Hardware Analysis Community Forums http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/ 2008-08-20T07:25:57-05:00 http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/ http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/halogo.gif text/html 2007-10-22T09:07:15-05:00 DublinGunner http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#515209 Bond, its not discrimination - its called a license agreement, incorporating terms of use.<br /> <br /> text/html 2007-10-22T05:58:59-05:00 Bobby http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#515192 Bond, this thread died about a year ago... text/html 2007-10-22T05:34:02-05:00 Kieran Blenkarne http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#515189 Steam has and continues to work fine for me...and my flatmate, and my brother.<br /> <br /> So I dunno...gutted for you. text/html 2007-10-22T05:30:00-05:00 Bond Jur http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#515188 Buy instead games like Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. Our CSS clan has been disbanded and moved on to COD2 and the upcoming COD4. Not every company can ride their wave and kill their loyal customers Valve is doing.<br /> <br /> You buy the license, you are supposed to be able to use it. Not some crazy Cold War mentality of segregation and total racism / discrimination. <br /> <br /> One clan member bought his CSS set while on a holiday in Taiwan or Thailand. The box says &quot;not to be sold outside of Taiwan/Thailand&quot; - and yes it was sold inside there. Correct. He bought in inside that country. Never did it mention that the game cannot be played in Siberia, Nigeria, Sweden or Australia. Nada.<br /> <br /> Why - oh if we bought a bar of Kit Kat in the JFK airport, and then flew to London. By the time we get to London &quot;the wrapper shrinks up and pops up a note&quot; not to be consumed in England!! Crazy discrimination. <br /> <br /> Let's watch &quot;V for Vendetta&quot;. Stop buying Valve games. Stop buying Half Life 2. Stop buying Counter Strike Source. CSS Sucks 100%.<br /> <br /> We all moved on to COD4. I am still able to play Call of Duty (Version 1) in anywhere when i travel on holiday yearly on my laptop computer. <br /> <br /> Call of Duty 4 (and 10 other FPS games) RULES.. Valve Steam simply sucks 100%! <img src="http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/smilies/smile17.gif" width="14" height="14" border="0" alt=">:o" title=">:o"> text/html 2007-01-01T02:27:10-05:00 A_Pickle http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#467954 I think Steam is a brilliant <i>idea</i> in content and media protection, but... I feel that there are still so many menially trivial problems that need to be fixed. I don't have problems with it, but my friend can't play Half-Life: Source in Offline Mode, and he shouldn't have to use some ridiculous work-around just to get it to work. <br /> <br /> Valve needs to sort Steam out, badly. text/html 2007-01-01T01:48:45-05:00 sovietdoc http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#467951 I love CS:S and HL2 but is it just me or with every other &quot;update&quot; they make CS:S worse and worse? Kinda like EA. Take their recent change to cs &quot;dynamic weapon pricing.&quot; Not only they made deagle cost $5000, but when they were forced into reseting the price, they just HAD TO mess with the rest of the pistols making more of them more powerful and etc. If you mess with the game like that, it makes it very hard for the good players to play it. We get used to certain settings and we play perfecting them, but when they changed weapon prices, power, and mouse sensitivity, that just F***ed the community up! text/html 2007-01-01T01:35:26-05:00 Jeff Smith http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#467947 First of all, I am a VERY DISSATISFIED Valve customer. I could care less about gaming over the internet. I found and purchased Counterstrike Condition Zero (CS-CZ)at our local Wal-mart and that is a fun, although now a bit monotonous game to play. I have been playing it every now and then for about 2 years now. That's a decent time killer - so not a big deal with it.<br /> <br /> Having been somewhat satisfied with CS-CZ, I purchased Half life (HL), supposedly rated very high by several magazines. I cannot remember how I was able to play it, but I did play it and I liked it.<br /> <br /> The one thing I will say is that it required &quot;steam&quot; to be able to play it and I live in a fairly rural setting and my options are dial-up and satellite. The Sat is a bit pricey for my needs now. In order to download the sizes of files required for steam, it took me a very long time and I realized that must be the reason that I didn't try to play HL again is that it was very inconvenient for me to download all the files.<br /> <br /> This very night (New year's eve), I purchased Half life 2 at Wal-mart. I brought it home and it would not register on my CD-DVD ROM. It was if there was not a disc in it at all. I drove 15 minutes one way to exchange my new game for another. I brought the new one home, it still did not work. I then searched the www for this problem. It appears for the last 2 years since the game has been out, there have been hundreds of people to have this same problem that is apparently without a solution.<br /> <br /> Time is precious. I shouldn't have to work any harder than opening a package, put it into my CD/DVD ROM drive, load it and start playing. THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED!!!<br /> <br /> I fired up steam - they wanted nearly 4 GIGS of space on my hard drive in order to run their stinking game! 4 GIGS! The hard drive on my laptop is 20 GIGs, of which I barely have 4 available.