Steam is just a horrible piece of software all over, valve has seldom done any better than that anyway. Obviously (and unfortunately) its the backbone of our scene, but as a piece of software its just horribly, horribly inefficient.
I liked the old steam, before they released for mac and completely changed the interface. The old one wasn't great, but it was leaps and bounds better than the current one. They need to spend more time getting the basics working and spend less time on that full screen thing.
It doesn't matter how crap Steam is, it will always win simply because it was first and, for convenience purposes, people simply do not want to fragment their game collection and have to remember which game gets accessed from which delivery program. It's called vendor lock-in. Valve is a new Microsoft.
I don't have a problem with the quality of Steam. It's just that it should not belong to Valve; it should belong to a consortium and should include not just games but everything.
You can like Steam all you want...just remember if it goes down or they "caught" you cheating then so will all of your shit that you bought and "own".
For me...I had decent experience with Steam and have probably 35-40 games but I know once you have an issue with Valve or their no-arbitration policies you get screwed royally and will receive zero help or consideration.
One is to play Dirt 3: Showdown that I received with my Radeon card for free
The second is so I can play some of the old cdrom games that I can enter the key code for without finding the disk
I did some research and steam "greenlight" seems like an inherently lousy idea.
I also agree with "happyballz" (LOL)
It is a serious problem that you can lose games that you bought because of a dispute. That is a very dodgy business practice IMO
I don't care about a lot of those Indie games (although I did buy FEZ and FTL, but you could almost consider them mainstream), but steam is awesome because of one thing: the Steam summer sale. Every game is half off pretty much. And it's convenient.
Also: That's the reason why people complain when microsoft pushes their DRM, and they say "well, were just copying steam", because there is no way that microsoft will sell games as cheaply.
I don't have a problem with the quality of Steam. It's just that it should not belong to Valve; it should belong to a consortium and should include not just games but everything.
You can like Steam all you want...just remember if it goes down or they "caught" you cheating then so will all of your shit that you bought and "own".
For me...I had decent experience with Steam and have probably 35-40 games but I know once you have an issue with Valve or their no-arbitration policies you get screwed royally and will receive zero help or consideration.
steam has an offline mode and you can backup your games.
Granted Steam can be a little sluggish to start up compared to some of the best programs out there; but how is it a horrible piece of software? It's well organized and supported...What is your problem?
Whatever. I live in Brazil and games here are priced like gold at the retailers. If i can purchase games at a discounted price, so i will. It doesn't matter where i have to buy those from. I just don't like EA and their Origin. I don't have an international credit card because of monthly interest the banks here charge (over 10% a MONTH, damnit!). As Steam doesn't mind going full into our crippled and messy economy, i'll stick with it. I have nothing better to resort to...
For a company that has been dominating the digital scene, they have not shown any monopolistic tendencies. they continue to innovate and bring new things to the table while still keeping profits on their side up. i own about 160 games for steam, and i've had very few problems in the past 6 years i've been part of them
In reply to IndignantSkeptic, there really is no vendor lock (Well there may be a precived one) all steam games and many other services allow for desktop shortcuts. Just make the shortcuts and put them all inside a game folder.
Would you guys rather be forced to Origin or god forbid Uplay? Nah let's just go back to the good 'ol days with stacks and stacks of plastic sleeves with keys. Those would never get loss or broken. >.>
I liked Steam when it first started up back with Counter-Strike, and I still like it now. We've had some bumpy spots but overall the experience has been good.
What I'm not a huge fan of is this whole trading card deal, but I simply ignore it. Just like some other features.
Just looking at that games Greenlight page, there's barely been any exposure and news was posted about it twice. Both posts almost a year after it was first posted to Greenlight.
Greenlight isn't a fire-and-forget process to get it your game on Steam, it never was. You have to get your game out there and get it voted up. His complaints make it sound like whining that Valve isn't doing it for them in their place.
You really can't blame Valve for not getting your game around.
Would you guys rather be forced to Origin or god forbid Uplay? Nah let's just go back to the good 'ol days with stacks and stacks of plastic sleeves with keys. Those would never get loss or broken. >.>
I liked Steam when it first started up back with Counter-Strike, and I still like it now. We've had some bumpy spots but overall the experience has been good.
What I'm not a huge fan of is this whole trading card deal, but I simply ignore it. Just like some other features.
Origin and Steam (from lots of personal experiance) almost exactly the same in every way. Both have problems, both have DRM and sluggish start ups.
Origin and Steam (from lots of personal experiance) almost exactly the same in every way. Both have problems, both have DRM and sluggish start ups.
I can't believe I am actually going to defend Origin, but in comparison to Steam currently, Origin starts faster on first load even though it's on a slower drive(7200RPM vs 10k for my Steam drive). Though if closed then opened a few times Steam does open quicker than first load.
It's honestly not that bad, it lacks lots of features I enjoy from Steam, and is another program I have to maintain to play some of my games. I have it because of games I bought(and received for free) on EA Downloader, and it turns out it's not as bad as I originally thought it would be. They just need better sales.