Recent thoughts on Steam

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

Now let's start with some positive things that come to my mind about steam:
a) They have a polite and fairly competent support crew.
b) They have a nice niche of independently developed games.
c) If you want to spend money it's very easy to get into a shopping-spree.
d) They have some nice sales and promotions from time to time.

Now this is all fine and well and I rather have Steam than any other system providing these services but some things really really bother me.

1) I'm living in Europe and Steam seems excessivly expensive. Today I got an advertisment that Shogun II dropped 67% to roughly 17.40$ (US Dollars)for the next 24h.
I was poised to buy it when I checked Amazon and got a price of 15$ (US Dollars) (100% Normal Price)


2) Next thing was that the Blood Pack wasn't even downloadable in my country. Seriously? I'm legally an adult for a long time now, I can prove it with credit cards, IDs and passport verification if necessary but Steam just doesn't care. Too violent for my country. Shogun 2 has to remain free for twelve year old kids. I don't care about the blood honestly I care about restricting my choice as a consumer. I don't like that. Blood and gore isn't against the law here. Even Dead Island is available for adults. Perfectly legal to buy and sell and own (for adults that is). I have no idea why they are not selling a Blood Pack DLC.

3) Oh yes while we are at it: I can only buy a "low violence" version of left4dead. Seriously, Steam? What???
Next time you are going to sell me a car racing game with a 60mph speed limit

4) I don't want to talk much about unstoppable AUTO-Patching of the games you access via Steam. Already made a ranting-thread about that somewhere here.

So I'm not sure what to think about them. Do they believe we Europeans are such incompetent fools that we are unable to shop from Amazon? They probably hope that all the small kids get the Credit Cards of their father and start spending. That's probably why they have the stupid "low violence" version anyway.

Oh and on a side note I read somewhere in another forum I should actually find someone nice abroad in that "friendly country of unlimited possiblites" who just sends me "Steam gift codes" and in turn gets compensated by some appropriate donation. Don't you worry, I'm not going to ask you, you probably won't trust me anyway - I'm not even sure if it works.

But this is quite silly as well.
Because twelve year old timmy can ask his pen pal to send him over some juicy violent activation codes while sending money back to his paypal account. All sponsored by daddys credit card information and internet passwords.

I don't know what to make of this. So what do you think?

 

[Atmos Duality]

4) I don't want to talk much about unstoppable AUTO-Patching of the games you access via Steam. Already made a ranting-thread about that somewhere here.

While there's plenty to comment on, you can turn that feature off before your initial download even completes, for ANY game.

 

[capper42]

What country do you live in? Germany?

 

[cgaWolf]

Sounds to me like you're on the receiving end of the minor-protecting german (?) laws, and suffering for it because most publishers will self censor, or simply not offer the uncensored versions, before getting into trouble. That the restrictions are easily circumvented by anyone of average intelligence is another problem - ease of circumvention doesn't mean publishers or retailers can simply ignore the rules in question.

It's not a general EU problem, but more specific to your locale. I get the uncensored version (I'm in Austria), but ofc we don't have laws censoring videogame content (or even legally binding age restrictions, although most retailers will more or less adher to PEGI/FSK/USK suggestions).

That said, the 1 dollar = 1 Eur conversion rate is fairly annoying.

Auto-patching can be turned off however, so that one's on you

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

4) I don't want to talk much about unstoppable AUTO-Patching of the games you access via Steam. Already made a ranting-thread about that somewhere here.

While there's plenty to comment on, you can turn that feature off before your initial download even completes, for ANY game.

Well, oddly you commented on the least interesting point. Steam just switches back to "Always automatically update" after some various amount of time (about 27.31 minutes). I got some reply from the support staff how avoid this "bug" but I haven't tried it yet. (No new updates, so I don't know if it works anyway)
Alas they didn't have a solution that reverted the whole thing to the last version before. Forcing customers to do something isn't really a smart choice in economics, convincing a customer doing it in his own volition is.

 

[cgaWolf]

Weird bug, that; and i generally agree with the 'convincing customers' stance. Reflects my line of arguing in the always-on DRM vs. Online+good discussion (that we were having in another thread somewhere).

 

[Rednog]

I want to address the "positives:
a) Really? Cause I see Steam's support to be one of the worst and most disgraceful for a company that has pulled in such an obscene amount of money and gotten so big.
Their support takes anywhere between 24-48 hours to get back to you on a single reply of a problem. Seriously if you have a problem that isn't solved with a single exchange you can be dealing with it for quite a while. I had a Portal 2 problem that took about 2 weeks to solve, because it was my problem -> 24 hours -> response -> my response -> 24 hours -> and it repeated for quite a while.
Throw in the fact that steam occasional throws out those big bundled games from a whole series and oh guess what these games aren't going to work on anything above like windows XP, sorry XP is being phased out and most people have moved on, but no returns.
b) Meh, sure they have a slew of indie games, but so do other sites, and even then I hate when steam uses tf2 related bonuses to basically cheat sales from other companies.
c) Uhh, sure? Money isn't really hard to spend anywhere online, especially considering how paypal/amazong etc can be a 1 click thing.
d) I'll give you that (even though some of their sales really aren't that great of a sale).

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, oddly you commented on the least interesting point. Steam just switches back to "Always automatically update" after some various amount of time (about 27.31 minutes). I got some reply from the support staff how avoid this "bug" but I haven't tried it yet. (No new updates, so I don't know if it works anyway)

I commented on what I had time for. I'm bouncing between The Escapist, and something else.
Didn't want to risk going on one of my mile-long dissections when something else is demanding my brain.

Anyway, it sounds like a problem with your client; not implicitly the service.

For instance, I've had Left4Dead2's updates turned off (since Valve just loves to dump huge updates that don't really change anything), and checking my history, it hasn't updated since August (when I turned it off).

A further check of the relevant SteamApp folder shows that its contents haven't been modified since then, either.

"I don't know what the fuck yo."

 

[Get_A_Grip_]

My only complaint with Steam is that it very often does not launch in offline mode when I'm not near an access point...

It goes in a horrible cycle of failing to connect to online servers and then repeating...