I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

I just have one fear with Steam.

Once when my account was hacked I had to show them a picture of the Box I had bought. Since then I've not bought hard copies anymore, I simply buy it via Steam. Right now I have about 1500 euro's worth of games on Steam. I'm simply afraid my account will be hijacked one day and I'd lose this money because they would have some sort of rule like this in place.

All I have now, really, is a copy of their email that confirms I bought something, but there's no serial in there or nothing. Hell I can't even see the serials any longer, unless I fetch them (game by game) via the menu's. So it's a pretty good platform despite the fact that a $50 game costs 50 euros (that's almost twice as expensive, people!) and despite the fact that I have real fears of losing my games.

Can tell you this though, if that ever happens and I actually lose money over Steam they can expect a lawsuit from me.
And having EU laws behind my back they'd have a hard cookie to crack.

Originally, I felt Steam was laggy and an unnecessary burden on system resources. Valve still had to work out the kinks, and technology would only keep getting better. I don't have any real complaints about it. Sure, my download queue can be a bit ditsy at times (it was trying to download the Alien Breeder 2 demo, even though I already had it for several months). Otherwise, it's fine.

I especially think it's cool that the old DOS games come with DOSBox and pre-settings to take you straight into the game.

...although, I would rather play Doom/Heretic/HeXen in one of the port engines (jDoom, Doomsday, etc.). Still, it's neat that Steam has all these accommodations.

BloodRayne wrote:

Can tell you this though, if that ever happens and I actually lose money over Steam they can expect a lawsuit from me.
And having EU laws behind my back they'd have a hard cookie to crack.

I'm pretty sure what they're doing violates some US laws too but most people don't care & the ones who do don't make a big enough stink. Just look at how the US Govt. went after Microsoft years ago for the same kind of things Valve does with Steam (IE comes to mind). Games aren't on the legal radar is all.

Deadite4 wrote:

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

Yeah but, all those things you can do with Steam that it "lets" you do are things you've always been able to do without it. That's like building a prison and then praising all the freedoms and privileges that the inmates are allowed to have while still ignoring the fact that at heart it's still a prison.

CrimsonHead wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

Yeah but, all those things you can do with Steam that it "lets" you do are things you've always been able to do without it. That's like building a prison and then praising all the freedoms and privileges that the inmates are allowed to have while still ignoring the fact that at heart it's still a prison.

It's not 'letting' you do anything. People are complaining steam is adding DRM on an indy game when it is really not. Steam is just the default interface and the user is free to launch the game with or without steam just as if they bought it else where. In this case Steam is nothing more than a distributor, but is getting "OMG DRM" bashed for false perceptions.

Steam doesn't do anything crazy. I don't know where all the hysteria comes from. They are a distribution and marketplace platform. Each game has it's own EULA that the copyright holder makes any end user agree to whether you bought it from DD, GoG, box retail, etc. Many games, unless they use Steamworks DRM, can be launched via their .exe and use the default DRM for that specific game. Serial keys are as easy as Right-click game in your list--> View Game CD Key. It's actually easier to get your CD key from Steam then finding your box and finding it on the booklet, cd, case, or loose paper.

I also have backups of all my games in my library. There are ways of getting them to work in the event Steam went down one day and last resorts were required to play the games.

Come on now people! Learn what your software actually does before hating on it! Most of this is all mis-information.

I just went to play Steal Storm, an id-Darkplaces GPL game. Low and behold, Steam wouldn't open from my icon tray. Load up task manger & it's sucking up a whole core & a few hundred MB of RAM. So I decided, "screw it, I'll run the game from the EXE". Nope, it won't run. Not even listed in task manager. So I close the Steam process & run the game directly (again). Hey, Steam loads up, on a GPL game! And to boot it's updating when it restarts. And it decides to update NS2 again & I can't play MP again until I stop that update.

Yup, convenience at it's finest. I'd say it's just my system but Steam has had these same issues on this system & the previous two I've had.

Hmm... For me, Steam stops anything its downloading whenever a game is loading...?

And meh, just loaded steam, and wowzers, a 12meg L4D2 patch, shocking...

There's plenty of others besides steam. gamersgate, d2d, impulse, gog.com and such. No need to rent games on gabe's rental store only.

Zombie13 wrote:

Everyone is more than happy to have bit torrents running on their pc's all day every day?

i don't have bit torrent's running. ever. I've only ever had 1 for the prey demo.

Zombie13 wrote:

fuck you guys are a bunch of whiners. nothing wrong with steam, I load it when I want to play some half life, then exit steam when I'm dong, what is the fucking fuss?

Everyone is more than happy to have bit torrents running on their pc's all day every day?

Z

-Steam is pretty much the definition of bloatware
-I don't know what it really does so I don't trust it
-Its slow as hell
-It sometimes doesn't work at all

I used it to play HL2 but now its gone from my machine (i hope so at least).

Please watch your language. Theres way to much fuck in your post.
People can whine here if they want to. Sometimes even grown men have to cry!

There may be people that aren't warezing all day long...yes i know, you can also download legal stuff with BT!

Burrito wrote:

-Steam is pretty much the definition of bloatware

No way, no way, not even remotely close.

There's obviously lots of driver packages you've never downloaded

.

Burrito wrote:

Zombie13 wrote:

fuck you guys are a bunch of whiners. nothing wrong with steam, I load it when I want to play some half life, then exit steam when I'm dong, what is the fucking fuss?

Everyone is more than happy to have bit torrents running on their pc's all day every day?

Z

-Steam is pretty much the definition of bloatware
-I don't know what it really does so I don't trust it
-Its slow as hell
-It sometimes doesn't work at all

I used it to play HL2 but now its gone from my machine (i hope so at least).

Please watch your language. Theres way to much fuck in your post.
People can whine here if they want to. Sometimes even grown men have to cry!

There may be people that aren't warezing all day long...yes i know, you can also download legal stuff with BT!

It's too un-reliable. For me as a gamer, I just wanna play and enjoy the game for what it was meant to be, wheras steam just gets in the way.

Ofcourse if our world had any sense, and there weren't hackers, bittorrent, limeware, warez or whatever the hell else people use, then there wouldn't be a need for Steam, and we could all just have a happy life.

:/

I'm not a big Valve fan, but I have to admit...

1) Steam gived me 0 problems from the first day

2) Games running with Steam in background runs extremely well (when I don't need it I can close it :wink:

)

3) I found Half life 2 an Incredibly cool game

4) I've just bought "The Ship"... It's really cool... "Ok, maybe I can buy it"... BAM, I got it on my HD in half an hour...

But obviously since lots of users got problems, I can't stick my head in the sand and think the *everything* is ok...

Indeed, I've never had issues either with steam, not one. Never had a problem with Valves games (I'm not a Valve fan boy, I just like their products).

Z

Most of the problems with Steam have been diminishing through the years; the new interfaces work ten thousand times better. I've also learned that Steam's 'bloat' has a lot to do with CPU: for example, on my previous computer, even though I could run HL2 moderately well (using DX8), it was a pain to start any game because Steam would take *forever* to load. It made me think 10 times before firing the game, so much I only completed the game once then promptly forgot about it. But when I got a new computer (with more memory) this problem almost disappeared. Strange.

