Steam - love or hate?

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I've been in IT for 15 years and Steam has never been a problem for me. :lol:

IT for 12 i have tons problems with steam.

I managed to find a solution for all, but all were from the program and well known issues and not from my pc.

Aside from that I find steam is good ONLY if you have a significant discount on what you buy.....

Full retail price and no rights on reselling is dumb...
Doing the same (i still have to check) with a boxed product without proper adverticement is plain illegal....as much as piracy i could say (and i have only genuine software/OS and even music).
 
No love, no hate. Steam is needed to run the game, so I use it, and I don't have any problems with it.
 
Hardly. Steam is pure garbage, its one of the buggiest programs i've ever used. I use my pc for music production, and have premium software like ableton and cubase running just fine. I also use photoshop 64bit and have no problems whatsoever.

Tried installing steam the other week, came up with a bunch of random errors, after reading a few forums and trying loads of things i eventually got it installed in safe mode. Only took me about an hour and a half. Then it took ages downloading the Civ V demo, said it was at 30% then suddenly let me play it. A really awful buggy load of crap, i've since uninstalled Steam and will not be using it on my system again.

For the record i was an IT professional for 5 years, and still keep up to date. I think it is you who is the ignorant one to post such a comment.
Seeing as how you are, supposedly, an IT pro, you should be well aware that due to the widely differing configurations of software and hardware sometimes things just don't work or an error is made. Steam has never given me a major problem, nor most of the many (100s) of people I know/have contact with who use Steam. If a majority had to go through the same thing you did then either VALVe would have to have fixed that problem with Steam and/or it would die due to most people not knowing anything about how to get it working. Yet the reality is it works for most people and is going up in popularity.

Firstly, perhaps you should put your cd's back in the box. That is what the boxes are for. Then perhaps some sort of a shelf to keep it on? Heres an idea, you could have a shelf that you put all of your games on, then they would be in the same place. That way it wouldn't take you a whole afternoon to find them. Also, you can download a no cd patch, then you don't have to keep your cd in the drive, thats what i use and it works fine.

Secondly, from what you're saying, your download speed is actually faster than the transfer rate of your dvd drive. Wow, i wish i lived where you do, the internet must be pretty fast there. :lol:
CD cracks are not necessarily legal (in fact cracks are a bannable offense on these and many other forums), and your assuming the crack definitely works. Nor do they always work with the new patches, sometimes they could be a virus or mistaken for a virus by your AV scanner. The deals and ingame Steam Community features are great (since few other people seem to use X-Fire >.>).

With Civ IV, I was able to play from the same DVD with my wife (start Civ on a PC with the DVD, when it is loaded put the DVD in the other PC and you can play together).

I didn't try but I suspect it would be impossible with Steam. May I ask, who will pay 2x for the same game just to play with wife/children ?

For me, Steam is just a useless bloatware used because of piracy paranoids.

I bought a box version of the game, why force me to use Steam ???

Steam was chosen for the Steamworks features Firaxis implemented for the game, and it does provide DRM at the same time (though it was cracked on day 1, also VALVe (the makers of Steam) are well aware they can't stop piracy). Steam is also NOT bloatware, it takes up VERY few system resources and space.

You can install the game on as many computers as you want, you can just only use it on one at a time if its connected to the internet. You can, however, have set one to offline mode and don't let it back on the net while you play it online on the other computer.

I don't know if Civ5 has LAN though, but that would be Firaxis's fault (Steam has NOTHING to do with them multiplayer).
 
Cool, just found this thread, ok I ain't bashing steam because i am a pirate but i am bashing steam because when i don't wanna click no more and quit civ 5 a stupid steam sapm fest pops up on my computer and now I can't play when i need my fix? i think this will happen a lot and will my unsaved game of civ 5 just crash to desktop while i play because of steam?
 
The main thing I don't like is that my son and I can't have a seperate set of achivements or a unique identifier in the internal HOF. I'd have to buy another copy of the game to do that. This summer we played "World in Conflict". He had his set of medals and campaign progress and I had mine.
 
Wallet vote anyone?

If you don't like Steam then don't use it?

"But I want to play my game!"

That's what this really boils down to, lack of conviction to actually stick to your guns. If it's really so distressing for you to use Steam, then don't perpetuate it's use by buying games that require Steam.

That's exactly what it boils down to. Until a few years ago, I just couldn't do without my favourite games, so I put up with DRM and (more recently) game sites. Even put up with Starforce and Securom until I realized how bad they were. And I still buy Stardock games, since their Impulse program is a much better client than Steam.

But eventually I realized the truth that Hyspasist states. So I didn't buy Napoleon Total War and I doubt I'll buy Civ 5 or any other game that requires Steam. The last straw was discovering that Steam was circumventing my firewall and calling home to Valve, even in what it inaccurately calls offline mode. No doubt Valve does so for what they would justify as legitimate reasons, but I don't trust any software company that takes such a cavalier attitude towards their customers.
 
It really annoys me when people consider it piracy when you play a friend on a lan using one copy of a game. I play 99% of the time on my own or online, i don't see why i should have to pay double just for the odd lan game. Thats one thing i'll never agree with, the game makers should really allow for this situation.

As for considering a no cd patch illegal, i really couldn't care less. I bought civ 4 on a disc, and that disc is still in perfect condition, in its original box. Like all my games, they're all boxed with instructions and look the same as they did when i bought them. Also i live in the uk and i believe its actually legal here to make a backup copy of anything you own.

Instead of inflicting usage rules and regulations on paying customers, game makers should just concentrate on making good games. They will never be able to stop piracy, and all their measures do is annoy loyal customers.
 
