steam hate, why?

[Someone Depressing]

There are many, many problems with Steam. For everything they do right, they do so many things wrong.

1)The layout is messy, and it's hard to find anything if I've not been using Steam for a while.

2)I don't technically own the games; I don't really mind, just as long as I have access to them; but I wouldn't get any copies of the game if Valve went out of business. They're not going to go out of business for a pretty damn long time, but still, it's paranoia-inducement for some people.

3)The download speeds are pretty bad. And the country I live in generally has pretty good internet.

4)The quality control, god damnit the quality control. I saw a hack of Super Mario Brothers on the Greenspot. Several, infact... the fuck? Can someone explain to me how that is either legal or allowed? When was that game released, 1986-ish?

5)No refunds whatsoever. Again, I wouldn't mind this... if they actually sorted their shit out, and made sure you don't have to do stupid shit with the game files ot play them. My copy of Dragon Age: Origins didn't start because it was missing a file. I looked all over the directory, I couldn't find it. I even pirated the game to see if I could find the file in the pirated copy's directory; that's where I finally found it.

6)A ton of older games don't work on it. Bioware RPGs (y'know, before they tapped into the spring of shitty copy-and-pasted dungeons and lots of money?) and many CRPGs (that's an exaggaration. I mean Fallout and Baldur's Gate. I'm so sorry) and many modern games written in older languages/run on older computers/using older software simply don't work because they're not optimised. Yeah yeah, I know, use Good old Games, but they're (Valve) still selling shit.

Too many things to list, way too many. Steam's a very good service, but recently it's been slipping. I've been moving to GoG and Desura (got a lot of old games and cool indie games respectively) and, God smite me, Origin on occasion, and I don't feel defiled. It's mostly a problem of Valve trying to rush up to new trends in gaming and publishing, but those trends and practises are about as horrible and anti-consumer as we all know.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

There are many, many problems with Steam. For everything they do right, they do so many things wrong.

1)The layout is messy, and it's hard to find anything if I've not been using Steam for a while.

2)I don't technically own the games; I don't really mind, just as long as I have access to them; but I wouldn't get any copies of the game if Valve went out of business. They're not going to go out of business for a pretty damn long time, but still, it's paranoia-inducement for some people.

3)The download speeds are pretty bad. And the country I live in generally has pretty good internet.

4)The quality control, god damnit the quality control. I saw a hack of Super Mario Brothers on the Greenspot. Several, infact... the fuck? Can someone explain to me how that is either legal or allowed? When was that game released, 1986-ish?

5)No refunds whatsoever. Again, I wouldn't mind this... if they actually sorted their shit out, and made sure you don't have to do stupid shit with the game files ot play them. My copy of Dragon Age: Origins didn't start because it was missing a file. I looked all over the directory, I couldn't find it. I even pirated the game to see if I could find the file in the pirated copy's directory; that's where I finally found it.

6)A ton of older games don't work on it. Bioware RPGs (y'know, before they tapped into the spring of shitty copy-and-pasted dungeons and lots of money?) and many CRPGs (that's an exaggaration. I mean Fallout and Baldur's Gate. I'm so sorry) and many modern games written in older languages/run on older computers/using older software simply don't work because they're not optimised. Yeah yeah, I know, use Good old Games, but they're (Valve) still selling shit.

Too many things to list, way too many. Steam's a very good service, but recently it's been slipping. I've been moving to GoG and Desura (got a lot of old games and cool indie games respectively) and, God smite me, Origin on occasion, and I don't feel defiled. It's mostly a problem of Valve trying to rush up to new trends in gaming and publishing, but those trends and practises are about as horrible and anti-consumer as we all know.

i think you mean greenlight, in order to be on greenlight you only need to pay 100 dollar and post your idea, it used to be worse before this fee was introduced


however in order for a game to be ON THE STORE, it must be voted up by the community and finally steam must approve it



if i was you i wouldnt really mind any clones or shitty games on greenlight, if they leave greenlight and enter the store, then i say you should get worried

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

snip

I think that people need to stop calling legitimate criticisms "hate". If you can't accept that whatever you're a fan of has undeniable flaws or that not everyone shares your opinion, don't be so base as to throw those differing thoughts into a negative category.

Steam has problems.

It's quality control is now gone. The WarZ fiasco as well as the 2 companies that censored TotalBiscuit illegally are recent examples.

Greenlight is a major failure as Valve set up rules for curation and then immediately ignored those rules.