They're getting better little by little. There's still a lot I don't like about the system, but when you compare it with the other similar systems available, you can see they're doing their homework pretty well...

i have to agree with Burrito and Phobos, Steam is unecessary as well as unwanted :roll:

evilartist wrote:

xfxgeforced wrote:

this thread was started a year ago.... :lol:

Yeah, I know. It's just fun as hell to drag stuff like this. You never know...this might make some kind of world record! :wink:

Maybe the record: "World's Longest Running Thread about Hating Steam and/or Valve"

Hey, we should follow up with that idea. This post I quoted (of myself) was from over a year ago (check page 3), it stopped at July recently, and vinnie was kind enough to start it up again. Have we set the record yet for the longest running "Hate Valve/Steam" thread yet?

lol, well since it adresses something as malignant as Steam, i think so yes

What's really interesting to me is that so many people are ambivalent towards this digital distribution platform. I'm sure those of you who have complained about this online service are fully in your right to ask for an easily working version, but at the same time are unhappy with the game play. But really everyone has been assuming the wrong idea about STEAM. it wasn't meant to satisfy the consumer. It was meant to satisfy the businessmen: the publishers, developers, and investors (should any investors be 3rd party).
They weren't really as worried about affecting their sales in terms of consumers dropping the product adoption, because it really isn't up to us consumers to adopt the idea of this digital distribution platform, it's up to the other developers and publishers to adopt this platform to release their games on. A lot of people don't know just how the gaming industry is structured and they insist on being a critic of it simply because their a consumer of it. I don't criticize an industry just because I'm a consumer of it.
Let's face it, this industry is a luxury industry and most of us are American to my guess, so either we expect too much from our luxuries when we should be more concerned about keeping track of the industries that actually affect our health (like the whole peanut butter scare across the nation with Jiffy and some other brand had an entire batch infected with Salmonella.
Let's face it, I have a friend who watches at least 2 - 3 movies a day, and gives me the most horrible advice of what to watch. His criticisms and opinions are heavily biased on his personal preferences, which doesn't make him wrong. It makes him an invalid source of professional criticism and like the rest of this country, a commodity has arisen from this: everyone can be a critic and give their opinion. Suddenly we're surrounded by mediocrity. I find this terribly counter-productive and intrusive on just about every aspect of life! Tell me I'm wrong.

Soulburned wrote:

What's really interesting to me is that so many people are ambivalent towards this digital distribution platform. I'm sure those of you who have complained about this online service are fully in your right to ask for an easily working version, but at the same time are unhappy with the game play. But really everyone has been assuming the wrong idea about STEAM. it wasn't meant to satisfy the consumer. It was meant to satisfy the businessmen: the publishers, developers, and investors (should any investors be 3rd party).
They weren't really as worried about affecting their sales in terms of consumers dropping the product adoption, because it really isn't up to us consumers to adopt the idea of this digital distribution platform, it's up to the other developers and publishers to adopt this platform to release their games on. A lot of people don't know just how the gaming industry is structured and they insist on being a critic of it simply because their a consumer of it. I don't criticize an industry just because I'm a consumer of it.
Let's face it, this industry is a luxury industry and most of us are American to my guess, so either we expect too much from our luxuries when we should be more concerned about keeping track of the industries that actually affect our health (like the whole peanut butter scare across the nation with Jiffy and some other brand had an entire batch infected with Salmonella.
Let's face it, I have a friend who watches at least 2 - 3 movies a day, and gives me the most horrible advice of what to watch. His criticisms and opinions are heavily biased on his personal preferences, which doesn't make him wrong. It makes him an invalid source of professional criticism and like the rest of this country, a commodity has arisen from this: everyone can be a critic and give their opinion. Suddenly we're surrounded by mediocrity. I find this terribly counter-productive and intrusive on just about every aspect of life! Tell me I'm wrong.

So, you and your friend downloaded it off the torrent didn't you? You fox you..

KrisTof wrote:

Now I am really getting frustrated in addition to be pissed at Valve.

I have unchecked the box that says "start steam when windows starts" and when I tried to play it offline (I have zonelab) it tells me the game can not be played in offline mode.

I turned off zonelabs fw and now I have been waiting for 20 minutes to "re-download some files from steam...".

I am about done with it and :

1) I will NEVER buy anymore Valve game ever (*you won at pissing off at least one previously loyal customer*)

2) once I have finished the game, I will backup the game dir and uninstall HL2 from my PC. period

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

You have successfully made a loyal and lawful customer into an effective Valve underminer... good job a..holes!

Same thing happened to me this year, but horst.
Here they gave me germany version of Half LIfe 1 , I bought it in the box, and I had to download the game.
Ridiculous.

I will never buy a Valve game, too :wink:

Fabiolinks wrote:

I will never buy a Valve game, too :wink:

Last post: Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:52 am

DUDE! :O

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

I just have one fear with Steam.

Once when my account was hacked I had to show them a picture of the Box I had bought. Since then I've not bought hard copies anymore, I simply buy it via Steam. Right now I have about 1500 euro's worth of games on Steam. I'm simply afraid my account will be hijacked one day and I'd lose this money because they would have some sort of rule like this in place.

All I have now, really, is a copy of their email that confirms I bought something, but there's no serial in there or nothing. Hell I can't even see the serials any longer, unless I fetch them (game by game) via the menu's. So it's a pretty good platform despite the fact that a $50 game costs 50 euros (that's almost twice as expensive, people!) and despite the fact that I have real fears of losing my games.

Can tell you this though, if that ever happens and I actually lose money over Steam they can expect a lawsuit from me.
And having EU laws behind my back they'd have a hard cookie to crack.

Originally, I felt Steam was laggy and an unnecessary burden on system resources. Valve still had to work out the kinks, and technology would only keep getting better. I don't have any real complaints about it. Sure, my download queue can be a bit ditsy at times (it was trying to download the Alien Breeder 2 demo, even though I already had it for several months). Otherwise, it's fine.

I especially think it's cool that the old DOS games come with DOSBox and pre-settings to take you straight into the game.

...although, I would rather play Doom/Heretic/HeXen in one of the port engines (jDoom, Doomsday, etc.). Still, it's neat that Steam has all these accommodations.

BloodRayne wrote:

Can tell you this though, if that ever happens and I actually lose money over Steam they can expect a lawsuit from me.
And having EU laws behind my back they'd have a hard cookie to crack.

I'm pretty sure what they're doing violates some US laws too but most people don't care & the ones who do don't make a big enough stink. Just look at how the US Govt. went after Microsoft years ago for the same kind of things Valve does with Steam (IE comes to mind). Games aren't on the legal radar is all.

Deadite4 wrote:

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

Yeah but, all those things you can do with Steam that it "lets" you do are things you've always been able to do without it. That's like building a prison and then praising all the freedoms and privileges that the inmates are allowed to have while still ignoring the fact that at heart it's still a prison.

CrimsonHead wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

Yeah but, all those things you can do with Steam that it "lets" you do are things you've always been able to do without it. That's like building a prison and then praising all the freedoms and privileges that the inmates are allowed to have while still ignoring the fact that at heart it's still a prison.

It's not 'letting' you do anything. People are complaining steam is adding DRM on an indy game when it is really not. Steam is just the default interface and the user is free to launch the game with or without steam just as if they bought it else where. In this case Steam is nothing more than a distributor, but is getting "OMG DRM" bashed for false perceptions.

Steam doesn't do anything crazy. I don't know where all the hysteria comes from. They are a distribution and marketplace platform. Each game has it's own EULA that the copyright holder makes any end user agree to whether you bought it from DD, GoG, box retail, etc. Many games, unless they use Steamworks DRM, can be launched via their .exe and use the default DRM for that specific game. Serial keys are as easy as Right-click game in your list--> View Game CD Key. It's actually easier to get your CD key from Steam then finding your box and finding it on the booklet, cd, case, or loose paper.

I also have backups of all my games in my library. There are ways of getting them to work in the event Steam went down one day and last resorts were required to play the games.

Come on now people! Learn what your software actually does before hating on it! Most of this is all mis-information.

I just went to play Steal Storm, an id-Darkplaces GPL game. Low and behold, Steam wouldn't open from my icon tray. Load up task manger & it's sucking up a whole core & a few hundred MB of RAM. So I decided, "screw it, I'll run the game from the EXE". Nope, it won't run. Not even listed in task manager. So I close the Steam process & run the game directly (again). Hey, Steam loads up, on a GPL game! And to boot it's updating when it restarts. And it decides to update NS2 again & I can't play MP again until I stop that update.

Yup, convenience at it's finest. I'd say it's just my system but Steam has had these same issues on this system & the previous two I've had.

Hmm... For me, Steam stops anything its downloading whenever a game is loading...?

And meh, just loaded steam, and wowzers, a 12meg L4D2 patch, shocking...

There's plenty of others besides steam. gamersgate, d2d, impulse, gog.com and such. No need to rent games on gabe's rental store only.

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

I just have one fear with Steam.

Once when my account was hacked I had to show them a picture of the Box I had bought. Since then I've not bought hard copies anymore, I simply buy it via Steam. Right now I have about 1500 euro's worth of games on Steam. I'm simply afraid my account will be hijacked one day and I'd lose this money because they would have some sort of rule like this in place.

