Poll: Educational debate about Steam

[Zannah]

I hear steamsales are pretty nice, if you've got money to spare. Which I don't have.
As far as Drm goes, and as a platform to connect multiplayer games, it's a complete and utter failure though. It requires permanent internet connection, it eats tons of traffic, it's abnoxious, it's annoying, it's ridden with bugs, and steam-free versions of the exact same games run better in every single case I've witnessed.

:|

 

[Trolldor]

Parity means I pay essentially equal the US amount, +$3.00 in exchange tax

And I still save a good 10-20 dollars, minimum.

 

[Trolldor]

I hear steamsales are pretty nice, if you've got money to spare. Which I don't have.
As far as Drm goes, and as a platform to connect multiplayer games, it's a complete and utter failure though. It requires permanent internet connection, it eats tons of traffic, it's abnoxious, it's annoying, it's ridden with bugs, and steam-free versions of the exact same games run better in every single case I've witnessed.

:|

Steam requires a permanent internet connection?

Lolno.

In fact, I just spent the better part of half a year playing offline while I was at university.

 

[Sandytimeman]

I rarely buy games outside of holidays. If you wait for holiday sales you can get crazy deals. One year I got bioshock for 5 bucks.

 

[Zannah]

That's really situational. I live in Australia and I have unlimited internet so I really, really don't give a shit about how much quota it uses. It doesn't require a permanent connection either, just run it in offline mode.

Curious though, what bugs have you encountered? I haven't run across any myself. I like having the cheap games and as someone who upgrades their PC a lot, it's really convenient to have a way of constantly redownloading my games when I need to.

Say your connection isn't all that good, and you want to play some multiplayer. Last time I checked steam needed an online connection when playing steam games online.
Now when I play Cod4 online, I start the game, and join a server.
When I want to play Blops, for steam to actually start and connect, it takes roughly the time it takes in Cod4 to finish the first map. Then it takes a minute or so for the game to start, and another minute for the server list to load. By the time I've joined a Blops server, I've finished the second cod4 round. And of course while playing, Steam does whatever it does, using up brandwith I'd need to, you know, not lag.

As for bugs - see I happened to play a steamfree version of Blops before buying it (which I wholeheartedly regret, the buying that is).
The version without steam loaded reasonably fast, and could be played through without any serious problems start to end.
The (!)SINGLEPLAYER of the steamversion crashes regularly, encountered several sound issues and a really annoying savegame bug. But as compensation, takes about two times as long to actually fire up.
On the exact same rig, with the exact same drivers. But sure, Drm is totally fine and all.

 

[Megacherv]

Wait, is it standard to pay almost 50 dollars more for games than North America does?

Something like that. PC games are in the $70-90 range over here when they first release, so big name games are usually $90 on PC. And PS3/360 games are usually $110 on release/are still at $110 if its name is Modern Warfare 2.

It's even worse in the UK.

Wait

What?

Which area of North America are you? $110?! I though they were $40, $50 maybe $60

New Vegas for me was £30...

 

[Mace Tulio]

I used to use Steam but I stopped after all my purchases were 'lost'.

I'd purchased around $250 worth of games, but at the time my internet speed wasn't great, so the downloads took forever. By the time the games had finished downloading (and I'd got a few hours of gameplay out of a couple) Steam had some form of overhaul, so basically a big update. This update also took forever to download, in the end, all the downloads were completed around 8 days after purchasing (I'm aware that this isn't Steam's fault, it was my own, slow internet connection). When the updates are finally done, I boot up Steam to play my games to discover that Steam hasn't recorded me as purchasing any of the games, despite the money being missing from my account. I contact Customer Support, they claim that I should just be able to re-download the games, when I try to explain that I can't, he tells me to re-install Steam.

Several months later I haven't been able to recover my games, and my money couldn't be refunded.

tl;dr: I had a bad experience with a big error, so I stopped trusting Steam.

 

[Elijin]

Recently (Last week), Steam had some issues and curled up and died and needed to be reinstalled to fix a few corrupt files somewhere in there, s'all good.

Well, I thought was all good, till I noticed it deleted every game associated with it from my harddrive.