Early Access is a major problem as it removes the incentive for developers to finish their game as they make boatloads of money before the game is finished.

EA's Origin, GOG, and almost every other digital distribution outlet has better customer service as well as a respectable refund system.

There's a difference between "hate" and real criticism. And slapping the term hate to eschew real criticism is irresponsible.

 

[Jimmy Sylvers]

I have received a refund from Steam.

The reason they will not refund most of the time is that there is no legitimate reason to do it. Just because you didn't like the game doesn't give you the right to a refund.

I have never encountered speed issues on Steam, then again I live in Australia so maybe I am more easily impressed. The interface itself is a little laggy. There are certainly issues with steam but I think they are greatly outweighed by the benefits of using it.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

snip

I think that people need to stop calling legitimate criticisms "hate". If you can't accept that whatever you're a fan of has undeniable flaws or that not everyone shares your opinion, don't be so base as to throw those differing thoughts into a negative category.

Steam has problems.

It's quality control is now gone. The WarZ fiasco as well as the 2 companies that censored TotalBiscuit illegally are recent examples.

Greenlight is a major failure as Valve set up rules for curation and then immediately ignored those rules.

Early Access is a major problem as it removes the incentive for developers to finish their game as they make boatloads of money before the game is finished.

EA's Origin, GOG, and almost every other digital distribution outlet has better customer service as well as a respectable refund system.

There's a difference between "hate" and real criticism. And slapping the term hate to eschew real criticism is irresponsible.

i have no damn idea what comment you are quoting

i do admit steam has some flaws, even when many of them dont affect me, and im willing to listen to any criticism as long as its valid

for instance, saying origin provides a better customer service is absurd, first of all, when it was first conceived, origin was a literal spyware and EA was free to delete any free, unused account, even now origin only refunds EA games, and only within a certain amount of time, i think people exaggerate the scope of this feature, specially when EA threatened to ban people who requested a refund for Sim City, and despite this refund feature, compared to steam, origin has much less sales and their discounts are usually worse, you cant sell virtual items for extra money on origin, it has worse community features than steam, you cant trade items on origin, it doesnt support linux, and theres no game sharing

not to mention until recently i couldnt even use origin since it wanted me to pay in euros instead of dollars

for more examples of how well EA treats their customers i invite you to read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(digital_distribution_software)#Criticism

gog.com, sure you could argue they treat their customers slightly better


first greenlight was critized for letting too few games in, now its critized for letting too many, there are 2 sides to this

you critize Early Acess for not giving devs incentives to finish their games, and yet, games like insurgency were finished thanks to it, also games like dayz, rust and kerbal space program gained a great following and have managed to increase their scope thanks to early access

devs have an incentive to finish their Early Access games, because early access games sell much less than finished titles, insurgency has proven it, shortly after its release, the game peaked at around 2.5 k players

http://steamcharts.com/app/222880

the game released on late january but it was on early access long before that

i suggest you use some real data before comming up with your assumptions, because this is mere "hate", not criticism



as for QC, i think yo got the wrong idea, shitty games shouldnt really be used as evidence of faulty QC, ride to hell retribution was released on the PS3 and xbox360 for instance, but games that dont work properly, or games that lie about its features SHOULD be used as examples of faulty QC, something i never said wasnt a problem with steam, the problem is that standard QC might be too clumsy for the sort thing valve wants to do with steam, they want to make it more open and put the least amount of barriers between the developers and the customers

i want better quality control on steam, but i dont think a standard solution for this problem is the best

 

[Lotet]

Not saying steam didn't have anything to do with that, but maybe you should get a better internet service if possible

Do you always have problems with steam or just with these games?

Oh, I have a small number of indie games that other people I know played before I did, Terraria, Gunpoint. But I didn't need Steam to buy those, I already bought games like Cortex Command digitally before I ever heard of Steam.

I pretty much only ever buy games for consoles nowadays, so it irritates me that the few times I want to get a strategy game, which is often only on the PC, there are problems because, well, I can't think of any better reason than some people thought steam was a good idea to use as DRM. I can't get a better internet service in my area, why won't it just let me use the disk? The company has done it for ages and all I can see is steam saying "Okay, lets install from that disk you have there!" *starts downloading* . Also, I should mention that Dawn of War 2 was the game I created a steam profile for. One hell of a bad introduction to the service.