All I have now, really, is a copy of their email that confirms I bought something, but there's no serial in there or nothing. Hell I can't even see the serials any longer, unless I fetch them (game by game) via the menu's. So it's a pretty good platform despite the fact that a $50 game costs 50 euros (that's almost twice as expensive, people!) and despite the fact that I have real fears of losing my games.

Can tell you this though, if that ever happens and I actually lose money over Steam they can expect a lawsuit from me.
And having EU laws behind my back they'd have a hard cookie to crack.

Originally, I felt Steam was laggy and an unnecessary burden on system resources. Valve still had to work out the kinks, and technology would only keep getting better. I don't have any real complaints about it. Sure, my download queue can be a bit ditsy at times (it was trying to download the Alien Breeder 2 demo, even though I already had it for several months). Otherwise, it's fine.

I especially think it's cool that the old DOS games come with DOSBox and pre-settings to take you straight into the game.

...although, I would rather play Doom/Heretic/HeXen in one of the port engines (jDoom, Doomsday, etc.). Still, it's neat that Steam has all these accommodations.

BloodRayne wrote:

Can tell you this though, if that ever happens and I actually lose money over Steam they can expect a lawsuit from me.
And having EU laws behind my back they'd have a hard cookie to crack.

I'm pretty sure what they're doing violates some US laws too but most people don't care & the ones who do don't make a big enough stink. Just look at how the US Govt. went after Microsoft years ago for the same kind of things Valve does with Steam (IE comes to mind). Games aren't on the legal radar is all.

Deadite4 wrote:

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

Yeah but, all those things you can do with Steam that it "lets" you do are things you've always been able to do without it. That's like building a prison and then praising all the freedoms and privileges that the inmates are allowed to have while still ignoring the fact that at heart it's still a prison.

CrimsonHead wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

rich_is_bored wrote:

I don't know of an Indie title with DRM.

Yeah for many indie titles I own on Steam you can create a shortcut to the .exe and launch it like you do any game without Steam. There are many games that are DRM free on Steam that you can do this with. It always ends up being Steams fault that people don't actually look at what you can do with Steam and they get the bashing incorrectly. There is a lot more you can do with Steam and the games you buy off it than most people realize.

Yeah but, all those things you can do with Steam that it "lets" you do are things you've always been able to do without it. That's like building a prison and then praising all the freedoms and privileges that the inmates are allowed to have while still ignoring the fact that at heart it's still a prison.

It's not 'letting' you do anything. People are complaining steam is adding DRM on an indy game when it is really not. Steam is just the default interface and the user is free to launch the game with or without steam just as if they bought it else where. In this case Steam is nothing more than a distributor, but is getting "OMG DRM" bashed for false perceptions.

Steam doesn't do anything crazy. I don't know where all the hysteria comes from. They are a distribution and marketplace platform. Each game has it's own EULA that the copyright holder makes any end user agree to whether you bought it from DD, GoG, box retail, etc. Many games, unless they use Steamworks DRM, can be launched via their .exe and use the default DRM for that specific game. Serial keys are as easy as Right-click game in your list--> View Game CD Key. It's actually easier to get your CD key from Steam then finding your box and finding it on the booklet, cd, case, or loose paper.

I also have backups of all my games in my library. There are ways of getting them to work in the event Steam went down one day and last resorts were required to play the games.

Come on now people! Learn what your software actually does before hating on it! Most of this is all mis-information.

I just went to play Steal Storm, an id-Darkplaces GPL game. Low and behold, Steam wouldn't open from my icon tray. Load up task manger & it's sucking up a whole core & a few hundred MB of RAM. So I decided, "screw it, I'll run the game from the EXE". Nope, it won't run. Not even listed in task manager. So I close the Steam process & run the game directly (again). Hey, Steam loads up, on a GPL game! And to boot it's updating when it restarts. And it decides to update NS2 again & I can't play MP again until I stop that update.

Yup, convenience at it's finest. I'd say it's just my system but Steam has had these same issues on this system & the previous two I've had.

Hmm... For me, Steam stops anything its downloading whenever a game is loading...?

And meh, just loaded steam, and wowzers, a 12meg L4D2 patch, shocking...

There's plenty of others besides steam. gamersgate, d2d, impulse, gog.com and such. No need to rent games on gabe's rental store only.

I criticised Steam heavily earlier in the thread, but these days I actually use it extensively, having been pleasantly surprised by a generally positive level of service since "biting the bullet" with the Orange Box. I feel that my concerns about its potential for abuse were valid, but that Valve has taken a somewhat different agenda with it, trying to create a positive difference between a legit copy of a game and a warezed one- it's certainly a lot better for the consumer than it was around the original HL2 release. It does take certain traditional freedoms away, most notably resale, but it also adds some, such as the download facilities and the Steam Cloud integration for saved games when playing on different computers.

As well as the indie titles that can be bought via Steam and used without Steam's DRM, it's worth noting that some games with GPL source code can be purchased cheaply on Steam and then played using source ports (e.g. Doom 1/2, Heretic, Hexen, Wolf3D). You can even add the source port as a "non-Steam game" to your Steam library and access the overlay (chat, screenshots etc) if desired. It's a useful resource for many of the old titles that are hard to buy for reasonable prices elsewhere.

A large majority of my traditional issues with DRM are negated by the benefits that Steam offers, especially the sales and game bundles/packs and download/backup facilities, but the one big downside remains that if something goes wrong with your account (mostly due to user stupidity, but you get the odd case when someone is very unlucky) you can lose all your games. In that sense it's like buying an expensive digital camera where in rare cases a camera might have a faulty lens mechanism. I find this unethical, but, as things currently stand, not a big enough reason to reject the Steam platform.

Now I am really getting frustrated in addition to be pissed at Valve.

I have unchecked the box that says "start steam when windows starts" and when I tried to play it offline (I have zonelab) it tells me the game can not be played in offline mode.

I turned off zonelabs fw and now I have been waiting for 20 minutes to "re-download some files from steam...".

I am about done with it and :

1) I will NEVER buy anymore Valve game ever (*you won at pissing off at least one previously loyal customer*)

2) once I have finished the game, I will backup the game dir and uninstall HL2 from my PC. period

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

You have successfully made a loyal and lawful customer into an effective Valve underminer... good job a..holes!

HL2 is the gaming equivalant of AOL.

It "updates" everytime you connect and but no matter how hard you look nothing's changed.

you know 40% of AOL's users don't have computers? probably the reason they've always been able to maintain customer satisfaction at 40%

in other news, I honestly hope Valve decides to consider backpedaling and releases a 'Steam-Free' version in time for christmas or something. Or at least that they decide to make it optional for HL3.

I *was* planning on buying HL2 tomorrow, but after reading about all the problems I won't. I'll wait till it comes out as a budget title in a year or so or until I find a cheap version via the internet. I'm pretty easilly annoyed when software I payed for doesn't immediately work.

Besides I have Doom3 mods and weapons to make!

Stream-ing turd.

Well it works great for me. I don't regret buying HL2 at all.

Just finished the game. Some good ideas, but overall, I feel like it wasn't worth the $50 bucks. Like I said, it's time for me to burn it to DVD and wait for the crack.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME unless you are ready for a big downer...

I hope they go down in flames and that before going out of business, they will have to make a patch for TRUE offline playing available.

SCO = VALVE = slow and painful death

All I can say about this thread is:

"Feel the power of STEAM!"

I never had any problems with Half Life 2, nor steam for that matter, Is Steam a good thing? who knows, like I said, I never had any problems, but I would have rathered not to have been forced to use it just the same, and for that matter, it would have been good if they never forced me to install CounterStrike as well. I thought Half Life 2 was a really good game, I had much fun playing it. But for now it is uninstalled, may or may not play it again. Back to my favs, Quake and DooM

bullet wrote:

you know 40% of AOL's users don't have computers? probably the reason they've always been able to maintain customer satisfaction at 40%

Dear lord I hope you're not stating that seriously, since the article about that was meant to be satire.

How about this pun:

"A Steaming pile of cattle's business"

KrisTof wrote:

SCO = VALVE = slow and painful death

I second that.
I used to like SCO Unix, but I saw the light - Linux - and never looked back, now in my current job we support all the Unix's Linux & Windows. The support issue for OS's are basically: SCO, Windows, the rest. ( in order by most problems first ).

