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Reasons why Steam is useless and bad

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"You have been signed out due to Friends network maintenance."

Also known as:

signedout.png

That's it. All the reasons encapsulated in a single sentence. What, you want more? Well, bah, OK.

I avoided Steam for as long as possible, but thanks to a yearning for Counter-Strike yesterday, I decided to dice with death and download it. Of course, Valve, being the caring sharing chaps that they are, tried to make me wait around in a Fileplanet queue for 50 minutes in order to get the half-meg installer. Fortunately, I found a really old version hanging around on an FTP server, so I was able to install that and have it update itself. Counter-Strike downloaded pleasantly fast and I was able to connect to a server within about 15 minutes, only to be met with pings of 300ms and upwards. A bit confused, I had a look at Steam, and discovered that it was downloading every HL mod ever behind my back! There was no obvious way to stop the download - but you'd think it would stop it all by itself, considering I'd just initiated an online game, via Steam, which required the use of my bandwidth!

As if doing stuff behind my back wasn't annoying enough, the above-mentioned "You have been signed out due to network maintenance" message appears so frequently that the buddy list and the instant messenging is rendered pretty much useless. And the GUI is a dull, greeny-brown. Greeny-brown! Who designed this thing, id Software? And the integration with Half-Life itself is really, woefully bad. Changing the brightness in HL's options causes the whole thing to restart and, more often than not, crash entirely.

OK, rant over. I'm off to play Opposing Force, which despite Steam's hilarious badness in all other areas, it somehow managed to give to me for free. Hooray!

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Well, I have just bent over and installed it, expecting Valve to penetrate me with the giant meat sausage that is Half-Life 2. I expect that, without Steam firmly rooted in the very depths of your file system, you won't even get the HL2 disk anywhere near your computer.

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Yeah i downloaded it too, in anticipation of HL2, give them time though, they are trying to do something new and ambitious, takes time.

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And another thing! You can purchase the right to download Condition Zero via Steam. The cost to you, in terms of money paid out for distribution, packaging, media, and the store's markup? Nothing! What do you get for your money? Well, a few downloaded files, plus the ability to redownload them at will (assuming Steam doesn't go tits-up, leaving you up the creek).

So, considering what you get and the costs involved, it should be considerably cheaper to download Condition Zero than to buy it, right? Nope, I'm afraid it costs you $10 more than getting it off Amazon - $39.95 versus $29.99. All into Valve's back pocket? What the hell? $10 more and I don't even get a fancy box? Valve are living on a strange planet if they think that's going to be a popular option.

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what??? something's seriously wrong with their business model. I thought the main "hook" of steam is that you can get the games at cheaper price than retail.

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Other reasons include:

steamunavail.png

I only want to play Opposing Force! Just to enter its single-player incarnation and roam free!!!! But no! The Valve gods decree it will not be so!

And this, as much as anything else, is why any centralised subscription-esque system like the Phantom is doomed to failure.

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When I got my PC I went out and bought the Platinum Pack, and then said "f this I don't want to bother installing it all, I'll just get it in pieces via Steam." Whoops. Okay so now when playing Opposing Force there is a Steam download screen beween all the load areas (they fortunately fixed that for regular Steam Half Life single player), and on top of that, Blue Shift isn't Steam compatible? I have to install it all after all. >:

That said, Steam is a really good concept and I think once they get the kinks worked out it will be extremely awesome. The way the full Half Life 1 can be streamed to your client in portions as you play is awesome.

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That said, Steam is a really good concept and I think once they get the kinks worked out it will be extremely awesome. The way the full Half Life 1 can be streamed to your client in portions as you play is awesome.

Yes, that is quite impressive, but the way it attempts to stream online-only mods like Counter-Strike while you play them is less awesome and just dumb - as downloading while playing online leads to lag city. The way it insists upon downloading all the latest patches before you can play, even when you only want to have a quick blast on single-player where being all up-to-date isn't important, is also incredibly annoying.

I'm definitely not going to purchase HL2 through Steam (unless it's amazingly cheap, which it almost certainly won't be), but I suspect it will rely on Steam even so. That'll be interesting when Valve ceases to exist, which must happen at some point.

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Got a bit further this time. The update downloaded, then this:

steamnoconnect.png

A problem with the Steam network?! Surely not! I'm not sure what's happening here, because it used to complain about being unable to connect, then let me play my games anyway. Whatever's happening, at this rate, I might actually get a game of Opposing Force by tomorrow, if I'm lucky.

EDIT - Oh oh! It just connected! I guess I'd better not close it until I'm absolutely sure I've finished with it. :~

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Also, the practical problems of creating a large transportable heat source to boil water leaves steam far behind the combustion engine. As it stands, its only practical for use in power plants and sea vessels.

You know, so that's probably why they named their seemingly crappy program after an outdated source of power.

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You know, so that's probably why they named their seemingly crappy program after an outdated source of power.

Either that or to make "steaming pile of shit" jokes even easier.

