What is wrong with steam?

[cpt.tripps.2012]

So I noticed over in the CIV4 modding forum that a number of people refuse to switch over to CIV5 because it is on steam. I use steam and have not had any issues with it. I am curious as to why people have such a strong dislike of steam. What do you think?

 

[Gucumatz]

To be fair a lot of people don't trust steam.

With more people now adays saying Civ 5 is better than Civ 4 (other than the die hards who hate 1 -UPT) some are making the switch.

But there is plenty not to trust with Steam, the security, the cloud aspect of it, the removal of the box/material aspect of a game [once again less secure] etc.

 

[bean5671]

Steam = DRM to me
if they can stop me from playing something I paid for on a whim i wont buy it

plus I will not use steam intil it becomes family friendly

I have 4 pcs at home and one for each kid I am not buying the same game 4 times
if one kid is using the game the other can not fine but the other kid should be able to login to steam and play another game on my account

I will not create a seperate account for each kid because I would have to buy the same games for each account

 

[King Kalmah]

Steam = DRM to me
if they can stop me from playing something I paid for on a whim i wont buy it

plus I will not use steam intil it becomes family friendly

I have 4 pcs at home and one for each kid I am not buying the same game 4 times
if one kid is using the game the other can not fine but the other kid should be able to login to steam and play another game on my account

I will not create a seperate account for each kid because I would have to buy the same games for each account

I just think that if you buy something.You should be able to hold it in your hands.

ABOVE is a good example,but I'm going to give the reverse example.Lets say I have two PC's and one is at my mom's house and why am I being made to spend twice the money just the play the same game on two different PC's??

Plus with all the major hacking happening nowadays nothing is safe.

I am refusing to buy SC2013 because it is STEAM...plus CLOUD oriented...

I have been playing SC4 for almost a decade...don't you think anyone would get the idea by now that steam is BAD....well I forget that many gamers are kids and these kids have no clue what the history of gaming is anyway,,,,

 

[lymond]

.Lets say I have two PC's and one is at my mom's house and why am I being made to spend twice the money just the play the same game on two different PC's??

I'm just curious here...have you ever tried Steam or are is this something that someone else told you? I've played my Steam games on multiple PCs for a long time so I just don't understand this argument.

I hear DRM, DRM, DRM all the time in opposition to Steam. Really, this means diddly to me. I've never had an issue with DRM. Steam is pretty simple in that regard. You are basically online once to authorize your purchase and then you can play offline should you choose, with the exception of of online games, of course.

To be fair a lot of people don't trust steam.

There's millions and millions of people who do trust Steam, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to say here. The popularity of this service and the milliions of customers are fact. Saying lot's of people don't trust steam is an opinion. Just want to make sure that is clear for everyone.

With more people now adays saying Civ 5 is better than Civ 4

Do you have something to back up this statement?


I use multiple download gaming services exclusively, including Steam. I've done this for several years now. I've said this before and I will say it again, this is where PC gaming is headed. Don't expect to by PC games off the shelf in the future.

Some folks have strong opinions against Steam, but for every one person who refuses to use it or see its merits, there are many many more that do.

Also, keep in mind that with modding Steam and Civ5 are totally different now than ease of modding with CIV IV. One major issue is that Firaxis has yet to release the DDL.

As for CIV V, when you come to this forum you won't find many folks that care much for the game.

 

[Drakarska]

This reminds me of a similar post over in the Civ V forums, that got closed very fast when things got heated.

While I get the whole easier, convienant, yada yada yada viewpoints, mine is basically simple. I shouldn't be required to have a 3rd party program running in the background in order to play a SP game at home. It's a slap to the face of the customer fm corps stating " if you want to play our game, you have no choice but to do what we want you to". Similar situation for D3, my kids and I were really looking forward to it. But enforced connection to the internet, even in SP mode is total crap IMO.

 

[damerell]

So I noticed over in the CIV4 modding forum that a number of people refuse to switch over to CIV5 because it is on steam. I use steam and have not had any issues with it. I am curious as to why people have such a strong dislike of steam. What do you think?