<br /> <br /> Wal-mart will not refund opened software. It simply will not. I have not found any address or customer support for VALVE games to obtain a refund. Therefore, VALVE, steam, sierra, vivendi, et. al. have STOLEN MY MONEY since they fail to offer anything in exchange for it.<br /> <br /> I will NEVER, EVER purchase a game from this group of companies again.<br /> <br /> So, in conclusion, yes, I TOTALLY AGREE that STEAM SUCKS!!! text/html 2006-08-16T08:15:53-05:00 john doe http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#439007 Steam is the dictator game developers dream remove the middleman and tech support directly from the the company and make the general public give each other support . This my friend is valves main goal with steam other than hiding undectable maleware inside your system when you openly trustingly allow them to download and install anything they want at anytime your connected to steam without any say in the matter , and as steam has posted in the agreement that they force everyone to agree too steam is not viruse/spyware free or safe from attack from a hacker , you either agree to WTF ever they want to do to you or don't bother messing with their software .<br /> Now blizzard and many other game companies do not force their will on players like this , you can install older versions of patches for other games and connect via tcp/ip , but not with steam .<br /> It's either valves way or the highway let us A**f*$k you all we want or your not allowed to use our broken infected software that we control you &amp; your games with . Did you know that you cannot turn steam off 100% completely ???? I bet the steam lovers prolly already knew this but never bothered to mention it before . yes you can turn it off on your task bar but steam has a nice little hidden registry setting that allows valve's &quot;steam&quot; to use your pc has a p2p content server to dl updates from to save them money . OPPS they didn't tell you did they ? I would post the registry setting but when you set it to off , steam will just turn it right back on . <br /> Steam updates alot we all know this , but have you noticed how often steam &quot;DOESN'T WORK&quot; and how steam brakes most of the time after the updates and you lose favorites or your friends list , and/or get version errors / or mem dumps . and go try to ask for help in the steam forums , them retards will say &quot; it's your pc / or / you have spyware / or / you need a better connection / you don't have enough ram / doesn't really matter what the problem is they NEVER EVER admit it may just be steams fault or steam has problems , their almighty software must be damn perfect to run so flawlessly on every single computor they touch . <br /> I was told last year right before I uninstalled the POS software from every pc I have and vowed to never use buy/or afiliate myself with valve or steam again . that my p4 3ghz with a gb dd2 400 mhz ram with 10mbs cable with my gf7 series video card just wasn't enough to run steam ,I needed a better connection and upgraded pc to make steam run properly . well beings I had just 1 thing other than windows xp sp2 installed on the pc from a fresh full wiped format on clean install was steam and my steam games , I just for the life of me could not see where the steam &quot;moderator&quot; was comming from . except that he needs to remove his head from his A** and leave the forums because he was far from being any help to anyone . <br /> <br /> Steam is useless it's a waste of time and does not do anyone except valve any good the policy for dealing with them is to just uninstall steam and not reinstall it this will wake them up after they start losing enough people to relize people are leaving and not buying their spam . text/html 2005-02-17T14:49:20-05:00 Rild Silverlok http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#242978 &quot; This whole bitching at Valve's Steam system has been sorted out long ago, with exactly the same answers that have been touted here, ie, piles to begin with, but getting better.&quot;<br /> <br /> Adam brown you are blind . <br /> <br /> Direct distribution is good .<br /> <br /> What Valve is doing is not good . <br /> <br /> Remember direct distribution is about removing the middle man ( and the attendant cost and quality issues that arise from said middle men ).<br /> <br /> There is NO COST DIFFERENCE between Valve's retail and internet distribution on HL2 . WHY?<br /> <br /> Is it possibly because Vivendi ( you known middleman for not just games but movies and porn and....) had something to say about it AND is able to sit quietly in the shadows ( while valve takes all the heat ) observing VERY CLOSELY and with great interest the draconian implimentation of a content AND USER &quot;management&quot; system with a price point equal to that of retail ? hmmm, can't imagine how the market research gained from this outing of Valve's could possibly benefit a HUGE distributor of content oriented products (like movies , porn , etc,etc) , ...oh ,wait ,yes I can . <br /> <br /> And I have news for you regarding: &quot; This whole bitching at Valve's Steam system has been sorted out long ago, with exactly the same answers that have been touted here, ie, piles to begin with, but getting better.<br /> If anyone needs to cast a critical eye over Steam, I think it should be someone with a little more foresight than someone who's just plain annoyed at one part of the software.