That's exactly what it boils down to. Until a few years ago, I just couldn't do without my favourite games, so I put up with DRM and (more recently) game sites. Even put up with Starforce and Securom until I realized how bad they were. And I still buy Stardock games, since their Impulse program is a much better client than Steam.

But eventually I realized the truth that Hyspasist states. So I didn't buy Napoleon Total War and I doubt I'll buy Civ 5 or any other game that requires Steam. The last straw was discovering that Steam was circumventing my firewall and calling home to Valve, even in what it inaccurately calls offline mode. No doubt Valve does so for what they would justify as legitimate reasons, but I don't trust any software company that takes such a cavalier attitude towards their customers.

Give it a try it is not all that bad. I don't like the whole thing particularly good myself. I feel it is quaint to have to sign in to play my own game. But Civ 5 is a blast and it's worth it. I have Empire and Napoleon, and I like em, but have not played much. The graphics for those are pretty good, but Civ has always been my game.
 
Wallet vote anyone?

If you don't like Steam then don't use it?

"But I want to play my game!"

That's what this really boils down to, lack of conviction to actually stick to your guns. If it's really so distressing for you to use Steam, then don't perpetuate it's use by buying games that require Steam.

No it doesn't. Your argument is like saying, if you really don't like people blowing foghorns at sports events, don't go to sports events! Or you have no balls.

Or, if you really think the level of value-added tax is too high, don't buy anything! Or you lack conviction.

In this iteration of Civ it's a bit of a con, because most people don't know they're going to have to use Steam before they buy (certainly I didn't, and there's no indication on the box or in adverts, or most reviews). But even if they did know, people (myself included) would still buy it, while still disliking and resenting having to use Steam.

In the long term Steam certainly will damage sales. Not because everyone who dislikes Steam will refuse to buy Civ 6 (if it's ever made), but because the game experience is fractionally worse for those who don't like it, making them fractionally less likely to buy the next installments or expansion packs. And aggregate reviews on sites like Amazon will be fractionally worse, tipping a few people over from the "maybe buy" camp to the "maybe not".

It's not as simple as "if you don't like Steam, don't buy the game", but enforcing this kind of fascistic DRM will come back to bite the publishers eventually.
 
thats right you are only allowed to say good things about either of them.
 
DRM: you can use the game just one ONE computer but anyone can use it, you can borrow it to a friend, buy used and so on.

STEAM: you cannot borrow it, you cannot buy that used you have far less right on the game itself.

Now, if you choose to buy from steam is OK for me, you know the deal, even if i wouldn't buy anything without an heavy discount to compensate for the limited usage.
BUT if you buy a boxed game, that is as wrong as piracy in my own country...cause its not clearly written on the box.

Yeah there is written in a smoky way with little character in a wall of text, that you should check ToS before buying it.
Its a pity that ToS doesn't count anything in 90% of the world.

that said, i won't ever give another single dollar to steam whereas i bought lot of games before from them.
 
its a good thing I don't live anywhere close to valve/steam headquarters...I would have to go fire the CEO if you get my drift
 
its a good thing I don't live anywhere close to valve/steam headquarters...I would have to go fire the CEO if you get my drift

It's not Steam or its publishers that we should be railing against - it's the people at 2k who made the decision to force us all to use it, for their own evil reasons.
 
CD cracks are not necessarily legal (in fact cracks are a bannable offense on these and many other forums)

That depends completely on where you live. They are not necessarily illegal either. Forum policies obviously are not the same as the law, thank god. Most forums are run on the whims of a handful of autocrats who would lose their heads if they ever had real power.


Its a pity that ToS doesn't count anything in 90% of the world..

This is true. In the UK, you can write anything you want in the ToS, it will just be ignored if things ever get to court and it is deemed to go against consumer rights. In fact, it can really count against the company trying to do it if it looks abusive.
 
That is something people should remember when they rail out against Steam/valve/2k or whatever. They aren't using steam for the sake of it, they are using it since it's pretty much guaranteed to give them more sales.

And if they didn't use Steam, which probably is the best form of DRM there is since it actually gives you benefits with a community, easy access to games etc, they'd use some other form of DRM. It wouldn't be a Stardock esque DRM free title.
 
You are dreaming. I guarantee being on Steam generates more sales than not being on Steam. Your game is delivered right to the screens of the people who game.

You think you're contradicting me but you're not! :)

Obviously using Steam as an extra storefront will generate more sales, and I can't imagine too many copies of Half-Life would be sold this year if it weren't on Steam. I approve of Civ being available on Steam.

But how many games actually force you to use Steam to play them? AFAIK this is uncharted territory, and this is the difference between Civ 5 and Half-Life.

Civ 5 seems a particularly bad game to run this experiment on, since I would suggest that the audience consists of a higher proportion of strategy game veterans who have been happliy buying their games from a shop since the days of floppy disks, than 18-year-old "1337 pwnars" who cannot imagine anything other than instant gratification from the internet.

What I'm saying is that there's no evidence to suggest that the extra sales from Steam will be greater than those lost in the long term by alienating their exisiting user base. (Notwithstanding the fact that sales are not the only measure of success.)

Developers don't do deals with Valve for the sake of it, they do it because they get an advantage.
Hmmm... and developers don't make mistakes? The whole of Civ 5 is a pretty big boo-boo. They got rid of Leonard Nimoy, halfed the number of civilizations and reduced the tech tree. But this must have given them an advantage, right?
 
Hmmm... and developers don't make mistakes? The whole of Civ 5 is a pretty big boo-boo. They got rid of Leonard Nimoy, halfed the number of civilizations and reduced the tech tree. But this must have given them an advantage, right?


Everyone makes mistakes, including folks posting on a forum overstating another person's statement to make for an easy target rather than actually discussing the topic ;)
 
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