Open Letter To Steam and Firaxis Games

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Unused RAM is wasted RAM. Of which Steam uses very very little (like 5 MBs when its just in the tray not doing anything, like during a game).

Yeah, it is a little different than the old days of running Memmaker to optimize 640k of RAM. :)
 
I know I am a little late to the party but here we go again. :) Again, I like Steam, what it offers me, ease of use, automatic updating, no more cd's and I don't put stuff that I don't want people see/have on my computer but I don't really have anything that anyone would want.

Change is inevitable with everything. You will get left behind if you are not open to change. Seriously, it's not like we are talking about Social Security and unemployment here.

~Monk
 
...and I don't put stuff that I don't want people see/have on my computer but I don't really have anything that anyone would want.

Change is inevitable with everything. You will get left behind if you are not open to change. Seriously, it's not like we are talking about Social Security and unemployment here.

~Monk

Maybe nothing Valve would want. But for all the people online who report their steam accounts hacked... its the games linked to the account they are after, so you do have things people would want.

Steams thinking of adding some trade-in system for games, and you get credit to buy new stuff. IMO this is just going to get more of these aye holes trying to get more accounts, because now it doesnt matter if the account has the games they want or not, they can just trade in all your stuff for things they want.

Larger unoptimized code, digital distribution only, more strict ISP download limits... the future looks stupid. I wonder who will jump on the steam wagon next. Maybe ill need to connect to the apple store before i listen to songs in offline mode? :crazyeye:
 
Maybe nothing Valve would want. But for all the people online who report their steam accounts hacked... its the games linked to the account they are after, so you do have things people would want.

Yes and no, quite often a lot of account hijacks are done by hackers as they need a new account to play when their's gets VAC banned. Several people in my TF2 community/clan have had their accounts hijacked (despite that they should have known better, it is always the user's own fault) and they all got them back, one guy convinced the hijacker to return it the rest went through VALVe which was, slow but they didn't get VAC banned and got all their games back.

Steams thinking of adding some trade-in system for games, and you get credit to buy new stuff. IMO this is just going to get more of these aye holes trying to get more accounts, because now it doesnt matter if the account has the games they want or not, they can just trade in all your stuff for things they want.
Use a good password and don't tell it to anyone or enter it ANYWHERE ELSE but Steam (VALVe's website and forums require separate and differently named accounts). There is also no confirmation of the trade in system yet, its still a rumour.
 
Uhm if you want to play the game without having steam, pirate is the way. Don't QQ too much though. It's not that bad. When I play starcraft 2 single player, I need internet +log on to battle.net to do it too.

Moderator Action: This site has a zero tolerance policy in regards to piracy please avoid posting about that in the future
 
Uhm if you want to play the game without having steam, pirate is the way. Don't QQ too much though. It's not that bad. When I play starcraft 2 single player, I need internet +log on to battle.net to do it too.

Um, no. I haven't heard a worse idea for a little while. Piracy is not a solution, it only encourages worse DRM.
 
Um, no. I haven't heard a worse idea for a little while. Piracy is not a solution, it only encourages worse DRM.
Actually, piracy is what prevent prices to rise. Look at the exact same game on a console platform compared to a PC. On average, the former is distinctly more expensive.
Also, DRM completely fails at preventing piracy. All protection are cracked in a matter of days, if not hours. I know it's useful for limiting loss on release, but then it means that any attempt at "permanent" protection is just a smokescreen.

What I see is more piracy being an excuse for companies to find underhanded way to tighten their grip on the consumers, and even the complicity of well-intentioned but short-sighted people defending them and downplaying the problems.
 
To Steam:

I do not want your product. Period. I especially don't want YET ANOTHER application running on my computer; connecting to the internet behind the scenes and eating up even more processing power. I don't want to be connected to the internet with Steam because I don't play multi-player games and I don't chat. I just play a few games. So I'm really jarateed off that I had to install your application. I set your application to "Offline" mode. Now every time I boot my computer, I get a freakin pop up telling me I'm in Offline mode. Thanks to your arrogance, I've gone from not wanting Steam to loathing STEAM!!!

To Firaxis:

The only reason I installed Steam in the first place was because I wanted to play your game. SHAME ON YOU for forcing me to install this bloated, big-brother arrogant piece of crap software just to play your game. There HAS to be a better way to distribute software digitally that big-brother app like this. I'd rather buy a DVD in the store than install more bloatware.

This was probably pointed out already but Firaxis simply does not care about this letter. They probably won't even read it, there are too many people that will buy the game to care about this post. Steam was a great marketing decision for Firaxis which probably opened the game up to much more people. Some people may not like it, but it should only be a minor annoyance.

Also, while you were getting mad in your ignorance there is a way to stop steam from loading at start-up. You just go to your configurations and tell the steam process not to start up when the computer starts. Then steam will only run when you tell it to. I would go in more detail, but I get the feeling your to ignorant to care about this...
 
Actually, piracy is what prevent prices to rise. Look at the exact same game on a console platform compared to a PC. On average, the former is distinctly more expensive.
Also, DRM completely fails at preventing piracy. All protection are cracked in a matter of days, if not hours. I know it's useful for limiting loss on release, but then it means that any attempt at "permanent" protection is just a smokescreen.

What I see is more piracy being an excuse for companies to find underhanded way to tighten their grip on the consumers, and even the complicity of well-intentioned but short-sighted people defending them and downplaying the problems.

So they say piracy is an excuse for DRM and you say DRM is an excuse for piracy.

But whos breaking the law, huh?
 
So they say piracy is an excuse for DRM and you say DRM is an excuse for piracy.