&quot;<br /> <br /> Valve , a company that has ( in the past ) represented itself as 'for gamers by gamers' , routinely kicks ( as in removes ) threads from their official forums ( labeling them troll threads ) when the threads are either merely discussing or asking valve to address any of a number of the severe issues ( both technical and 'political ') raised by FrankenSteam (like the fact that you lose the licsence to all the older valve games you have installed on your machine ) . Based on steams intrusive nature it is causing still major problems with fire walls . <br /> <br /> How is that 'getting better' or 'sorted out' ? In fact how can you classify it as anything other than utter contempt for gamers? <br /> <br /> If you are going to try and lob a high handed reference at &quot;someone(s) with(out) a little more forsight&quot; you might first want to check to see if those hands you are lobbing with are attempting to pound sand with ham fists .<br /> <br /> Oh yeah and Blizzard , even though they are fallen into the shadow , have done such a superior job in handling their distribustion and initial customer problems that one Cannot even compare valve and Blizzard in the same class ( how Blizzard handles it's transfere of ownerships rights ( as in on resale ) will be an interesting thing to pay attention to ). <br /> <br /> One final Thing . The sales numbers for HL2 DO NOT REFLECT PEOPLE'S ACCEPTANCE OF STEAM . Do not confuse rush of hype and momentum generated by ONE of the MOST POPULAR franchises ever when it releases it's only NEW PRODUCT IN FIVE YEARS for acquiescence to a crappy distribution/suscription model . <br /> <br /> The p**s poor treatment of gamers, and the draconian nature of Frankensteam do not detract from the quality of the CONTENT OF HL2 . That is the thing selling games , in a way steam is a new form of cyber terrorism : one cannot play HL2 (legally) without dancing to ExACTLY the tune Valve plays . Let's just see where valve and more importantly Steam is five years from now . text/html 2005-02-16T19:04:51-05:00 Ben McIntire http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#242664 Blizzard's <a class="ext" target="_blank" href="/action/r/http://battle.net">battle.net</a> pwnz the shizzle out of steams content delivery system. Trust me, I was a blizzard fanatic before I got hooked on CS. I got hooked in 1.5 tho, before they gayed things up. text/html 2005-02-09T22:37:15-05:00 Adam Brown http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#239863 This whole bitching at Valve's Steam system has been sorted out long ago, with exactly the same answers that have been touted here, ie, piles to begin with, but getting better.<br /> If anyone needs to cast a critical eye over Steam, I think it should be someone with a little more foresight than someone who's just plain annoyed at one part of the software.<br /> <br /> Steam has been a godsend for many people, because of the attempt at getting all the publisher's games under one menu, instead of the Start menu. It also allows people to receive updates to the games automatically, instead of manually updating the game, which many people have forgotton to do in the past, and wondering why they can't play on their favourite server. Also, it has been shown as the most successful online distribution medium, far more reliable than most of the MMO routes, and easily superior to Blizzard's <a class="ext" target="_blank" href="/action/r/http://Battle.Net">Battle.Net</a> service.<br /> Another point to make is that even though Steam did have connection problems to begin with, and didn't really have enough launch servers, both latency times, and active content and connection servers have drastically changed. Even the beta versions of the games were successfully launched. Having worked in a gaming centre during the 1.6beta, and being one of the testers, the chaos that it caused was unbeliveable. 30min waits to play CS, and only a handful of servers to play on. This was changed in the space of a few weeks, ending up with almost instant connections to CS, and plenty of beta servers to play on. Even the CS:Source beta went smooth. All the major bugs were ironed out in the first month, and the game was almost fit for retail release. That has got to be the fastest that I've ever seen a game be fixed, and to a better state than most other games.<br /> <br /> This may seem like a biased view of the system, but hey, I like Steam. Anything that gives the money direct to the developers of a game, instead of minus the publishers sizeable cut, has got to be good.<br /> text/html 2005-02-09T21:55:15-05:00 Jonathan Wilson http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#239823 I also think steam sucks. But what sucks more is to get an acc. stolen -.-. There goes all your games. I've had it happen and I know someone who has had it happen.....Someone got some games off of us *Sigh* Luckily. I got one from someone I knew who had some games so It was ok I guess? text/html 2005-02-09T14:24:41-05:00 ross mckechnie http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#239661 steam does suck at the moment but just wait internet speeds will go up and the software will be better <br /> and steam will get better text/html 2005-02-01T19:09:08-05:00 Ben McIntire http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38856/?l=1#0 What did I tell you all. I remember, about a month ago, people on this website were touting steam as the next great thing, removing the CD manufacturer from the loop and going straight to the servers. What a wonderful idea! Lag and server crashes for everyone! Bugs out the a*****e, and of course a technical support community that gets little response from Valve about any issues regarding their product.<br /> <br /> The largest problem steam has is that its got far too many parts to it, and instead of first fixing these parts to work together well, Valve just simply created more and more s**tty parts untill their whole system was just s**t. I hope some of the a*****es who were disagreeing with me would come back and give me a blowjob now, thanks.