Why All The Hate?

[Commodore]

Simple Question: Why does there seem to be so much animosity toward Steam?

I used to be on the anti-Steam bandwagon until I realized I had no idea why. I decided to try Steam, and two years later I love it and I find it to be one of the most convienent gaming tools on my PC. So I just don't understand why everyone seems to hate it so much. I even have heard some people say that Steam will ruin PC gaming forever and I just can't see that as being true.

 

[Adam7Eight]

Simple Question: Why does there seem to be so much animosity toward Steam?

I used to be on the anti-Steam bandwagon until I realized I had no idea why. I decided to try Steam, and two years later I love it and I find it to be one of the most convienent gaming tools on my PC. So I just don't understand why everyone seems to hate it so much. I even have heard some people say that Steam will ruin PC gaming forever and I just can't see that as being true.

No animosity here. I love Steam... perhaps a little too much.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Isn't part of it the DRM or that a lot of games that you buy in a store might require Steam these days?

 

[Commodore]

Isn't part of it the DRM or that a lot of games that you buy in a store might require Steam these days?

Yeah, but I don't see why that's a problem for people. It's not like you have to pay a monthly fee to use Steam. If you had to pay for it then I could see people being upset.

 

[FeelGood]

I just hate it because it doesn't work in my laptop and PC. Anything that suppose to work but doesn't work deserve to be hated. But, that just me though. Everyone is entitle to their own judgment.

 

[Thrawn]

I hate it because they keep emptying my wallet.

 

[PeteAtoms]

I hate it because they keep emptying my wallet.

A picture is worth a thousand words

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

I'm the sort of person who shops in real-world stores and who pays in cash. It's the mandatory Internet activation that I absolutely hate, particularly since I'm not a(n Internet) multiplayer guy. The argument had been made, and fairly, that there's incredible convenience in being able to install any game purchased on any computer with access to Steam... but should the servers go down or the company fold, I'm stuck with an unusable product. A physical disc has more permanence than a cloud.

Without getting into semantics over what it means to "own" a copy of software, what troubles me is how 'control' over the implementation of a product has shifted from the user to the distributor. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that if I have in my hand a CD/DVD that I have paid for, I should be able to use its contents in full without having to expose myself to the World Wide Web, even for a moment.

Now that I mention it, the decline in hard copy availability is an issue in of itself.

 

[Skwink]

but should the servers go down or the company fold, I'm stuck with an unusable product.

Untrue, Gabe has stated that if Valve or Steam goes down for good, they'll release a patch to make all their games playable without any online verification.

 

[Thrawn]

I'm the sort of person who shops in real-world stores and who pays in cash.

Personally, I would like to own physical copies of stuff(I've kept every game I own, got a giant box full of discs and manuals, I've bought DVDs that I've already seen because I enjoyed them etc), but financially it's cheaper for me to buy them digitally. And when you're a poor student, the cheaper method wins out.

As it stands I'd likely only purchase hard copies if it was a collectors edition, and I could afford it. At the moment I can't afford any games anyway.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Don't listen to the haters, Steam is amazing and you know it.

 

[Commodore]

I'm the sort of person who shops in real-world stores and who pays in cash. It's the mandatory Internet activation that I absolutely hate, particularly since I'm not a(n Internet) multiplayer guy. The argument had been made, and fairly, that there's incredible convenience in being able to install any game purchased on any computer with access to Steam... but should the servers go down or the company fold, I'm stuck with an unusable product. A physical disc has more permanence than a cloud.

Without getting into semantics over what it means to "own" a copy of software, what troubles me is how 'control' over the implementation of a product has shifted from the user to the distributor. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that if I have in my hand a CD/DVD that I have paid for, I should be able to use its contents in full without having to expose myself to the World Wide Web, even for a moment.

Now that I mention it, the decline in hard copy availability is an issue in of itself.

As Skwink stated the whole server going down thing is a non-issue. As for the decline in hard copy availability: Well what do you expect? Digital distribution carries with it significantly less production and distribution costs. Not to mention it ultimately reduces cost to the consumer. With a hard copy, if you lose the disk you have to go out and purchase a new one. With digital distribution you pay once and ifyour harddrive crashes or you get a new computer all you have to do is reinstall Steam, login, and reinstall all your games completetly free of charge. I used to be the kind of person who loved having the actual hard copy until I actually tried Steam and found out how ridiculously convienent it is. I just got tired of fumbling around with stacks of disks and those disks taking up valuable shelf space that could be used for something more important.

I have to disagree with your point that implementation of the software now favors the distributor. Never once in my experience with Steam have I ever felt like I had anything less than 100% control over my games and when and how I decide to play them. In fact it makes it easier for me to use the software, especially when it comes to updates. Steam (and other DD services) usually do automatic updates so I no longer have to monitor the recent news for software to see when an update is going to be released.

 

[Maniacal]

Untrue, Gabe has stated that if Valve or Steam goes down for good, they'll release a patch to make all their games playable without any online verification.

In one interview years ago, and if Valve goes out of business that may not even be possible for them to do at the time. While I don't doubt that Gabe would like to do that, it isn't an officially announced policy or plan and may not be legally possible due to licensing contracts and other stuff.

Having paid less than $15 (if not less than $10) for most of my games on Steam I'm not really worried if I have to find copies of them in years.

Steam`s offline mode doesn`t work very well either, sometimes, randomly, for some people, it usually works for most people (if they set it up probperly, which is extremely easy to do without the guide). I never had ap roblem with it until last November when it just wouldn`t work while my net was down.

Overall though the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages (many of which are due to digital distribution and not unique to Steam).

