Valve Support through Steam is impressive

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-07-29 02:31am

I've heard many a complaint about Steam being forced upon the Half-Life players by Valve and that it doesn't work or has problems. I don't deny that there are problems, but damnit I just learned that Valve is doing their damnedest to fix them.

I try and get Steam working after a reformat and I encounter some problems. I get fed up and find the Steam forums. I post a message at 7:08 detailing my problem. At 7:15 I get a response from a Valve employee detailing how to fix my problem. At 7:16 I get a second reply from the same guy expanding on a particular aspect. At 7:21 I am up and running problem solved.

Now has anyone else had quick tech support from a game company like that before?

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2004-07-29 02:46am

Nice!

My expirience is BAD from any and all buissnises, only the official formus is of any use and then it's an other user that aids not the company.

Good thing that Valve supports it's customers

Azazel · Post by **Azazel** » 2004-07-29 12:53pm

Yes, despite many complaints that people seem to have against steam, I have had few experiences where I have been upset at the program.

Lt. Dan · Post by **Lt. Dan** » 2004-07-29 03:03pm

I dunno why everyone hates it so much. The only thing that makes me upset is the buddy system. It's always down. But as for the games, I never has a problem.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2004-07-29 03:53pm

The majority of players simply accept it; as always you only hear from the vocal minority. I had the fortune to testing steam early some years ago and it's come a long way. Deep down, I know and long for the day when it works perfectly, but I still find it hard to believe that it is practicle solution.

The idea of delivering games to users online, without buying the box is really not important if you were to ask me, and I think most people in general. What makes steam great, and feared, is that everyone has to use it. Instead of giant patches everyone 5 or 6 months that litteraly bog down the entire internet, you can have small, almost daily patches to fix even the most insignficant of bugs. Also, and very important is it's cheat prevention abilities. No, that isn't correct; it can't prevent cheats, rather it can allow developers to create fixes for critical exploits that allow cheating "on the fly". If some asshat finds a hole in the code and writes a program to exploit it, as soon as it "gets out" developers can figure out how to prevent it, the lifetime of public multiplayer cheats could be cut down to days!

All in all, I like the idea behind steam, and greatly hope to see it work. But presently, I feel it's slowing down the release of HL2, and that makes me MAD

GoldenFalcon · Post by **GoldenFalcon** » 2004-07-29 04:00pm

I can't see why anyone would be able to hate Steam...it has better search functions (searching for partial map names, such as elusive es_ maps is now EASIER), the code stablizes Half-Life (normal Half-Life crashed after 3-4 games, then had to restart due to it sticking in memory), and you can actually alt-tab Half-Life without losing sound!

IMO, they're probably living in the past.

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2004-07-29 04:20pm

Despite occasional oddness when running Sven Co-Op, i'm generally pretty happy with Steam.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-07-29 10:09pm

Instead of giant patches everyone 5 or 6 months that litteraly bog down the entire internet, you can have small, almost daily patches to fix even the most insignficant of bugs.

Yeah, but there's something to be said about being able to keep copies of patch files on your hard drive in case you have to reinstall the game or if one of your buddies at a LAN party doesn't have his/her game patched up.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2004-07-30 08:28am

Uraniun235 wrote:
Instead of giant patches everyone 5 or 6 months that litteraly bog down the entire internet, you can have small, almost daily patches to fix even the most insignficant of bugs.
Yeah, but there's something to be said about being able to keep copies of patch files on your hard drive in case you have to reinstall the game or if one of your buddies at a LAN party doesn't have his/her game patched up.

In the ideal world, and perhaps in the real one some day, Steam may be accomodating. However, it's your own fault if you didn't plan ahead for the lan party and get the right software on a friend's computer.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-07-30 02:42pm

InnocentBystander wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:
Instead of giant patches everyone 5 or 6 months that litteraly bog down the entire internet, you can have small, almost daily patches to fix even the most insignficant of bugs.
Yeah, but there's something to be said about being able to keep copies of patch files on your hard drive in case you have to reinstall the game or if one of your buddies at a LAN party doesn't have his/her game patched up.
In the ideal world, and perhaps in the real one some day, Steam may be accomodating. However, it's your own fault if you didn't plan ahead for the lan party and get the right software on a friend's computer.

Some people do not have consistent internet access and therefor could not update Steam. That is Valves fault, not ours. When they don't allow for downloading of patches to keep the game at a consistent level thats their fuckup. Tribes 2 and Battlenet update for the games, but you can still download the patches at the same time which allows for LAN games.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-07-30 07:36pm

Ideally, Steam should be able to function at a LAN such that everyone can join a session, Steam determines who has the most recent version, and distributes the files to those who need them.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-07-30 08:05pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Ideally, Steam should be able to function at a LAN such that everyone can join a session, Steam determines who has the most recent version, and distributes the files to those who need them.

Thats a pretty good idea. The other option is Steam identifies who has the oldest version and everyon uses that standard.