sammyF70 said:
Starke said:
I'll be honest, I've never really understood this hatred of Steam. I get where some people have a dislike of the process but people who go, "I won't touch a game because it has Steamworks" strikes me as a bit odd. No offense.
Quite a few reason really,
* The currency problem. 60 to 70 US dollars for a game, just because you happen to live in Europe is infuriating (and don't give me the crap about "but it's not Valve's fault, it's the publisher's", as they do the same with their own games)
I'm not sure what you're saying. That they up-charge ten to twenty dollars per title? Or that the prices have gone from $50 USD to $60 USD?
If it's the former, I don't know. That could be the VAT with enough of a markup that they don't have to be picky which VAT, though I am guessing.
If it's the latter, then that's something that has happened over here as well.
sammyF70 said:
* You don't *own* whatever you ~buy~ on Steam.There are enough stories about people whose accounts were banned and who couldn't play ANY of ~their~ Steam games anymore. Similarly, depending on where you lived/resided when you bought certain games you might or might not be able to play them if you move to another country.
I've actually heard more about people swiping steam accounts more than account wide bans. This is a little like people that are terrified of flying because of plane crash footage, no offense. It isn't an invalid claim, but it is incredibly rare. Realize that if they were banning legitimate users who had done nothing wrong their EULA wouldn't protect them from consumer protection inquiries in the EU.
Stateside it could be more of an issue, I'll grant you, but the lack of any legal action on the subject suggests that this is people who were doing... untoward things getting caught and then complaining about it. XBox Live has the same problem and gleefully airs the dirty laundry on a fairly regular basis.
As for it working in some countries, but not others? That's a legitimate gripe. Though it probably reflects legal realities regarding legislation and licensing from one country to another. Not saying it's fair, mind you, just why it happens.
Finally, it's worth remembering that you don't "own" any software you buy, according to the EULAs you agree to.
sammyF70 said:
* linked to it, the DRM works for many (most) people, for others it doesn't. This is particularly the case if you are mostly playing single player game (aka. games who wouldn't require you to be connected). Steam generally let's you play offline if you don't have a connection, but (from my own experience), sometimes it will just DEMAND that you connect to the website to apparently refresh some $h1t. If for some reasons you can't connect at that time then you are out of luck and won't be able to play the game you intended to play, no matter what.
You know, it's not against the rules to say "shit", and spelling it with a dollar sign and a one is kinda... well... tacky.
And yeah, I've actually run into this a few times. Not often, mostly back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the service was new. Back when it was (sometimes) impossible to start the service in offline mode.
I haven't run into that in years, though. That said, the first time you run a piece of software using steam as the DRM, you'd better have an internet connection or it will commit process sepuku. There used to be an alternate phone authentication line (back when HL2 came out), but I haven't heard anything about it for years, so I kinda doubt it still exists.
sammyF70 said:
* Playing a game is not possible if Steam is currently downloading a patch for it. You can actually turn the automatic patching off but how hard could it be to just download the patch in the background while letting the customer play and INSTALL whenever possible, instead of saying "we know you REALLY wanted to play this game right NOW, but you will need to wait for 2 hours until it is patched" ( depending on your connection speed, two hours is *very* realistic)
Yeah, that's completely legitimate. The biggest flaw with the service I'm actively aware of is it's assumption that you're in the states on a broadband connection. If you fall out of either of those its value drops off sharply.
On top of that it has a habit of killing any download if you fire up a different game. This makes sense for online shooters or MMOs, but less sense if you're trying to patch up New Vegas and playing Hinterland to kill time (something I've actually done).
sammyF70 said:
There are other, minor, issues, but those are the big ones.
I don't intend to sound like an apologist, I'm just trying to press and see what comes out of these issues.
. Nothing new though. Lots of people around considering DX a shooter or what the hell else not understanding what made this game great and why DX:HR is a lackluster attempt to cash in on the DX franchise. At last not as bad as DX:IW but still riddled with bad design choices left and right. Steam-forced, cover-system, camera-nausea, takedown-idiocy, pseudo-stealth, exp-mania and many other things. But how much non-deusex do you expect from developers stating they "wear blinders so they don't have to deal with deus-ex fans". What more face-fist can you give a franchise than this <.=.<