 

[Adam7Eight]

A picture is worth a thousand words

That's about right.

 

[Rub'Rum]

I'm the sort of person who shops in real-world stores and who pays in cash. It's the mandatory Internet activation that I absolutely hate, particularly since I'm not a(n Internet) multiplayer guy. The argument had been made, and fairly, that there's incredible convenience in being able to install any game purchased on any computer with access to Steam... but should the servers go down or the company fold, I'm stuck with an unusable product. A physical disc has more permanence than a cloud.

Without getting into semantics over what it means to "own" a copy of software, what troubles me is how 'control' over the implementation of a product has shifted from the user to the distributor. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that if I have in my hand a CD/DVD that I have paid for, I should be able to use its contents in full without having to expose myself to the World Wide Web, even for a moment.

Now that I mention it, the decline in hard copy availability is an issue in of itself.

Ultra convenience, awesome prices, etc.

I too, like you, used to be worried about the permanence of purchases. Now I rarely buy physical games anymore for various reasons.

First, with websites like gog.com, it's sort of reassuring to know that, if 15 years from now I feel like playing a game I bought in 2012 AND somehow Steam has died AND somehow that has cut my access to all my games... Well odds are very high there will be an outlet somewhere on the internet to buy these "good old games" for ridiculously small amounts. It doesn't have to be gog.com, but I'm pretty sure we'll have access to those games in some ways for not too much.

Second, even today, you go out and buy almost any game in a store, come back with your disk, and the first thing it tries to do is authenticate with some servers online. I hate this as much as anyone else. I hate singleplayer games that somehow need you to be connected to the internet at any point. However, yeah, every other game seems to be doing it at this point, so I might as well go with Steam, who is the lesser of all these evils in my opinion, if I have to be online, I might as well be online with awesome functionality and epic small prices. So yeah, now you go out, buy your disk, but without the internet services required to activate or maintain your game activated, your "disk" will be useless to you 15 years down the road. I almost have more faith that Steam or some surviving service will be there to keep my games working than some obscure company's authenticating server will be online to activate my "permanent physical disk copy" in 2028.

 

[GoodGame]

I have no animosity against Steam. I think it's the best online digital distributor out there, with a good customer-centric approach.

I have animosity against retail box purchases that require online DRM, such as activating online (excepting say a Microsoft OS purchase). Having moved several times in 4 years, I can say that not all internet service levels are available in all locations, so online activation for retail box purchases is a bit of a slight against the consumer. I boycotted GTA 4 and Civ 5 for those reasons, in part.

 

[Polycrates]

I think part of the hate, especially in these forums, comes from resentment when you get the first game that needs it (in this case probably Civ V for most people), and you have to install this big third-party online app just to play your game. It feels a bit intrusive, and I know I resented it when I first had to install it for Half Life 2 or Team Fortress or whatever it was. It's really only when you start getting a few games on there that you realise its benefits, I think.

Then there's people who hate it because it's also DRM - to which I'd argue it's pretty unobtrusive DRM as far as these things go, and the more publishers feel they can rely on something like that, the less they're likely to add their own painful DRM nonsense (or GFWL, god forbid). In the real world, publishers/shareholders are always going to want some anti-piracy measure, and I think Steam mostly strikes a pretty reasonable compromise (even if its offline mode can be awful flaky). When there's one bit of software that a publisher can just rely on for the selling, downloading, updating, multiplayering, achievementing and DRMing, that makes it an attractive package for going with rather than implementing some other horrible solution.

My major gripe with it is that it replicates the retail pricing for a lot of games - so to buy a new AAA game from Steam from an Australian IP will usually cost $80-100 (it's the same in shops); and the Australian dollar buys about $1.06 US, so we're paying double what everyone else pays for exactly the same thing. You can buy from elsewhere and activate on Steam usually, but it's not always easy and it's a hassle. So I usually wait for sales.
I'd really like Steam to have a serious competitor(s) to hopefully get rid of this crazy price gouging.

But yeah on the other hand there's the convenience and the crazy sales and the indies. Steam's HUGE role in the resurgence of the PC indie makes it hard for me to be angry with it.

 

[Maniacal]

Steam does have serious competitors, and they all follow the same price gouging for Aussies.

 

[Polycrates]

Steam does have serious competitors, and they all follow the same price gouging for Aussies.

Nah I mean someone who will make them actually break a sweat, not the current bunch of clowns who are just so far behind it's embarrassing. Some proper competition for the digital download dollar and maybe there starts being some pressure. I can dream.

 

[Maniacal]

Nah I mean someone who will make them actually break a sweat, not the current bunch of clowns who are just so far behind it's embarrassing. Some proper competition for the digital download dollar and maybe there starts being some pressure. I can dream.

You're missing the point, Valve isn't sitting down and saying "Hey, wouldn't it be funny to say screw you to the Aussies and charge them more for games?", if they significantly undercut the retail stores (outside of sales, which stores barely do if at all) they risk having the stores pulling Valve's and Steamworks titles off the shelves or other problems. As well the contracts and agreements they have with publishers, who are probably in no rush to fix the inflated prices.

Also a lot of people like to have their games all in one place, there are people who will only buy digital games on Steam because they do not want to manage various accounts (and you never know what will happen to the other sites either, D2D is now part of GameFly and Impulse was bought up by Gamestop). EA is trying to copy Steam with Origin, but it is still little more than a glorified EA download manager that serves no real purpose besides that (it doesn't even sync with your Battlelog friend's list for BF3 ). While I'd love for GoG.com and GamersGate to keep growing and make more money, more competition with Steam isn't really going to change anything.