So while Im normally a fan of steams convenience and community, right now we're not on speaking terms. Also, if you see him, tell him he's a jerk and I still havent forgiven him.

 

[Woodsey]

It requires permanent internet connection, it eats tons of traffic, it's abnoxious, it's annoying, it's ridden with bugs, and steam-free versions of the exact same games run better in every single case I've witnessed.

You might want to check your sources on that. ESPECIALLY that first point.

 

[Zannah]

Honestly, to me it sounds like you're running a buggy game with a bad internet connection and expecting it to run really well.

What I'm saying is,

A) The non-steam version has none of the issues I experience with the steam version, that being the only difference.

B) All non-steam games, run with a considerably lower ping and less lags compared to the steam onces.

I know, I know, total coincedence.

 

[Souplex]

Steam is what you get when you mix two of the worst threats to gaming.
It's a digital distribution service, run by Valve.
No redeeming qualities there.

 

[jpoon]

Fuck steam, I will always buy a hardcopy, and I will always avoid being screwed over by steam and losing the ability to play my games if they suddenly decide that I have done something wrong.

*thumbs down to steam*

 

[Vanaron]

Steam is what you get when you mix two of the worst threats to gaming.
It's a digital distribution service, run by Valve.
No redeeming qualities there.

I'm not a big Valve fan (when it comes to their games, anyways), but how is digital distribution a threat to gaming?

 

[redisforever]

I love Steam for absolutely every reason, except that I am now broke because of it's Christmas sales.

And, the offline mode sucks. You need to be able to connect to the Steam servers to go offline?! Why?!

 

[Brutal Peanut]

I've never had a problem with Steam. I've had one crash before when I started really using Steam, but that was it. I've also noticed that it's usually cheaper or the same as the other stores in pricing. Then again, I rarely buy the game on the day of release, unless I've been waited impatiently for it. Which means I am usually behind when it comes to titles, because I wait for their prices to drop. Then I buy them for cheap, and thoroughly use them (but they like it. *WINK*)

Awesome: Steam sales. *drool* So........many...sales and...game packs.

 

[[BDS]Omega]

I have no problem with steam, and have only encountered rare bugs and issues with it (maybe once a month). I do take issue with their sales though, but for a different reason. I have precious little money and those damn sales keep trying to steal it from me

 

[Gindil]

I love it, but I hate how some games are way over-priced or region locked, but that's not their fault, but that of the publishers.

I like buying games from Steam when they have sales on, and I like the Steam overlay that allows me to chat with friends while I'm playing games. That being said, I don't like buying retail games and being forced to play them through Steam. DRM is still DRM regardless of all the shiny bells and whistles that come with it.

And for why I hate Steam, unless there's a sale on, it's rarely. fucking. cheaper. It is beyond ridiculous when I can buy discs, with cases and manuals, for cheaper than I can get a goddamn digital download.

Spoiler

Fuck you Steam, I bought that for $49 in a retail store.

I don't think i ever saw the price of that game at $90 when did this happen?

Not when, but where. You'll find that almost all games cost that much in Australia, despite our currency being basically the same as yours.

Didn't Kotaku explain it, here? [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/05/monday-musings-the-price-is-right/]

 

[LightOfDarkness]

I love steam because the DRM works, isn't all that intrusive and only screws up during mass playtimes (most common cause is a TF2 class update)

 

[Savagezion]

I like the prices on steam but I don't like that I am not guaranteed to get to keep what I pay for. Thus there are some games I will buy on Steam and some I refuse to as I want a hard copy of the purchase to ensure I will always have it. (Like Mass Effect series, Dragon Age, etc.) That way if a scenario pops up 20 years from now and Steam shuts down and does not release the code that will allow you all your games, I am not of the droves of people bitching that they lost all their favorites.

Of the two options I would go with hate although that is a strong term. I would say I just don't prefer it.

 

[ImpofthePerverse]

The only problem I've ever had with Steam is back when I bought Half Life 2 shortly after it came out and DIDN'T have a internet connection so I couldn't play the game for nearly 5 months.

Despite that I've never had a problem. True some of their games are overpriced compared to retail copies, but that what stores are for. Fallout: New Vegas was £30 on Steam and £14 on amazon.co.uk so I got it from amazon and hey now have it on Steam.