Valve's steam is a bunch of good ideas VERY badly executed.
I've been complain and pointing out problems and issue in steam on the steam forums since I was tricked into having steam by buying HL2 ( it doesn't mention steam is REQUIRED to play it on the DVD case ), I thought I'd only need steam if I wanted to buy HL2 online and download it. How wrong I was.

Sign here if you don't like steam:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?nosteam

KrisTof wrote:

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

the fully working crack that works with your computer offline was released 3 days after the game was released

Dante_UK the link is not working

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3

first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

Whereas ID strained their big brains to fully utilize every feature implemented in new and original ways valve came with original ideas that are going to shake the little world of first person shooters: they have less weapons than in the first title but the gravity gun more than make up for it. It's so groundbreaking that we are starting to see it implemented in all the other engines... there is a mod for it for Doom3 and it's going to be in the expansion, there is a mod for it being developed for Farcry..
It just adds so much depth to the gameplay... so many ways to deal with situation. to the point that in the last levels it's the only weapon you are allowed and it works, they were among the funnest levels of the game. grab a gas bottle and it becomes a fireball launcher use a circular sawblade and it cuts the opponents in two... grab the grenades the soldiers toss at you and throw them back. In one word I found the game fun ,and it got better the further it went.

When ID shows off their engine showing how their new interface allows to manipulate objects like cranes to move barrels around in Halflife you take control of the crane with the arrow keys and you use it to carry your buggy to unreachable areas or to smash soldiers with stuff ( found it more enjoyable too )

And finally the character animations were more entertaining in hl2 made me want to follow more of the story. Moreover they managed to create the illusion of a real breathable new world. Kinda felt like 1984 meets the prisoner meets starwars. ( the combine soldiers look like cousins of the stormtroopers and the striders remind of the imperial walkers ) Actually it felt like a franchise that might become very popular. ( heck they could even make a mmorpg that takes place in the half life universe now .)

However I tried to make a map to try those nifty little 3d skyboxes.and after more than a hour and a half with the compiler running and nothing happening I have switched it off.

I cant really afford to waste hours compiling lightmaps with nowadays technology running in other game engines. With such a big compiling time no wonder the maps are so small. I think that making a mod will be easier in other engines for that reason. Too bad because the way displacement maps and terrain are implemented was interesting ( modelling interesting terrain feels easier than in farcry ) however it only two textures blending on a terrain object whereas farcry allows as many as you want. Also compiling in Farcry is much much faster that it is almost negligible even though the terrain utilizes lightmaps too
however farcry doesnt use brushes everything is made with models so I guess Doom3 editing seem the most satisfying right now too bad I have so much trouble making believable outdoors lighting with it I guess I will do more decors in 3d proggies. Apart from that I will stick with doom3 right nowbut halflife doesnt stand at the top of my list as far as editing is concerned: they said they had developed it with mod makers in mind but seriously who can bother having to cope with a hours long compiling process nowadays?

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3

The last time I checked, people were talking about steam. Then out of nowhere comes another huge post praising one of the games (hl2 or d3) while putting the other down (hl2 or d3) because, of course, the first game cited (hl2 or d3) is the best game ever and the other one (hl2 or d3) is a pile of crap.

You know, that's getting very boring very fast.

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3... first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

will you play hl2 again? i won't. there are too many tedious parts that take away replay value in addition to the fact that its a very linear game. same old spawning of badguys, same old jumping puzzles, same old scripted events. when you think about it, there's not much new in hl2. it was fun the first time, but it didn't deserve all the credit and hype.

but i like going back and playing d3 from time to time. its always fun, its never tedious and the visuals and details never cease to amaze me.

one thing that bothers me is that all the "professional" reviews went out of their way to nit-pick d3 apart but with hl2 they gloss over all of its faults and slap a 98% on it.

sorry to go off topic...

since i bought hl2 a week after its release, i didn't have a problem with steam. it worked fine but the encryption decoding and install was way too long. and since i'm done with hl2 i can just uninstall steam until they release something interesting on it.

pbmax wrote:

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3... first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

will you play hl2 again? i won't. there are too many tedious parts that take away replay value in addition to the fact that its a very linear game. same old spawning of badguys, same old jumping puzzles, same old scripted events. when you think about it, there's not much new in hl2. it was fun the first time, but it didn't deserve all the credit and hype.

but i like going back and playing d3 from time to time. its always fun, its never tedious and the visuals and details never cease to amaze me.

one thing that bothers me is that all the "professional" reviews went out of their way to nit-pick d3 apart but with hl2 they gloss over all of its faults and slap a 98% on it.

sorry to go off topic...

since i bought hl2 a week after its release, i didn't have a problem with steam. it worked fine but the encryption decoding and install was way too long. and since i'm done with hl2 i can just uninstall steam until they release something interesting on it.

I *totally* agree with you here. I've found many faults with HL2. From the tedious waterbuggy levels to the repetetive gameplay with the gravity gun. After having made the gg mod myself I'm noticing how much HL2 really does hang on the physics gimmick, look past that and very little remains.

Not only that but there's so many bugs in this game that I almost didn't believe it. I got stuck with the waterbuggy all but 3 times which made that part even more tedious. It was only with relentlessly ignoring my boredom that I managed to get past those maps. It was nice and nostalgic to see it but I know that I will deinstall this to free up those 4 gigs again as soon as I finish the game.

In the meantime I'm noticing the gamepress going nuts over this game while there's actually very little strong points for this game. I thought Max Payne 2 was almost a year beyond HL2 while in fact HL2 came out a year later than it. The physics in MP2 are even more realistic and the mapdesign in MP2 is just that much better than it is in HL2.

Personally I can give HL2 no more than a 7. It must be a personal taste thing but it just doesn't do it for me. I'll prefer Doom 3 for it's gameplay and modding capabilities over HL2 anytime.

I agree the Steam thing is annoying at best, but we all better get used to this sort of install for games in the future. I think your right when you say someone will crack it, but won't valve just release a patch and when you bootup the game it will update it for you?
I think the most annoying thing was the 1 hour wait while my HL2 files got Decrypted. Im on ADSL and it took an hour, imagine a 56ker :shock:

The game it's self was pretty good, but valve better get their heads out of their asses, hell Bill Gates dosent even have this kind of annoying protection and we all know Big Bill is all about the money...

Quote:

agree the Steam thing is annoying at best, but we all better get used to this sort of install for games in the future.

Personally, I don't totally agree with that. Put simply, if there is a growing trend towards systems that many people find intrusive, if people just accept it and get used to it, then nothing will be done about it. I don't think Steam is a revolutionary system that will be improved upon with time, I think it is more likely to be one cog in the ever-accelerating process of increased control over the end user. (Or it may be refined and improved, but with increasing control over the end user as a by-product)

If people make their discontent heard (as they have done in this and other threads), then companies might take notice, and this trend is less likely to go the whole way.

Honestly, as I read the things going on onto the differents BBS I use to read, I see a kind of a war starting. Starting from a simple problem which is refused to be taken by the companies : People do not have a lot of money anymore.
But we are still forced to buy games, always more expensive.
So, we find another way to get our copy, that's all.

P2P may be the answer, not by itself, but by the renewal of consumer's habits it generates.

That's my opinion...

Bye !

Now I am really getting frustrated in addition to be pissed at Valve.

I have unchecked the box that says "start steam when windows starts" and when I tried to play it offline (I have zonelab) it tells me the game can not be played in offline mode.

I turned off zonelabs fw and now I have been waiting for 20 minutes to "re-download some files from steam...".

I am about done with it and :

1) I will NEVER buy anymore Valve game ever (*you won at pissing off at least one previously loyal customer*)

2) once I have finished the game, I will backup the game dir and uninstall HL2 from my PC. period

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

You have successfully made a loyal and lawful customer into an effective Valve underminer... good job a..holes!

HL2 is the gaming equivalant of AOL.

It "updates" everytime you connect and but no matter how hard you look nothing's changed.

you know 40% of AOL's users don't have computers? probably the reason they've always been able to maintain customer satisfaction at 40%

in other news, I honestly hope Valve decides to consider backpedaling and releases a 'Steam-Free' version in time for christmas or something. Or at least that they decide to make it optional for HL3.

