Rethinking Steam: My Battle.net experience

[Genocidicbunny]

Oh for the love of god, another of these discussions.

Steam is nothing like Battle.net. I dont know the specific numbers for B.net, but steam has about a million users playing various games on it at any one time. Yes, there is downtime, but that happens. It happens online, it happens offline.

As for "I paid for the game, I want to play it" -- you also agreed to that legal 'mumbo jumbo'. Im sorry to be on the side of the so called bad guys here, but you agreed to the conditions yourself. Somewhere in the EULA's there was a line that stated something along the lines of "There might be downtime, we arent responsible". You may not like it, but from a legal standpoint its alright.

Furthermore, you bought the game. You took your money and said "Yes, I think these features are alright in a game." Don't want them? Don't buy the game.

 

[Tarkhan]

Battle.net also supports offline mode after the first connect. Likewise, Civ5 will be playable offline, once you install and activate it.

 

[Ricci]

Ok, this was a real experience some days ago. I was playing SCII throuh Battle net of course, in the same exact room with other two human players (actually we were two against a very hard computer, just keeping the pace and knowing the game). After an hour of gameplay battle.net collapses and of course our game was finished.. what the he...!!!!!!!!! We weren't even in the mood or have the time to start a new game. Seriously, one should be independent of these @##%! "services" if one opts to. The game is spectacular but they really ruined it with this.
It was our first gathering, lasted just some hours with two of these crushes, this stands as to confirm that SCII MP is a broken feature as is.
I pray that ciV will be better (we know it supports LAN at least).

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Valve's Steam servers are independent of the multiplayer servers. They may have some official ones that go down when the Steam service goes down, but generally, if you are logged in, start a game and the Steam servers crash it wont boot you from the game.

 

[Quackers]

Battlenet hasn't been down since I bought SC2. About 2 weeks ago.

 

[Ricci]

Battlenet hasn't been down since I bought SC2. About 2 weeks ago.

May be not in your region Diego.
This reminds me that also one is region locked with SCII, so if you choose US region and suddenly want to play with your european buddy you can´t. Don´t really know if this is completely true or if there is a natural way around. But come on, it seems as if they are openly saying that they want to control your MP gaming and there is nothing for you to do about it. Utterly ridiculous.

 

[Tarkhan]

May be not in your region Diego.
This reminds me that also one is region locked with SCII, so if you choose US region and suddenly want to play with your european buddy you can´t. Don´t really know if this is completely true or if there is a natural way around. But come on, it seems as if they are openly saying that they want to control your MP gaming and there is nothing for you to do about it. Utterly ridiculous.

True, but not limited to battle.net or even activision/blizzard. It's pretty standard across many online games, unfortunately.

 

[Disgustipated]

My buddy at work had a good question the other day I had no answer to.

What if steam goes out of business?

All those games you bought off them you can't play. Games you bought in a brick and mortar store you can play offline, but what if you need to reinstall it?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

What happens if the manufacturer of your big fancy tv goes out of business? Your warranty evaporates. Much the same for any other product. The risk is part of the deal.

With that being said, the likelihood of Valve going out of business is quite small, especially with their user and sale volume. The vast majority of the games you will still be able to acquire through other means because you have the cd-key. Those which require Steam to work may get a patch to remove that requirement.

For the convenience and price of games on Steam, I am willing to accept that risk. I have close to 1200$ worth of games on Steam that I paid less than 250$ for, maybe even much less than that.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

If Steam was going bankrupt, wouldnt they provide some sort of patch that makes your games work?

 

[Aramazd]

If Steam was going bankrupt, wouldnt they provide some sort of patch that makes your games work?

Not necessarily, and it would most likely happen on a game by game basis, depending on the publisher and age/popularity of the game.

Of course, Valve going out of business is highly unlikely and so is them shutting down Steam.

 

[Tarkhan]

If Steam went out of business and shut down, most of the games would still function for single player offline.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

If Steam was going bankrupt, wouldnt they provide some sort of patch that makes your games work?

They could only do it for their own games.

Also, Steam would never go out of business. Steam is a product, not a company. Valve on the other hand.

 

[Bratmon]

What if steam goes out of business?

All their games would be abandonware.

 

[Ricci]

If Steam went out of business and shut down, most of the games would still function for single player offline.

In the case of ciV as it is, you won't be able to install the game ever again!
ha.. ahahaha .. let's welcome the newly: EVILsoft.. Muahahahah muahahahah!!!

 

[Bratmon]

Sorry, wrong thread. Please delete.