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Now - most of you will remember my HL2 installation debacle.

I have a confession to make now. I haven't finished HL2 yet. In fact, I haven't played it in more than a month? "BUT WHY?" I hear you scream "Its sooo damn good!" I hear yet more of you say. Why? Because Gabe Newell is an arsehole on level with Jack Chick, Kim Jong-Il, Stalin and Jesus Christ in "Fuck Mary Magdalene in her arse"-mode. I want to put him in a no-holds barred fight to the death with Derek Smart- THAT'S HOW LITTLE I THINK OF HIM RIGHT NOW!

BECAUSE STEAM IS A BAG OF SHIT!

I haven't been able to use Steam offline due to some STRANGE FUCKING ERROR! When I do connect to steam and go through the interminable update process over dial-up and try and save my settings so I can play offline - IT PROMPTLY FORGETS THEM AND DEMANDS TO BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET ONCE MORE!

Then when I finally do get steam to WORK (and ONLY in online mode at that) it FUCKING CRASHES WHENEVER I GO THE "PLAY GAMES" screen!

So after a month of desperately wanting to play HL2 and HL2DM and even Codename FUCKING Gordon - I decide to sit down one last time try to get it to work.

9:00pm - I place my HL2 Collectors Ed DVD in its drive and doubleclick the steam icon on my desktop.

9:02pm - I calmly reassure myself that its not ALL bad, as steam appears to have forgotten my details again. I reluctantly switch on my modem.

9:05pm - Online. And steam is updating.

9:20pm - And updating.

9:40pm - And updating.

9:50pm - And done. After yet more waiting I try and update my details. But no - apparently there is some error and I can't update them at the moment, too bad, so sad.

10:10pm - I click on the god-forsaken "play games" button.

10:25pm - And wait.

10:50pm - And wait.

11:25pm - A full HOUR after clicking "play games" the games window has decided to honour me with its presence.

11:26pm - With a great deal of trepidation I doubleclick the HL2 icon.

11:27pm - "Updating HL2"

11:40pm - Look at pathetically slow moving progress bar on uninterruptable and unavoidable update and decide to post this rant before heading to bed to get some.

11:50pm - Fuck you Gabe Newell. May your life be plagued by the hideous malformed offspring of many insane leprechauns and their banshee wives. I hate you. I really fucking do.

weemadando wrote: Then when I finally do get steam to WORK (and ONLY in online mode at that) it FUCKING CRASHES WHENEVER I GO THE "PLAY GAMES" screen!

Why not just use a direct shortcut to the game? You're not forced to go through Steam's menus every time you want to run the game.


I've personally found Steam perfectly fine to use.

weemadando wrote:11:50pm - Fuck you Gabe Newell. May your life be plagued by the hideous malformed offspring of many insane leprechauns and their banshee wives. I hate you. I really fucking do.

You realize, though, that Steam's going to stick around, right? Most of the reviews I read about HL2 said that Steam is a most valuable asset, especially against PIRACY... So, I don't know if more games will take a similar path as HL2... Bioware has released, past November, a group of Premium Modules (which we have to pay and download them), where a guy, in order to play them, has to be connected to the Internet

Steam is a mediocre concept married with quite stunning horrible code, insufficient bandwidth, and low user-end control of just what the hell it's doing at any given time. If something DOES go wrong and you have to reinstall Steam, you ALSO have to reinstall, say, Half-Life 2, because Steam suddenly doesn't realize it exists and tries to download the entire thing. Suck my dialup, bitch.

White Haven wrote: If something DOES go wrong and you have to reinstall Steam, you ALSO have to reinstall, say, Half-Life 2,

Backup HL2? I thought most people would do that anyway.

I've got the CDs, genius, but it's a royal pain in the ass to have Steam go 'Uh...no you didn't install HL2. I'm going to go download it now.'

Aside from the benfits to Valve are there any benefits to the USER. You know the guy who plunked down $50 for this game and should have a right to do with it as he pleases and not have to be online or whatever when he plays. I find the whole concept behind Steam to be annoying at best especially to someone who almost never multiplays. I just want to sit at home and play halflife2 without worrying whether it has the latest updates or not.

Benefits to the knowledgable user? None. Benefits to the fucking moron who can't download a patch without strangling himself with his phone cord in the process? Sure, they get their patches and content updates on a silver platter.

White Haven wrote:Benefits to the knowledgable user? None. Benefits to the fucking moron who can't download a patch without strangling himself with his phone cord in the process? Sure, they get their patches and content updates on a silver platter.

Is it a good idea to reward stupidity on that level? I mean by making things so fucking simple are we not dumbing it down in general for the rest of the gaming community? If this is the future of gaming then wow. That's just so fucking sad.

Stravo wrote: If this is the future of gaming then wow. That's just so fucking sad.