I *was* planning on buying HL2 tomorrow, but after reading about all the problems I won't. I'll wait till it comes out as a budget title in a year or so or until I find a cheap version via the internet. I'm pretty easilly annoyed when software I payed for doesn't immediately work.

Besides I have Doom3 mods and weapons to make!

Stream-ing turd.

Well it works great for me. I don't regret buying HL2 at all.

Just finished the game. Some good ideas, but overall, I feel like it wasn't worth the $50 bucks. Like I said, it's time for me to burn it to DVD and wait for the crack.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME unless you are ready for a big downer...

I hope they go down in flames and that before going out of business, they will have to make a patch for TRUE offline playing available.

SCO = VALVE = slow and painful death

All I can say about this thread is:

"Feel the power of STEAM!"

I never had any problems with Half Life 2, nor steam for that matter, Is Steam a good thing? who knows, like I said, I never had any problems, but I would have rathered not to have been forced to use it just the same, and for that matter, it would have been good if they never forced me to install CounterStrike as well. I thought Half Life 2 was a really good game, I had much fun playing it. But for now it is uninstalled, may or may not play it again. Back to my favs, Quake and DooM

bullet wrote:

you know 40% of AOL's users don't have computers? probably the reason they've always been able to maintain customer satisfaction at 40%

Dear lord I hope you're not stating that seriously, since the article about that was meant to be satire.

How about this pun:

"A Steaming pile of cattle's business"

KrisTof wrote:

SCO = VALVE = slow and painful death

I second that.
I used to like SCO Unix, but I saw the light - Linux - and never looked back, now in my current job we support all the Unix's Linux & Windows. The support issue for OS's are basically: SCO, Windows, the rest. ( in order by most problems first ).

Valve's steam is a bunch of good ideas VERY badly executed.
I've been complain and pointing out problems and issue in steam on the steam forums since I was tricked into having steam by buying HL2 ( it doesn't mention steam is REQUIRED to play it on the DVD case ), I thought I'd only need steam if I wanted to buy HL2 online and download it. How wrong I was.

Sign here if you don't like steam:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?nosteam

KrisTof wrote:

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

the fully working crack that works with your computer offline was released 3 days after the game was released

Dante_UK the link is not working

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3

first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

Whereas ID strained their big brains to fully utilize every feature implemented in new and original ways valve came with original ideas that are going to shake the little world of first person shooters: they have less weapons than in the first title but the gravity gun more than make up for it. It's so groundbreaking that we are starting to see it implemented in all the other engines... there is a mod for it for Doom3 and it's going to be in the expansion, there is a mod for it being developed for Farcry..
It just adds so much depth to the gameplay... so many ways to deal with situation. to the point that in the last levels it's the only weapon you are allowed and it works, they were among the funnest levels of the game. grab a gas bottle and it becomes a fireball launcher use a circular sawblade and it cuts the opponents in two... grab the grenades the soldiers toss at you and throw them back. In one word I found the game fun ,and it got better the further it went.

When ID shows off their engine showing how their new interface allows to manipulate objects like cranes to move barrels around in Halflife you take control of the crane with the arrow keys and you use it to carry your buggy to unreachable areas or to smash soldiers with stuff ( found it more enjoyable too )

And finally the character animations were more entertaining in hl2 made me want to follow more of the story. Moreover they managed to create the illusion of a real breathable new world. Kinda felt like 1984 meets the prisoner meets starwars. ( the combine soldiers look like cousins of the stormtroopers and the striders remind of the imperial walkers ) Actually it felt like a franchise that might become very popular. ( heck they could even make a mmorpg that takes place in the half life universe now .)

However I tried to make a map to try those nifty little 3d skyboxes.and after more than a hour and a half with the compiler running and nothing happening I have switched it off.

I cant really afford to waste hours compiling lightmaps with nowadays technology running in other game engines. With such a big compiling time no wonder the maps are so small. I think that making a mod will be easier in other engines for that reason. Too bad because the way displacement maps and terrain are implemented was interesting ( modelling interesting terrain feels easier than in farcry ) however it only two textures blending on a terrain object whereas farcry allows as many as you want. Also compiling in Farcry is much much faster that it is almost negligible even though the terrain utilizes lightmaps too
however farcry doesnt use brushes everything is made with models so I guess Doom3 editing seem the most satisfying right now too bad I have so much trouble making believable outdoors lighting with it I guess I will do more decors in 3d proggies. Apart from that I will stick with doom3 right nowbut halflife doesnt stand at the top of my list as far as editing is concerned: they said they had developed it with mod makers in mind but seriously who can bother having to cope with a hours long compiling process nowadays?

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3

The last time I checked, people were talking about steam. Then out of nowhere comes another huge post praising one of the games (hl2 or d3) while putting the other down (hl2 or d3) because, of course, the first game cited (hl2 or d3) is the best game ever and the other one (hl2 or d3) is a pile of crap.

You know, that's getting very boring very fast.

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3... first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

will you play hl2 again? i won't. there are too many tedious parts that take away replay value in addition to the fact that its a very linear game. same old spawning of badguys, same old jumping puzzles, same old scripted events. when you think about it, there's not much new in hl2. it was fun the first time, but it didn't deserve all the credit and hype.

but i like going back and playing d3 from time to time. its always fun, its never tedious and the visuals and details never cease to amaze me.

one thing that bothers me is that all the "professional" reviews went out of their way to nit-pick d3 apart but with hl2 they gloss over all of its faults and slap a 98% on it.

sorry to go off topic...

since i bought hl2 a week after its release, i didn't have a problem with steam. it worked fine but the encryption decoding and install was way too long. and since i'm done with hl2 i can just uninstall steam until they release something interesting on it.

pbmax wrote:

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3... first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

will you play hl2 again? i won't. there are too many tedious parts that take away replay value in addition to the fact that its a very linear game. same old spawning of badguys, same old jumping puzzles, same old scripted events. when you think about it, there's not much new in hl2. it was fun the first time, but it didn't deserve all the credit and hype.

but i like going back and playing d3 from time to time. its always fun, its never tedious and the visuals and details never cease to amaze me.

one thing that bothers me is that all the "professional" reviews went out of their way to nit-pick d3 apart but with hl2 they gloss over all of its faults and slap a 98% on it.

sorry to go off topic...

since i bought hl2 a week after its release, i didn't have a problem with steam. it worked fine but the encryption decoding and install was way too long. and since i'm done with hl2 i can just uninstall steam until they release something interesting on it.

I *totally* agree with you here. I've found many faults with HL2. From the tedious waterbuggy levels to the repetetive gameplay with the gravity gun. After having made the gg mod myself I'm noticing how much HL2 really does hang on the physics gimmick, look past that and very little remains.

Not only that but there's so many bugs in this game that I almost didn't believe it. I got stuck with the waterbuggy all but 3 times which made that part even more tedious. It was only with relentlessly ignoring my boredom that I managed to get past those maps. It was nice and nostalgic to see it but I know that I will deinstall this to free up those 4 gigs again as soon as I finish the game.

In the meantime I'm noticing the gamepress going nuts over this game while there's actually very little strong points for this game. I thought Max Payne 2 was almost a year beyond HL2 while in fact HL2 came out a year later than it. The physics in MP2 are even more realistic and the mapdesign in MP2 is just that much better than it is in HL2.

Personally I can give HL2 no more than a 7. It must be a personal taste thing but it just doesn't do it for me. I'll prefer Doom 3 for it's gameplay and modding capabilities over HL2 anytime.

I agree the Steam thing is annoying at best, but we all better get used to this sort of install for games in the future. I think your right when you say someone will crack it, but won't valve just release a patch and when you bootup the game it will update it for you?
I think the most annoying thing was the 1 hour wait while my HL2 files got Decrypted. Im on ADSL and it took an hour, imagine a 56ker :shock:

The game it's self was pretty good, but valve better get their heads out of their asses, hell Bill Gates dosent even have this kind of annoying protection and we all know Big Bill is all about the money...

Quote:

agree the Steam thing is annoying at best, but we all better get used to this sort of install for games in the future.

Personally, I don't totally agree with that. Put simply, if there is a growing trend towards systems that many people find intrusive, if people just accept it and get used to it, then nothing will be done about it. I don't think Steam is a revolutionary system that will be improved upon with time, I think it is more likely to be one cog in the ever-accelerating process of increased control over the end user. (Or it may be refined and improved, but with increasing control over the end user as a by-product)

If people make their discontent heard (as they have done in this and other threads), then companies might take notice, and this trend is less likely to go the whole way.