You see, for me, Steam doesn't provide anything I didn't have before, aside from mandatory downloads of course.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

Not saying steam didn't have anything to do with that, but maybe you should get a better internet service if possible

Do you always have problems with steam or just with these games?

Oh, I have a small number of indie games that other people I know played before I did, Terraria, Gunpoint. But I didn't need Steam to buy those, I already bought games like Cortex Command digitally before I ever heard of Steam.

I pretty much only ever buy games for consoles nowadays, so it irritates me that the few times I want to get a strategy game, which is often only on the PC, there are problems because, well, I can't think of any better reason than some people thought steam was a good idea to use as DRM. I can't get a better internet service in my area, why won't it just let me use the disk? The company has done it for ages and all I can see is steam saying "Okay, lets install from that disk you have there!" *starts downloading* . Also, I should mention that Dawn of War 2 was the game I created a steam profile for. One hell of a bad introduction to the service.

You see, for me, Steam doesn't provide anything I didn't have before, aside from mandatory downloads of course.

what a shame

well i guess experience may indeed vary, i personally havent had a single problem in the 3 years ive used steam, in fact even when theres a DRM free version avaliable i prefer to get the steam version of a game because it usually includes features such as achivements, trading cards and workshop

 

[Zydrate]

My brother vehemently boycots Steam because of the fact that he has to be online to play games.
...This is literally his only reason.

Not paying attention to the fact that there's an offline mode.
Nor the fact that we tend to be connected to the internet constantly ANYWAY. So who cares?

 

[AT God]

I've been using Steam since 2005 and while some aspects of it have gotten exponentially better, some of the old bugs that I thought would be patched out by now continue to exist which is a bummer because other, worse services have ironed them out.

While I am usually savvy enough to get my own workarounds for bugs, Steam has only gotten worse in letting broken games slip through. The fact that Steam hasn't nailed down a return policy is pretty unacceptable when EA is beating Valve in such an essential part of customer service. I know a lot of people have games that don't work on Steam, I personally can get all of mine to work but some of them are too busted to be worth playing after installing all the workarounds.

Steam's offline mode is still a bad joke, especially given how often Steam goes down these days, I don't know if any other services that are as consuming as Steam have better offline modes but Steam's is still really bad, the fact that the ingame overlay/browser stops functioning when steam is down is really silly. The offline mode's biggest problem is something that they have actually fixed but haven't implemented in certain situations. If you are connected to steam and Steam does down, it will automatically reconnect when Steam comes back up but if you launch steam while it is down, it wont automatically reconnect, you have to manually restart Steam to rejoin which seems really easy to fix.

My main complaint about Steam however is with the ingame web browser. Its not much to complain about because without steam I wouldn't have an ingame browser but the one they did implement crashes alot. If I am playing a game and have a few tabs in the browser open to help me find secrets or easter eggs, most Wikia pages have so many banner ads that the ingame overlay completely crashes, which means I have to close and relaunch the game most of the time.

I remember having this issue back when the browser first came out and it seems Valve has done nothing about it, all they have done is add more things to the overlay, which if anything has made it more unstable.

Still, despite these problems it is still better than the previous way PC games worked, I used to have a drawer full of CD's that I had to shuffle through everytime I wanted to play something so while I think Steam could be improved, I will take it over the way things used to be.


As for people who are really hating on Steam, I think a lot of the virulent hatred is simply down to the Grass is Always Greener expectation, when you play on Steam and have an issue getting a game to work, you get frustrated and wish that Steam was more like GoG. But, at least for me, when I play a game from GoG, I constantly press Shift-Tab and remember I wish I was using Steam.

Also, and this is less the fault of Steam but why the hell can't they play nice with EA so I can play some goddamn Battlefield 3? I know its a complex issue but it seems like one that should be able to be solved.

And Uplay, its not as bad as Origin since I can still get the games through Steam but that almost makes it worse, at least with Origin it is clearly EA taking their ball and going home but Uplay is completely illogical, either let Steam handle your DRM needs or use your own DRM program, don't make me deal with two different DRM clients to play 1 game.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

I really used to love Steam but the UI has hardly updated in ages, years in fact. This gives it a very late 00s feel whilst Origin has moved onwards and is much much faster and cleaner in it's UI.

Also I've just got too many games. When a game used to be on Steam I know it would be a quality game and always worth a buy, especially if it was on sale. Now they've just flooded it with too much shovelware, old games being passed off as new ones, so if you don't do your research it's like playing Russian roulette with your money to get a game that works.