I used Steam for years. Of course, I had the usual misgivings about DRM; but I honestly felt that Valve had got it right, that - unlike every other company doing digital delivery - they recognised that to make it work you have to make it easier than piracy for anyone who's got money [1], and for those years it seemed like this was actually the case; and furthermore that Valve could be trusted not to mess it up.

I was wrong, as you may already have inferred from the narrative structure of this post.

A while back, a US court decided that people could sign away their right to class action lawsuits. Now this doesn't directly affect me, being in the EU, but now every US company is having customers sign away such rights, and the approach taken to this was instructive. Steam comes out of nowhere with a new Subscriber Agreement; agree, or lose everything. By contrast, Origin and Games for Windows Live - and EA and Microsoft are not exactly noted for their enlightened attitude - both took the approach that you had to agree to a new deal if you wanted to buy any more games, but you could continue with the old agreement until you wanted to do so.

As I said, that doesn't affect me directly, but I know now that 1) Valve will impose agreement changes that are not necessarily desireable for the users (all previous Subscriber Agreement changes have been obvious no-brainers) and 2) they are quite willing to use the stick of "agree, or lose all your games" to do so. So, why would I buy another game on Steam, when it can be taken away from me if I don't agree to anything Valve might dream up for the rest of my life?

About now, someone's going to say, "you shouldn't have joined if you didn't like the clause that says Valve can vary the Subscriber Agreement at will". No; first of all, because I honestly (mistakenly) trusted them not to do something like that, but more importantly because such clauses are inherently unenforceable under EU unfair contracts law. You can't, as an ordinary consumer, enter into a contract here which the other party can vary at will. (Valve employ the legal fiction that it's a subscription, not a series of purchases, but that fiction is also not accepted by the EU.)

The mistake I made, besides trusting Valve, was in failing to notice that, while EU contract law doesn't permit it, I don't have any way to fight when they do bring in a change I don't like. I can hardly afford to go to court (and even if I could, when a Steam purchase carries with it the prospect of possibly having to sue Valve, this just stopped being the easy option), so my options will be to lose all Steam games or suck it up.

[1] You don't care what people without money do, pirate or not; because whatever they do, it's not giving you money.

But enforced connection to the internet, even in SP mode is total crap IMO.

That, on the other hand, would certainly be a legitimate complaint about Steam if Steam actually required it. It doesn't.

 

[gps]

I am curious as to why people have such a strong dislike of steam. What do you think?

I said it many times and I say it again: because it turns ownership of a game CD and it's content into a lend-and-lease-agreement. Because it takes away my controll and repsonsibility over stuff I rightfully bought and forces it into the hands of a third party company that can - as others allready pointed out - change, revoke or shut down the deal whenever they want. I am not willing to pay the full price, if I don't get the full value.
And please spare me the "this is the future of computer gaming" stuff. That's nonsense. Online DRM will only be the future of computer gaming if we all let companies get away with it. Games like Assassins Creed 2, Spore or Diablo 3 and the hundreds of 1-star-reviews on Amazon sure had a sales impact and were a clear signal that companies have to be carefull with how far they should go with online DRM. It all just depends on how many people cave in or not. Yes Steam is the most convenient and less intrusive form of online DRM around. Does not change my general rule of not accepting online DRM for anything that costs me more that 10 bucks.
And with the huge bags of stuff I see people hauling each day out of shopping centers it does not look like the end of shop based retail has allready come - and I also don't see the big retail companies giving away that source of income lightly. The really schizo part actually starts when I am forced to sign into an online distribution platform and spend the next night downloading the game I just brough home from the shopping mall. Worst part of both worlds...
With Civ IV released as a budget, no DRM whatsoever, complete edition - why would anyone ever want to buy it from Steam??? Yet people still do it...
And regarding Civ V: in retrospect I am quite gratefull for the decision to make it Steam-exclusive - because it kept me quite a long time from wasting a lot of money on a fundamentally broken and inferior game. When Amazon offered it for 5 Euros I actually got it to see if it's really that bad. Well it is. Haven't used it or Steam in ages and am considering to remove both from my PC. They're just not needed with Civ IV and it's many still unexplored mods around...

 

[King Kalmah]

Some folks have strong opinions against Steam, but for every one person who refuses to use it or see its merits, there are many many more that do.
.