Honestly, as I read the things going on onto the differents BBS I use to read, I see a kind of a war starting. Starting from a simple problem which is refused to be taken by the companies : People do not have a lot of money anymore.
But we are still forced to buy games, always more expensive.
So, we find another way to get our copy, that's all.

P2P may be the answer, not by itself, but by the renewal of consumer's habits it generates.

That's my opinion...

Bye !

Steam = BAD

"HL2 is the gaming equivalant of AOL. "
Im not american so that dussnt say much to me, altho i
understand that most americans dont like it,
but another version of above statement could be -
Steam is the gaming equivalant of Microsoft

romperstomper wrote:

Steam is the gaming equivalant of Microsoft

not quite... I don't NEED to update windows to use it. Register, yes, but update? No. Steam is the gaming equivilent of the cable companys from the 80's.

i used to accept steam (as bad as it is), since i rarely played cs...

but after my vacations i came home and had to format because of some nasty bug on windows...when i reinstalled steam, oh what a surprise..ACCOUNT DISABLED!

[start rant]
i mailed steam support supplying my cdkey and registered mail..and their response was that the account was disabled because it was affiliated with credit card theft or some s**t ...besides that, without giving me a date of the alleged 'crime', TELLING ME TO READ THE AGREEMENT, i was told that it wouldnt be enabled again ...

i could find a way to prove i did nothing illegal, but i suppose steam support WONT cooperate to solve the issue...so a big F U to valve/steam
[end rant]

two thumbs up for id software!

A problem happened to a friend too, but it was "different"...
A "Pirate" (Cracker/Thief) was playing with his key (don't know how...) so Valve disabled his key but never give him a new one.
When you bought a game, you would be able to play every time, Online and Offline.
And i never heard about another Company that punish a victim cause he was hacked/pirated! :shock:

But they really don't give a f**k, cuz you bought it. like much and much, i bought it too, in collector version, to play it only a month... :evil:

guys. try reporting to the FTC. Also, if you purchased the game recently, report it to your CC company for being ripped off.

I have two cracked versions of HL2. First is w/o steam and in second you don’t need to start steam to play HL2. So there is no problem. Although, I can’t use HL2 for online playing; luckily I’m not kind of a guy who likes multiplayer modes. But when I see how many problems some of you have, I lose my wish to even try to do such thing.

I just want to say, that there is always alternative. However, I think that some of you are really over reacting in some statements because HL2 is really very nice game. It is a bit shorter game than we was expected, it is a bit naive and childish but generally HL2 was offer something new, refreshing and fun. I was really enjoyed in the game and I’m pretty much sure that all of you will play HL3 when it shows up. I will, and it’s hard to me to believe that someone will not just because of the Steam. Sorry…

Vladimir wrote:

I have two cracked versions of HL2. First is w/o steam and in second you don’t need to start steam to play HL2. So there is no problem. Although, I can’t use HL2 for online playing; luckily I’m not kind of a guy who likes multiplayer modes. But when I see how many problems some of you have, I lose my wish to even try to do such thing.

I just want to say, that there is always alternative. However, I think that some of you are really over reacting in some statements because HL2 is really very nice game. It is a bit shorter game than we was expected, it is a bit naive and childish but generally HL2 was offer something new, refreshing and fun. I was really enjoyed in the game and I’m pretty much sure that all of you will play HL3 when it shows up. I will, and it’s hard to me to believe that someone will not just because of the Steam. Sorry…

People are complaining about Steam because its a pain in the ass. This can conclude in piracy as your post shows - which is a solution we don't condone.
Warez talk is, rightfully, not tolerated on this board. Be warned.

-post deleted-

Another post referring to warez and this topic is locked. -Burrito

Ah, sometimes I forget where I live, but that’s another story…

I’m redrawing all what I said in first part of my upper post. Second part still stands…

How can i have a peacefull discution with Burrito?

6th Venom wrote:

How can i have a peacefull discution with Burrito?

Everybody can - why can't you?

I found. my question was more "where" can i find a link to PM him.
But everything's alright now. :wink:

Edit: Sorry if one of you who read my reply had interpret it like a pub to pirate any game. it was NOT my intention. thanks.

The Happy Friar wrote:

guys. try reporting to the FTC. Also, if you purchased the game recently, report it to your CC company for being ripped off.

well, i dont live in the US, so i didnt know about the FTC ..but now that youve pointed it out, im filling a complaint

i bought retail CS about 3 or 4 years ago..

FTC is the Federal Trade Commision in the USA. They are basicly a govt run orginasation that checks out "bad" businesses. If enough people said "Someone stoll my key, i did nothingwrong & valve says "TS"" these are the guys you report them to.

I'm imagine your own country has something simular.

yeah, after you mentioned it i googled FTC and got there...as i said above, i filled a complaint ..

thx

and yeah, in my country there exists the same kind of organization..it's called something like "national service for consumer protection"

well, if all games were to be available on steam only, id stop playing games cuss theres N O way steam will ever infest my puter,
satan will go iceskating to work before THAT happens ! ^^

romperstomper wrote:

well, if all games were to be available on steam only,

that would NEVER happen. Nintendo would never do that.

Just for the record, I have never bought any product of Valve's purely because of Steam and my lack of appreciation for valve's work. It is true

.

And I don't plan on buying the "HL3" either, if it has STEAM.

fuck you guys are a bunch of whiners. nothing wrong with steam, I load it when I want to play some half life, then exit steam when I'm dong, what is the fucking fuss?

Everyone is more than happy to have bit torrents running on their pc's all day every day?

Z

Zombie13 wrote:

Everyone is more than happy to have bit torrents running on their pc's all day every day?

i don't have bit torrent's running. ever. I've only ever had 1 for the prey demo.

Zombie13 wrote:

fuck you guys are a bunch of whiners. nothing wrong with steam, I load it when I want to play some half life, then exit steam when I'm dong, what is the fucking fuss?

Everyone is more than happy to have bit torrents running on their pc's all day every day?

Z

-Steam is pretty much the definition of bloatware
-I don't know what it really does so I don't trust it
-Its slow as hell
-It sometimes doesn't work at all

I used it to play HL2 but now its gone from my machine (i hope so at least).

Please watch your language. Theres way to much fuck in your post.
People can whine here if they want to. Sometimes even grown men have to cry!

There may be people that aren't warezing all day long...yes i know, you can also download legal stuff with BT!

Burrito wrote:

-Steam is pretty much the definition of bloatware

No way, no way, not even remotely close.

There's obviously lots of driver packages you've never downloaded

.

Burrito wrote:

Zombie13 wrote:

fuck you guys are a bunch of whiners. nothing wrong with steam, I load it when I want to play some half life, then exit steam when I'm dong, what is the fucking fuss?

Everyone is more than happy to have bit torrents running on their pc's all day every day?

Z

-Steam is pretty much the definition of bloatware
-I don't know what it really does so I don't trust it
-Its slow as hell
-It sometimes doesn't work at all

I used it to play HL2 but now its gone from my machine (i hope so at least).

Please watch your language. Theres way to much fuck in your post.
People can whine here if they want to. Sometimes even grown men have to cry!

There may be people that aren't warezing all day long...yes i know, you can also download legal stuff with BT!

It's too un-reliable. For me as a gamer, I just wanna play and enjoy the game for what it was meant to be, wheras steam just gets in the way.

Ofcourse if our world had any sense, and there weren't hackers, bittorrent, limeware, warez or whatever the hell else people use, then there wouldn't be a need for Steam, and we could all just have a happy life.

:/

I'm not a big Valve fan, but I have to admit...

1) Steam gived me 0 problems from the first day

2) Games running with Steam in background runs extremely well (when I don't need it I can close it :wink:

)

3) I found Half life 2 an Incredibly cool game

4) I've just bought "The Ship"... It's really cool... "Ok, maybe I can buy it"... BAM, I got it on my HD in half an hour...

But obviously since lots of users got problems, I can't stick my head in the sand and think the *everything* is ok...

Indeed, I've never had issues either with steam, not one. Never had a problem with Valves games (I'm not a Valve fan boy, I just like their products).