I'm guessing that you have no idea about the large variety of UI overhauling skins that people make that change everything from the standard button layouts to the way the game overlay looks, so I'm going to just go ahead and let you know, those exist, and installing them is really easy. Also user reviews, and meta critic scores and whatnot are right there, so it makes the looking at the games you intend to buy thing easier, but really that issue is the same with EVERY pc game, gotta see if it works, or how it works on your machine if you wanna know if you should get it.

Hope the info about UI skins helps you.

 

[Lotet]

With or without steam, physical copies are dying. They cost too much, and ultimately provide nothing over online shopping in the 21st century.

Well, physical copies are supposed to allow me to install a game faster, but, you know, Steam.

and there is an option to install physically. Its on steam's support page. you didn't use it.

Don't be daft, I tried, repeatedly, a forum said it might be because I'm using Windows 7 or some such, so apparently Steam doesn't want to fix that little bug. Just because it worked for you (maybe you even use Windows 7) doesn't mean it works for everyone else with every game on every operating system.

steam has tools to check a game if its corrupted, but instead you installed and uninstalled multiple times. A simple check on its files in its properties would have fixed it. You don't treat steam like a CD game because it has the extra tools to fix itself without a whole new install.

Of course, I should have known this when I first signed up for steam, silly me. Why would I have treated a steam game like a CD game? Oh right, BECAUSE IT WAS A CD GAME and IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I USED STEAM. Mate, NuclearKangaroo has already acknowledged that my time with Steam has involved more nonsense than most people. My experience is not the typical experience, don't try so hard to defend steam from me. It is simply more functionally frustrating than my non-steam experiences.

 

[Lotet]

-snip-

I already tried that, but I'll try it again, for you. It hovered around 7 hours to install Empire Total war, now it has stopped on 103MB of 16132MB, I'm going to go eat, if it doesn't work, then I'll try it with Rome II, which is definitely not damaged.

 

[endtherapture]

I really used to love Steam but the UI has hardly updated in ages, years in fact. This gives it a very late 00s feel whilst Origin has moved onwards and is much much faster and cleaner in it's UI.

Also I've just got too many games. When a game used to be on Steam I know it would be a quality game and always worth a buy, especially if it was on sale. Now they've just flooded it with too much shovelware, old games being passed off as new ones, so if you don't do your research it's like playing Russian roulette with your money to get a game that works.

I'm guessing that you have no idea about the large variety of UI overhauling skins that people make that change everything from the standard button layouts to the way the game overlay looks, so I'm going to just go ahead and let you know, those exist, and installing them is really easy. Also user reviews, and meta critic scores and whatnot are right there, so it makes the looking at the games you intend to buy thing easier, but really that issue is the same with EVERY pc game, gotta see if it works, or how it works on your machine if you wanna know if you should get it.

Hope the info about UI skins helps you.

I still think the UI is somewhat slow and not that smooth so skins might just make that problem worse.

Point I was trying to make was that Steam used to be synonymous with value and quality. Now it's just let too much shit in to be compared with either.

 

[Kathinka]

because ANY type of post-purchase control tool for publishers and distributors is a terrible idea. it enforces stuff like you not being able to sell your property, and region locking.

one thing is the worry what happens when some day steam closes its doors. you hear the myth thrown around a lot that valve would make your games playable without steam in that case, but that's extremely implausible from a technical and legal standpoint, and as long as they are not legally bound to do something like this the mere promise to do it is absolutely meaningless. if it was ever actually promised, i've never actually seen this said anywhere but in hearsay.

granted, most of the unpleasant issues are easily circumvented manually, but that should not be necessary. players should be able to play THEIR games that they bought with THEIR hard earned money when and where and how they want, not under the specific circumstances that please some arbitrary valve overlords.

i will, however, admit that as far as shitty drm schemes go, steam is probably the least shitty.

 

[Lotet]

Oh wow, would you look at that. Empire Total War installed, it'll take a few hours to update, but it installed, good thing I never complained about this one. Now for a proper test. Shogun 2, this game had a flaw that affected many people, not just me, where it installed the entire game from the disk then it downloaded the entire game again. Oops, nope, it didn't do that, after doing your method again, it instead decided to install 143MB which took 20 minutes for some reason (E:TW breezed to 103MB) and it didn't even install a single MB from disk 1, just wants disk 2 right after it begins, now it's just gone straight for the digital update, woo...