I don't really see how having something auto-update means the future of gaming is bleak. When was gaming ever about browsing to a website, downloading a patch and installing it?
Did you complain when we suddenly had to stop making several boot disks with different variations of config.sys and autoexec.bat just to get different games to run?

Sharp-kun wrote:

Stravo wrote: If this is the future of gaming then wow. That's just so fucking sad.

I don't really see how having something auto-update means the future of gaming is bleak. When was gaming ever about browsing to a website, downloading a patch and installing it?
Did you complain when we suddenly had to stop making several boot disks with different variations of config.sys and autoexec.bat just to get different games to run?

I don't mean steam per se, I mean the dumbing down to the point where it slows everyone else down as it's done for Ando and others who have had bad experiences with Steam. (My system is powned by HL2's requirements but just setting up steam on my system was a pain)

Gaming has always required some level of computer knowledge and competence in order to get the best experience out of it as possible. Now they seem to be aiming towards a more idiot proof gaming system which might effect the qulaity of the experience.

And sometimes, just sometimes I do miss those good old days of multiple disks, slapping the disk drive to get it to work, entering codes....on second thought nah.

Steam's a decent concept on paper, if it would simply stay the fuck out of the way and sit in the corner until spoken to. A simple 'an update is available, click here to download' would suffice, not all this auto-updating, bandwidth-hogging (Steam downloads without asking, even content for other Steam games, eating bandwidth like there's no tomorrow), and that's not even including the cluster-fuck of opening-day authentication. It's a failed concept that may be redeemed...by someone /else/, as clearly Valve can't get it right in that arena.

Steam does have the benefit of cutting down on online cheating. But that's about the only advantage to the user I can think of.

Bleh, I don't understand everyone's beef with Steam. I can go up to any computer that's connected to the internet, install Steam, log into my account, and install HL2 on that computer from anywhere without having to carry a load of CDs with me.


For my computer, the total install time, to download and verify, took about 40 minutes, IIRC. On a friend's computer, about 2 hours. I haven't had a single glitch. Never.


And you can play all the Steam games offline. You all know that, right?

IF Steam actually works properly at the time. Often it does not, Shinova, and as I've been on the wrong end of Steam getting a bee up its ass, I know of what I speak.

White Haven wrote:IF Steam actually works properly at the time.

Works fine for me and my friends.

Naturally, that means that Steam must have an acceptable success rate, simply because you haven't seen the problem yourself.

If the game is only 99% complete as per Steam's download window, it will say "Not Ready" meaning it won't play offline. Once it is at 100%, then you can easily copy the ClientRegistry.blob file from the Steam folder when you've been online and use that whenever you log or switch off your PC since Steam will be fooled into thinking it is online.

My qualms with Steam were only a day old due to the slow decryption process on my dial-up, but once I got playing that mother, all was promptly forgotten.

I found steam to be a big waste. Okay it does the whole auto-updating and stuff which is nice but like someone else said, i haven't a clue what its doing most of the time. I find it to be a very arrogant, just does whatever it feels like, type of program.

I took my laptop home with me at xmas with the intention of finishing HL2 over the xmas break, only to find that I couldn't play the game offline. Despite trying steam in offline mode.

Its a nice idea, but a shitty, unhelpful, vague and irritating waste of time.

The major problem I see comes with the benefit of keeping all machines up-to-date. You can't choose when to update and what you want to update, it just does it. Don't want to update? TS. It either does or you don't play offline. Given my uni PC hides behind a NAT, I can't access Steam's servers anyway, so that rules out multiplayer for now and updating since downloading any individual patches is difficult (though the advantage of me getting the HL2: CE in mid-December meant all the initial bugs had been dealt with before I even played).

Actually, if you right-click on your games you can set it to either automatically update, like how it's done on default, or you can choose to ignore them and have it update only when you tell it to (ie right-click, then select Update, I believe)


You can also backup your local game files, create desktop shortcuts, and stuff.

Yes, but the DEFAULTS should never be that intrusive.

The irony of this is that all the filthy Pirates have downloaded the latest version off bittorrent, and haven't had to do a single update or neededed to be connected at all to play the single player story. Several of them already have unofficial servers set up where they can all connect without passing thru Steam at all. And a few even have successfully cracked their copies to be able to play on the OFFICIAL servers unimpeded. One would think that paying for legitimate software should be rewarded, not punished

Ooh, those damn pirates. How I envy them.

...Yeah, that's a bodyblow. Pirates have a smoother time playing their illegal copies than some legit users.

The Kernel wrote:Steam does have the benefit of cutting down on online cheating.

Heheheheh bullshit it does. Do they even have VAC2 for CS:Source or HL2DM?

VAC hasn't been worth a poop in HL engine games for some time. It took them 6 months to update cheat protection.