Z

Most of the problems with Steam have been diminishing through the years; the new interfaces work ten thousand times better. I've also learned that Steam's 'bloat' has a lot to do with CPU: for example, on my previous computer, even though I could run HL2 moderately well (using DX8), it was a pain to start any game because Steam would take *forever* to load. It made me think 10 times before firing the game, so much I only completed the game once then promptly forgot about it. But when I got a new computer (with more memory) this problem almost disappeared. Strange.

They're getting better little by little. There's still a lot I don't like about the system, but when you compare it with the other similar systems available, you can see they're doing their homework pretty well...

i have to agree with Burrito and Phobos, Steam is unecessary as well as unwanted :roll:

evilartist wrote:

xfxgeforced wrote:

this thread was started a year ago.... :lol:

Yeah, I know. It's just fun as hell to drag stuff like this. You never know...this might make some kind of world record! :wink:

Maybe the record: "World's Longest Running Thread about Hating Steam and/or Valve"

Hey, we should follow up with that idea. This post I quoted (of myself) was from over a year ago (check page 3), it stopped at July recently, and vinnie was kind enough to start it up again. Have we set the record yet for the longest running "Hate Valve/Steam" thread yet?

lol, well since it adresses something as malignant as Steam, i think so yes

What's really interesting to me is that so many people are ambivalent towards this digital distribution platform. I'm sure those of you who have complained about this online service are fully in your right to ask for an easily working version, but at the same time are unhappy with the game play. But really everyone has been assuming the wrong idea about STEAM. it wasn't meant to satisfy the consumer. It was meant to satisfy the businessmen: the publishers, developers, and investors (should any investors be 3rd party).
They weren't really as worried about affecting their sales in terms of consumers dropping the product adoption, because it really isn't up to us consumers to adopt the idea of this digital distribution platform, it's up to the other developers and publishers to adopt this platform to release their games on. A lot of people don't know just how the gaming industry is structured and they insist on being a critic of it simply because their a consumer of it. I don't criticize an industry just because I'm a consumer of it.
Let's face it, this industry is a luxury industry and most of us are American to my guess, so either we expect too much from our luxuries when we should be more concerned about keeping track of the industries that actually affect our health (like the whole peanut butter scare across the nation with Jiffy and some other brand had an entire batch infected with Salmonella.
Let's face it, I have a friend who watches at least 2 - 3 movies a day, and gives me the most horrible advice of what to watch. His criticisms and opinions are heavily biased on his personal preferences, which doesn't make him wrong. It makes him an invalid source of professional criticism and like the rest of this country, a commodity has arisen from this: everyone can be a critic and give their opinion. Suddenly we're surrounded by mediocrity. I find this terribly counter-productive and intrusive on just about every aspect of life! Tell me I'm wrong.

Soulburned wrote:

What's really interesting to me is that so many people are ambivalent towards this digital distribution platform. I'm sure those of you who have complained about this online service are fully in your right to ask for an easily working version, but at the same time are unhappy with the game play. But really everyone has been assuming the wrong idea about STEAM. it wasn't meant to satisfy the consumer. It was meant to satisfy the businessmen: the publishers, developers, and investors (should any investors be 3rd party).
They weren't really as worried about affecting their sales in terms of consumers dropping the product adoption, because it really isn't up to us consumers to adopt the idea of this digital distribution platform, it's up to the other developers and publishers to adopt this platform to release their games on. A lot of people don't know just how the gaming industry is structured and they insist on being a critic of it simply because their a consumer of it. I don't criticize an industry just because I'm a consumer of it.
Let's face it, this industry is a luxury industry and most of us are American to my guess, so either we expect too much from our luxuries when we should be more concerned about keeping track of the industries that actually affect our health (like the whole peanut butter scare across the nation with Jiffy and some other brand had an entire batch infected with Salmonella.
Let's face it, I have a friend who watches at least 2 - 3 movies a day, and gives me the most horrible advice of what to watch. His criticisms and opinions are heavily biased on his personal preferences, which doesn't make him wrong. It makes him an invalid source of professional criticism and like the rest of this country, a commodity has arisen from this: everyone can be a critic and give their opinion. Suddenly we're surrounded by mediocrity. I find this terribly counter-productive and intrusive on just about every aspect of life! Tell me I'm wrong.

So, you and your friend downloaded it off the torrent didn't you? You fox you..

KrisTof wrote:

Now I am really getting frustrated in addition to be pissed at Valve.

I have unchecked the box that says "start steam when windows starts" and when I tried to play it offline (I have zonelab) it tells me the game can not be played in offline mode.

I turned off zonelabs fw and now I have been waiting for 20 minutes to "re-download some files from steam...".

I am about done with it and :

1) I will NEVER buy anymore Valve game ever (*you won at pissing off at least one previously loyal customer*)

2) once I have finished the game, I will backup the game dir and uninstall HL2 from my PC. period

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

You have successfully made a loyal and lawful customer into an effective Valve underminer... good job a..holes!

Same thing happened to me this year, but horst.
Here they gave me germany version of Half LIfe 1 , I bought it in the box, and I had to download the game.
Ridiculous.

I will never buy a Valve game, too :wink:

Fabiolinks wrote:

I will never buy a Valve game, too :wink:

Last post: Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:52 am

DUDE! :O

Now I am really getting frustrated in addition to be pissed at Valve.

I have unchecked the box that says "start steam when windows starts" and when I tried to play it offline (I have zonelab) it tells me the game can not be played in offline mode.

I turned off zonelabs fw and now I have been waiting for 20 minutes to "re-download some files from steam...".

I am about done with it and :

1) I will NEVER buy anymore Valve game ever (*you won at pissing off at least one previously loyal customer*)

2) once I have finished the game, I will backup the game dir and uninstall HL2 from my PC. period

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

You have successfully made a loyal and lawful customer into an effective Valve underminer... good job a..holes!

HL2 is the gaming equivalant of AOL.

It "updates" everytime you connect and but no matter how hard you look nothing's changed.

you know 40% of AOL's users don't have computers? probably the reason they've always been able to maintain customer satisfaction at 40%

in other news, I honestly hope Valve decides to consider backpedaling and releases a 'Steam-Free' version in time for christmas or something. Or at least that they decide to make it optional for HL3.

I *was* planning on buying HL2 tomorrow, but after reading about all the problems I won't. I'll wait till it comes out as a budget title in a year or so or until I find a cheap version via the internet. I'm pretty easilly annoyed when software I payed for doesn't immediately work.

Besides I have Doom3 mods and weapons to make!

Stream-ing turd.

Well it works great for me. I don't regret buying HL2 at all.

Just finished the game. Some good ideas, but overall, I feel like it wasn't worth the $50 bucks. Like I said, it's time for me to burn it to DVD and wait for the crack.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME unless you are ready for a big downer...

I hope they go down in flames and that before going out of business, they will have to make a patch for TRUE offline playing available.

SCO = VALVE = slow and painful death

All I can say about this thread is:

"Feel the power of STEAM!"

I never had any problems with Half Life 2, nor steam for that matter, Is Steam a good thing? who knows, like I said, I never had any problems, but I would have rathered not to have been forced to use it just the same, and for that matter, it would have been good if they never forced me to install CounterStrike as well. I thought Half Life 2 was a really good game, I had much fun playing it. But for now it is uninstalled, may or may not play it again. Back to my favs, Quake and DooM

bullet wrote:

you know 40% of AOL's users don't have computers? probably the reason they've always been able to maintain customer satisfaction at 40%

Dear lord I hope you're not stating that seriously, since the article about that was meant to be satire.

How about this pun:

"A Steaming pile of cattle's business"

KrisTof wrote:

SCO = VALVE = slow and painful death

I second that.
I used to like SCO Unix, but I saw the light - Linux - and never looked back, now in my current job we support all the Unix's Linux & Windows. The support issue for OS's are basically: SCO, Windows, the rest. ( in order by most problems first ).

Valve's steam is a bunch of good ideas VERY badly executed.
I've been complain and pointing out problems and issue in steam on the steam forums since I was tricked into having steam by buying HL2 ( it doesn't mention steam is REQUIRED to play it on the DVD case ), I thought I'd only need steam if I wanted to buy HL2 online and download it. How wrong I was.