But whos breaking the law, huh?
I say some limited form of DRM has uses against piracy, but piracy is merely an convenient excuse for the countless stepping on toes that companies do to consumers' rights, helped with the blindness of well-intentioned but misguided people who understandably rally to the lawful case, but are too short-sighted, unaware or naive to see WHAT they are actually defending and see the longer term.
 
You do have control. You installed Steam. It is just evil because it "just is" isn't an argument. The resources are irrelevant and it does nothing sinister to your PC.
The "resources are irrelevant" argument is entirely case dependent. The word evil can stay out of the argument too.

You're technically right that you have control over whether to install steam or not, but the point is you don't have a choice if you want to play some games. And it's fairly reasonable to say that the requirement of steam in many games is nearly arbitrary other than for the DRM function. That is to say it's not really essential to the functioning of the game, like say, the operating system, or DirectX, or an internet connection, would be.

As I said in my post, steam uses only a tiny amount of resources, which makes the argument rather silly for most people to make because they have computers where a tiny amount of resources won't make much difference.

And demonstrating your expertise with computers doesn't make the argument against you any less valid. Several months back I went into quite a bit of detail about how I was having trouble getting steam to run in offline mode when my internet connection was temporarily dodgy thanks to my ISP and the local network infrastructure. Problems, however 'minor' or 'technical' they may be, do occur due to having steam as part of the process. These are extra to the normal technical problems of a PC game.



I used to run a script which turned off all non-essential services so I could maximize resources for gaming. However now on modern equipment it just isn't relevant technically.

I can guarantee there is really sinister software on most every PC out there unless you are running a web browser with scripts turned off. Web browsers and other common programs have all sorts of vulnerabilities and spyware.

People are entitled to the opinion that they just don't want it. However most of the arguments against it are pretty much silly. A few people have technical problems with it, which is annoying, but that kind of thing happens with every PC game.

Of course a lot of the arguments against steam look pretty much silly. That doesn't make all arguments against steam pretty much silly, does it? ;)

By the way, the "there's already sinister software on your PC" is a slippery slope of an argument. This is because the existence of such software on your PC shouldn't justify adding more. Not that I'm saying steam is sinister, of course.
 
Yes and no, quite often a lot of account hijacks are done by hackers as they need a new account to play when their's gets VAC banned. Several people in my TF2 community/clan have had their accounts hijacked

See, i made the assumption that they were simply hijacking accounts, having steam send them the games at high speeds, and then using one of the thousands of steam hack files found on the net.

Use a good password and don't tell it to anyone or enter it ANYWHERE ELSE but Steam

This is what i see as a problem. To use offline mode, i need to save my account information to do so. This information is stored somewhere on the computer, and although i may not know where that is, im sure the hackers do.
 
What!? Somebody started a new "Steam: Love/Hate/Gnashing of Teeth" thread and didn't summon me ;)
 
What!? Somebody started a new "Steam: Love/Hate/Gnashing of Teeth" thread and didn't summon me ;)

I'm responding to your sig and not your post here, but I can almost guarantee that Firaxis has the right to require Steam to run their game. I'm not sure the law would be able or willing to make such an arcane and domain specific ruling.

This would be similar to arguing that Burger King ads during The Simpsons are a violation of fair use. Good luck with that.

I was also not aware that people without internet connections had special legal status. I demand the ability to play World of Warcraft offline!
 
See, i made the assumption that they were simply hijacking accounts, having steam send them the games at high speeds, and then using one of the thousands of steam hack files found on the net.
Maybe someone has but I've never heard of it though. Might be more convenient to just pirate them in the first place.

This is what i see as a problem. To use offline mode, i need to save my account information to do so. This information is stored somewhere on the computer, and although i may not know where that is, im sure the hackers do.
If someone has that much access to your computer that they have cracked open the encrypted files in Steam that have your password you have bigger issues to worry about seeing as how your entire computer is now at their mercy. Account hijacks are usually (if not entirely) from people falling for phising scams.
 
See, i made the assumption that they were simply hijacking accounts, having steam send them the games at high speeds, and then using one of the thousands of steam hack files found on the net.

what the.... seriously where are you pulling out this nonsense from? :rolleyes:
 
I'm responding to your sig and not your post here, but I can almost guarantee that Firaxis has the right to require Steam to run their game. I'm not sure the law would be able or willing to make such an arcane and domain specific ruling.

This would be similar to arguing that Burger King ads during The Simpsons are a violation of fair use. Good luck with that.

I was also not aware that people without internet connections had special legal status. I demand the ability to play World of Warcraft offline!

The key word there being almost.

Good luck with that.
 
This is what i see as a problem. To use offline mode, i need to save my account information to do so. This information is stored somewhere on the computer, and although i may not know where that is, im sure the hackers do.

Now you're making the assumption that you are of interest to a hacker. :lol:
 
I say some limited form of DRM has uses against piracy, but piracy is merely an convenient excuse for the countless stepping on toes that companies do to consumers' rights, helped with the blindness of well-intentioned but misguided people who understandably rally to the lawful case, but are too short-sighted, unaware or naive to see WHAT they are actually defending and see the longer term.

So developers / publishers don't have the right to protect their investment? It's all about YOU YOU YOU isn't it? :rolleyes:
 
Now you're making the assumption that you are of interest to a hacker. :lol:
Yeah account hijackers (which don't have to be hackers, entirely different activities) probably are not very interested in an account that only has Civ5.

So developers / publishers don't have the right to protect their investment? It's all about YOU YOU YOU isn't it? :rolleyes:
Well to pre-empt their argument, DRM doesn't work :p
 
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