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Steam is weird...

I just downloaded it to play Codename Gordonl, the 2D Half-Life, and I thouhgt it would be nice to register and install my copy of Half-Life...

And then all of the sudden I have Counter-Strike, Day Of Defeat, Team Fortress, Half-Life Deathmatch, Opposing Force and Ricochet...

:eek:

What the!?!?

:erm:

I guess this Steam thing exists only for multiplayer mode since all those games didn't have single player mode, but still.... How on Earth did I get all those games for just registering one? :hmph:

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Those mods are all free to owners of the commercial single player version of Half Life - you could have downloaded them all on your own separately from those mods homepages and they would work with your CD key.

Instead, your CD key (which is for a valid retail Half Life 1) just unlocked them for you in Steam. If you want to play Condition Zero you'll still have to buy that separately.

Steam exists for single player too... It doesn't work entirely seamlessly, but if you want you can just download Steam enter your CD key and play Half Life 1 without ever installing it from the CD's - it downloads future maps through Steam as you progress through the levels.

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So they are just free multiplayer mods?

But the program said I registered Half-Life Platinum Pack...

So I thought something went wrong...

I'm still a bit confused... :erm:

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So they are just free multiplayer mods?

But the program said I registered Half-Life Platinum Pack...

So I thought something went wrong...

I'm still a bit confused... :erm:

Isn't the Platinum pack HL + OpFor + Blue Shift?

Blue Shift isn't supported by Steam (for some reason), which is why you haven't been given that.

And you seem to get OpFor for free with a bog-standard HL1 CD key - don't ask me why. Maybe they can't differentiate them from Platinum Pack CD keys or something.

Tsk, Valve.

Anyway, Counter-Strike, Day Of Defeat, Team Fortress, Half-Life Deathmatch and Ricochet are all multiplayer mods - the first two were formerly indy efforts which have been absorbed by Valve, the others were made by Valve themselves.

Have you seen the Melee 3D map for Half-Life? BEST!

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Isn't the Platinum pack HL + OpFor + Blue Shift?

Blue Shift isn't supported by Steam (for some reason), which is why you haven't been given that.

And you seem to get OpFor for free with a bog-standard HL1 CD key - don't ask me why. Maybe they can't differentiate them from Platinum Pack CD keys or something.

Tsk, Valve.

Anyway, Counter-Strike, Day Of Defeat, Team Fortress, Half-Life Deathmatch and Ricochet are all multiplayer mods - the first two were formerly indy efforts which have been absorbed by Valve, the others were made by Valve themselves.

Have you seen the Melee 3D map for Half-Life? BEST!

So what happened is that it can't tell the difference from my Half-Life (I have Half-Life and Half-Life ONLY) CD Key from the Platinum Pack CD Key?

Now it makes sense.... I think.... :erm:

Where can I get this mod? It looks cool!

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Where can I get this mod? It looks cool!

It's only a deathmatch map, but it is super-cool. Grab it here. Get it "on" by typing "map melee3d" at the HL console (or choosing it from the list when you create a LAN server, I think).

While I'm pimping out my stuff on certain other forums, I might as well blatantly plug the trailer I made for it. :innocent:

We used to play this map over at MIGC, but er, we don't any more. Boo.

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It's only a deathmatch map, but it is super-cool. Grab it here. Get it "on" by typing "map melee3d" at the HL console (or choosing it from the list when you create a LAN server, I think).

While I'm pimping out my stuff on certain other forums, I might as well blatantly plug the trailer I made for it. :innocent:

We used to play this map over at MIGC, but er, we don't any more. Boo.

Hmm, I seem to get an error message... Good old 404...

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Hmm, I seem to get an error message... Good old 404...

Hmm, OK, me too. Clearly some shooting in the face of the webmaster is required.

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What's wrong with this picture, you ask?

steamisokay.gif

Well... nothing!!!

I blame your lousy British internet service provider (or maybe that awful green skin). It has to be. Seriously, I've been using Steam for, well since it came out, and I've never, ever, have had any problems with it. Okay, one or two maintenance messages about the Friends Network, but you can still play the games.

--Erwin

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Interesting. My Steam is now grey. It still looks like a horrific accident.

I am also supposedly connected to the friends service, but I doubt this will be the state of affairs for very long.

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The other day i fancied playing my original halflife 1 online.However my original email address doesnt exsist anymore so i cant re-register the game back to myself and the same goes for opposing force and blue shift.Doesnt seem very fair to me really.I should think their are thousands of people out there with the same ball breaking frustrating problem.steam really has ruined a lot of fun hasn't it?

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The other day i fancied playing my original halflife 1 online.However my original email address doesnt exsist anymore so i cant re-register the game back to myself and the same goes for opposing force and blue shift.Doesnt seem very fair to me really.I should think their are thousands of people out there with the same ball breaking frustrating problem.steam really has ruined a lot of fun hasn't it?

Contact Valve.

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