Those people also have the money for monthly internet bills,which I like many people nowadays can't afford.I use my work for my internet(for free thanks boss...lol) so I do get the benefits of free youtube and whatever else comes into mind,but like I said before my gaming computer was separate from my internet PC...(Internet PC was old junker I paid coworker to refurbish)

Don't expect to by PC games off the shelf in the future.

Honetly the way the PC industry is heading with dumbing down and DRM/steam I think I'll just stop buying games then...

you think I'm joking..

I have a PS3 and just got GTA IV and Red Dead so I'm good for a few weeks and Fallout 4 is gonna be released someday next year,,,here hoping!!!

 

[damerell]

Those people also have the money for monthly internet bills,which I like many people nowadays can't afford.

Be serious. You have a computer to run Civ 4 on; and you can afford the electricity to run it. You have some money, and yet you're not so short of spare time that you can't play Civ. I would not care to be crushingly poor in the USA; I wouldn't care to be even slightly hard up; but you can afford as much internet access as Steam demands - which is certainly not an always-on service billing you montly.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Be serious. You have a computer to run Civ 4 on; and you can afford the electricity to run it. You have some money, and yet you're not so short of spare time that you can't play Civ. I would not care to be crushingly poor in the USA; I wouldn't care to be even slightly hard up; but you can afford as much internet access as Steam demands - which is certainly not an always-on service billing you montly.

I think King Kalmah is referring to the cost of home internet service. I don't know what it costs in the UK but in the US it often ranges from $30 to $50 per month for the basic service, whether you use it much or not. If you are on a tight budget, that isn't chump change.

 

[damerell]

I think King Kalmah is referring to the cost of home internet service. I don't know what it costs in the UK but in the US it often ranges from $30 to $50 per month for the basic service, whether you use it much or not. If you are on a tight budget, that isn't chump change.

I daresay they may be, but what is actually pertinent is the cost of enough internet service to use Steam, which is enormously less; once you've downloaded the bits, it's zero.

I did slightly hint at this when I wrote that what Steam demands "is certainly not an always-on service billing you monthly."

 

[MeatUnit2]

While you are supposed to be able to play games offline that doesn't always work in my experience. There is the added irritation that Steam frequently updates its client program, as in all the time, day after day, with changes that may have nothing to do with you (certainly they are not improving anything to do with Civ 4) and that they throw advertisements at you in pop-behind format.

Sure you can turn off the ads if you go searching for a way to do so, but they make no effort (why should they?) to tell you how to do it. These ads are a new feature that weren't part of the original agreement.

There is a strong trend for software to run "services" in the background on end users' computers which eat up memory and processing capacity. Most modern computers can handle this without slowing down but some people like the option to control what is running on their machines and that is not always available. Additionally there are folks who have poor internet connectivity or intermittent connectivity who are really inconvenienced by constant downloads and updates which will time out other applications or even crash their browsers and/or applications.

Currently I am at the mercy of my local ISP which has over-sold its service in my area and during peak hours throughput speeds drop dramatically[1]. Steam has been a major headache recently with their constant updates. Just turning Civ 4 on can involve several minutes of delay while client updates download (if speeds are really low the connection will drop). With a really fast connection this wouldn't be an issue (aside from wanting to control what is running on my machine) but at present I am not happy with Steam.

[1] I live in the San Francisco Bay Area near the Silicon Valley, not in a rural part of the country; the infrastructure that delivers internet connectivity is over-taxed and poor performance is not unusual.

 

[Ambidexter]

When I buy a loaf of bread or a washing machine I think I own them. When I buy a kindle book from Amazon I think I own that. When I buy software I think I own that as well. Steam doesn't think I own software I buy from them. They think they're leasing it to me and their EULA says they can change the lease in any way they want whenever they want. Until their philosophy comes more in line with mine, I won't "lease" any software from them.

 

[Iranon]

I don't want to enter one-sided contracts, especially not when the other side has been known to abuse their power.
I don't want large clumsy client software running on my system.
I don't feel like I own something unless I can sell it (without restrictions).
I react very negatively to unsolicited advertising.

Games aren't a necessity. There aren't many annoyances I will put up with for them, and from my experience genuinely good games tend to be available without any corporate dickery attached.