-PC-Gaming-Gets-Away-With-It


however im still gonna address some of the points here

1) i can understand how this can be problematic, theres no real reason for devs to do this, other than to make it easy to update one single version of the game and have feature parity as well as saving time thanks to the services steam provides, things like cloud saving and achivements

2) i think this is overly paranoid, steam has existed for 10 years, we've heard the same "if valve goes out of business your games are gone" argument for 10 years now, thats probably more than a physical copy of my 140 games on steam wouldve lasted, also steam does not restrict access to your library if you ever get banned. plus Gabe Newell has given his word he would disable Steam's DRM if Valve ever went backrupt, and i trust the man

3) its not hypocrisy, you cant possibly compare a ridiculous DRM box that required you to call microsoft every single day so it wouldnt fucking unplug your console, i can set steam to offline mode from now until the heat death of the universe and i will still be able to play my games, oh and heres the real kicker, microsoft wanted to CHARGE YOU 60 BUCKS FOR THE FUCKING PRIVILEDGE. plus steam offers tons of features that services like xbox live/GFWL/Origin/Uplay dont, things like cloud saving, achivements, sales, steam workshop, community features, steam market, trading, family sharing, in-home streaming, big picture mode, etc, all for free

4) you can OPT OUT of hardware survey thing, i never do but ive seen the option

5) why do you make stuff up?

http://store.steampowered.com/reviews/

read the FAQ about deleting reviews, developers cant do it


in fact lets pick a particulary bad game, Garry's incident, the dev has been known to be involved in shady stuff in order to hide their failure of a game, from inflating the metascore to taking down totalbiscuits video about it

http://store.steampowered.com/app/242800/

the page is chock full of negative user reviews


Valve is in my opinion one of the most pro-customer developers around, providing DRM that instead of making the customer jump through hoops adds value to their games, it has allowed people with extremly limited budget like me, acquire games legally, theyve given out free games in the past and keep updating steam with new features regularly, they also allow content creators profit off their effort

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=440&browsesort=trend
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=570&browsesort=trend
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=730§ion=mtxitems

hell they've given part of their split of the sales to the developers of the software modelers use and they let the modelers decide how to split this amount

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/06/27/steam-workshop-now-lets-creators-give-back-to-their-supporters/

they had literally no reason to do that other than indirectly support their fans and content creators



i can understand if you are agaisnt DRM just cause of principles, but man, dont fabricate stuff

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

as we all know steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming

Wait, what? Surely you're taking the piss.

Before the past couple months, most complaints about steam were petty and just excuses to hate them.

Wait, so broken games (which predated the past couple of months, as has the quality control issue), DRM (sometimes multiple layers of unlisted/extra DRM), control of media, monopolistic behaviour, and a no-refunds-ever* policy were just petty? Because those were most of the reasons.

Oh, and the fact that so many games require you to use Steam for physical copies. But then, I see retail fans get attacked for their preference of purchase venue by Steam fans, so this may be considered "petty" after all.

This does seem representative of the overall attitude shift towards Steam, though. A year ago when people complained about broken games it was "so what? MY games work." Now it seems like it's "this suddenly affects me....Steam has a new problem!"

3. Download speeds are slow and inconsistent (this is likely a regional problem)

No, Yanks and Europeans have complained a lot about the same. I usually don't care when I'm DLing a game because I've never bought a game that I absolutely had to play NOW!!!!!!!!!! so I have limited frame of reference, but my Xbox downloads games faster (when talking about similar-sized games).

how is it Valve's fault devs want to make a DRM sandwich with their games, developers dont have to put say securom or Uplay on top of Steamworks, hell Steamworks isnt even required, Valve sells tons of DRM-free games, most old games on steam are actually DRM-free

stuff like Commandos 2 and i think System Shock 2 as well

also how media control? monopolistic behaviour? do you know what any of that means, its not like there are no other digital distribution platforms and in fact if Gabe Newell is to be trusted (of curse he fucking is) Valve encourages devs to publish their games on as many platforms as possible, they arent forcing devs to do jackshit, when you see stuff like microsoft's "release parity" if they were ahead of the market, thatd be a blatant monopolistic behaviour, what we see here is a platform that manages to generally satisfy the needs of both developers and customers, therefore most developers and customers go to steam to publish their games, thats not a monopoly, thats simply some damn quality service

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Just wait until Steam randomly breaks one of your games with an update. Then you get to do the fun dance of submitting a ticket, being told to contact the developer because it's not Steam's fault (includes developers who are now defunct, wahey), venting your frustrations with other people on the forums who all have the exact same problem, keeping the ticket open because the issue isn't solved, being told to do things you've already done like verifying game files and restarting Steam etc.

On balance I find Steam has worked well enough, but their customer support is pathetic.