Sign here if you don't like steam:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?nosteam

KrisTof wrote:

3) Valve, prey that no crack ever come to life because on that day, I will happily share the game with as many friends as I can find so that they can freely play it. I am sure that crack/workaround is being worked on by someone as I speak... this is just a matter of time.

the fully working crack that works with your computer offline was released 3 days after the game was released

Dante_UK the link is not working

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3

first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

Whereas ID strained their big brains to fully utilize every feature implemented in new and original ways valve came with original ideas that are going to shake the little world of first person shooters: they have less weapons than in the first title but the gravity gun more than make up for it. It's so groundbreaking that we are starting to see it implemented in all the other engines... there is a mod for it for Doom3 and it's going to be in the expansion, there is a mod for it being developed for Farcry..
It just adds so much depth to the gameplay... so many ways to deal with situation. to the point that in the last levels it's the only weapon you are allowed and it works, they were among the funnest levels of the game. grab a gas bottle and it becomes a fireball launcher use a circular sawblade and it cuts the opponents in two... grab the grenades the soldiers toss at you and throw them back. In one word I found the game fun ,and it got better the further it went.

When ID shows off their engine showing how their new interface allows to manipulate objects like cranes to move barrels around in Halflife you take control of the crane with the arrow keys and you use it to carry your buggy to unreachable areas or to smash soldiers with stuff ( found it more enjoyable too )

And finally the character animations were more entertaining in hl2 made me want to follow more of the story. Moreover they managed to create the illusion of a real breathable new world. Kinda felt like 1984 meets the prisoner meets starwars. ( the combine soldiers look like cousins of the stormtroopers and the striders remind of the imperial walkers ) Actually it felt like a franchise that might become very popular. ( heck they could even make a mmorpg that takes place in the half life universe now .)

However I tried to make a map to try those nifty little 3d skyboxes.and after more than a hour and a half with the compiler running and nothing happening I have switched it off.

I cant really afford to waste hours compiling lightmaps with nowadays technology running in other game engines. With such a big compiling time no wonder the maps are so small. I think that making a mod will be easier in other engines for that reason. Too bad because the way displacement maps and terrain are implemented was interesting ( modelling interesting terrain feels easier than in farcry ) however it only two textures blending on a terrain object whereas farcry allows as many as you want. Also compiling in Farcry is much much faster that it is almost negligible even though the terrain utilizes lightmaps too
however farcry doesnt use brushes everything is made with models so I guess Doom3 editing seem the most satisfying right now too bad I have so much trouble making believable outdoors lighting with it I guess I will do more decors in 3d proggies. Apart from that I will stick with doom3 right nowbut halflife doesnt stand at the top of my list as far as editing is concerned: they said they had developed it with mod makers in mind but seriously who can bother having to cope with a hours long compiling process nowadays?

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3

The last time I checked, people were talking about steam. Then out of nowhere comes another huge post praising one of the games (hl2 or d3) while putting the other down (hl2 or d3) because, of course, the first game cited (hl2 or d3) is the best game ever and the other one (hl2 or d3) is a pile of crap.

You know, that's getting very boring very fast.

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3... first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

will you play hl2 again? i won't. there are too many tedious parts that take away replay value in addition to the fact that its a very linear game. same old spawning of badguys, same old jumping puzzles, same old scripted events. when you think about it, there's not much new in hl2. it was fun the first time, but it didn't deserve all the credit and hype.

but i like going back and playing d3 from time to time. its always fun, its never tedious and the visuals and details never cease to amaze me.

one thing that bothers me is that all the "professional" reviews went out of their way to nit-pick d3 apart but with hl2 they gloss over all of its faults and slap a 98% on it.

sorry to go off topic...

since i bought hl2 a week after its release, i didn't have a problem with steam. it worked fine but the encryption decoding and install was way too long. and since i'm done with hl2 i can just uninstall steam until they release something interesting on it.

pbmax wrote:

Mugwump wrote:

sorry but there are areas where halflife2 is superior to Doom3... first I find it less repetitive though in some area I was looking forward to seeing the end ( the canal levels )

will you play hl2 again? i won't. there are too many tedious parts that take away replay value in addition to the fact that its a very linear game. same old spawning of badguys, same old jumping puzzles, same old scripted events. when you think about it, there's not much new in hl2. it was fun the first time, but it didn't deserve all the credit and hype.

but i like going back and playing d3 from time to time. its always fun, its never tedious and the visuals and details never cease to amaze me.

one thing that bothers me is that all the "professional" reviews went out of their way to nit-pick d3 apart but with hl2 they gloss over all of its faults and slap a 98% on it.

sorry to go off topic...

since i bought hl2 a week after its release, i didn't have a problem with steam. it worked fine but the encryption decoding and install was way too long. and since i'm done with hl2 i can just uninstall steam until they release something interesting on it.

I *totally* agree with you here. I've found many faults with HL2. From the tedious waterbuggy levels to the repetetive gameplay with the gravity gun. After having made the gg mod myself I'm noticing how much HL2 really does hang on the physics gimmick, look past that and very little remains.

Not only that but there's so many bugs in this game that I almost didn't believe it. I got stuck with the waterbuggy all but 3 times which made that part even more tedious. It was only with relentlessly ignoring my boredom that I managed to get past those maps. It was nice and nostalgic to see it but I know that I will deinstall this to free up those 4 gigs again as soon as I finish the game.

In the meantime I'm noticing the gamepress going nuts over this game while there's actually very little strong points for this game. I thought Max Payne 2 was almost a year beyond HL2 while in fact HL2 came out a year later than it. The physics in MP2 are even more realistic and the mapdesign in MP2 is just that much better than it is in HL2.

Personally I can give HL2 no more than a 7. It must be a personal taste thing but it just doesn't do it for me. I'll prefer Doom 3 for it's gameplay and modding capabilities over HL2 anytime.

I agree the Steam thing is annoying at best, but we all better get used to this sort of install for games in the future. I think your right when you say someone will crack it, but won't valve just release a patch and when you bootup the game it will update it for you?
I think the most annoying thing was the 1 hour wait while my HL2 files got Decrypted. Im on ADSL and it took an hour, imagine a 56ker :shock:

The game it's self was pretty good, but valve better get their heads out of their asses, hell Bill Gates dosent even have this kind of annoying protection and we all know Big Bill is all about the money...

Quote:

agree the Steam thing is annoying at best, but we all better get used to this sort of install for games in the future.

Personally, I don't totally agree with that. Put simply, if there is a growing trend towards systems that many people find intrusive, if people just accept it and get used to it, then nothing will be done about it. I don't think Steam is a revolutionary system that will be improved upon with time, I think it is more likely to be one cog in the ever-accelerating process of increased control over the end user. (Or it may be refined and improved, but with increasing control over the end user as a by-product)

If people make their discontent heard (as they have done in this and other threads), then companies might take notice, and this trend is less likely to go the whole way.

Honestly, as I read the things going on onto the differents BBS I use to read, I see a kind of a war starting. Starting from a simple problem which is refused to be taken by the companies : People do not have a lot of money anymore.
But we are still forced to buy games, always more expensive.
So, we find another way to get our copy, that's all.

P2P may be the answer, not by itself, but by the renewal of consumer's habits it generates.

That's my opinion...

Bye !

Steam = BAD

"HL2 is the gaming equivalant of AOL. "
Im not american so that dussnt say much to me, altho i
understand that most americans dont like it,
but another version of above statement could be -
Steam is the gaming equivalant of Microsoft

romperstomper wrote:

Steam is the gaming equivalant of Microsoft

not quite... I don't NEED to update windows to use it. Register, yes, but update? No. Steam is the gaming equivilent of the cable companys from the 80's.

i used to accept steam (as bad as it is), since i rarely played cs...

but after my vacations i came home and had to format because of some nasty bug on windows...when i reinstalled steam, oh what a surprise..ACCOUNT DISABLED!

[start rant]
i mailed steam support supplying my cdkey and registered mail..and their response was that the account was disabled because it was affiliated with credit card theft or some s**t ...besides that, without giving me a date of the alleged 'crime', TELLING ME TO READ THE AGREEMENT, i was told that it wouldnt be enabled again ...

i could find a way to prove i did nothing illegal, but i suppose steam support WONT cooperate to solve the issue...so a big F U to valve/steam
[end rant]

two thumbs up for id software!