And why do you hate disks so much? Kids these days. Would you hate me more if I said my mobile phone is only a phone? That I don't connect my money to the internet? Joking aside...

I never said Steam or digital distribution is "evil." I don't even know why you put that word in quotes. I never complained about a lack of support. You know how some people never have an incident with steam? That's how I felt about PCs till Steam. The only incident I had before was a disk for Empire Earth 2 looked like it had a 5x2mm bubble carved into it, so the folks at EB Games (pretty sure they're GameStop elsewhere) replaced it.

 

[00slash00]

Well the idea that Steam is the best thing to happen to PC gaming, is damaging. That kind of mentality is why so many indie developers have trouble selling their game if they can't get it on Steam. Aside from that, Steam has a borderline monopoly on PC gaming, which is not a good thing, plus there's the fact that you don't own any of your Steam games. You're borrowing all your Steam games and if they ever decide they don't like you anymore or if the service somehow goes under, you lose all those games and will not be getting any money back. Finally, there's no quality control anymore and Steam is getting flooded with the kind of crap that you would expect to see selling for $2 at Target

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

I really used to love Steam but the UI has hardly updated in ages, years in fact. This gives it a very late 00s feel whilst Origin has moved onwards and is much much faster and cleaner in it's UI.

Also I've just got too many games. When a game used to be on Steam I know it would be a quality game and always worth a buy, especially if it was on sale. Now they've just flooded it with too much shovelware, old games being passed off as new ones, so if you don't do your research it's like playing Russian roulette with your money to get a game that works.

I'm guessing that you have no idea about the large variety of UI overhauling skins that people make that change everything from the standard button layouts to the way the game overlay looks, so I'm going to just go ahead and let you know, those exist, and installing them is really easy. Also user reviews, and meta critic scores and whatnot are right there, so it makes the looking at the games you intend to buy thing easier, but really that issue is the same with EVERY pc game, gotta see if it works, or how it works on your machine if you wanna know if you should get it.

Hope the info about UI skins helps you.

I still think the UI is somewhat slow and not that smooth so skins might just make that problem worse.

Point I was trying to make was that Steam used to be synonymous with value and quality. Now it's just let too much shit in to be compared with either.

i think you mean the client, an UI is just that, an user interface, it cant be slow


but yes, the client has been deserving a good speed increase since forever, ive always prefered to make my purchases through the browser because of it

Well the idea that Steam is the best thing to happen to PC gaming, is damaging. That kind of mentality is why so many indie developers have trouble selling their game if they can't get it on Steam. Aside from that, Steam has a borderline monopoly on PC gaming, which is not a good thing, plus there's the fact that you don't own any of your Steam games. You're borrowing all your Steam games and if they ever decide they don't like you anymore or if the service somehow goes under, you lose all those games and will not be getting any money back. Finally, there's no quality control anymore and Steam is getting flooded with the kind of crap that you would expect to see selling for $2 at Target

but it IS the best thing to happen to PC gaming, Steam is largely responsible for the revival of the platform, remember that not a long time ago PC was seriously struggling

also if steam has a monopoly on the market is not because of any shady practice, theres no lauch parity clause like with the xbox, steam doesnt force devs to use steamworks, in fact, many games on steam are DRM-free, specially old games



i think before asking valve to do worse so they loosen their grip on the market, maybe we should ask everyone else to be better

 

[Bombiz]

God, these people, saying haters gonna hate and other such distanced troll logic

Why do I hate Steam? Because Elder Scrolls used to only need the disk. Because Shogun Total War had to download the entire game after I already installed it. None of their dumb advice helps so I couldn't play till the next afternoon and I don't have infinite internet. Because Dawn of War 2 didn't work after I installed it repeatedly, physically, then I downloaded the entire thing but it still didn't work, so I uninstalled steam completely, reinstalled it and reinstalled Dawn of War 2, THEN it worked. What the hell was wrong with it?? But since I needed the obligatory patch, I couldn't play till the next day. Oh, I also had to wait for the patch to download EVERY TIME I installed it to check if I could play, it took 3 days to play a game!

Steam won't let me install Rome II: Total War physically, guess the estimated download time... 4 Days, 7 Hours.

You gonna tell me it's not Steam's fault? That no game dev is forced to use it? I'm sorry, it's hard to understand that when Steam is the only difference between 'games then' and 'games now' and so far, it's only gotten in my way.

to be fair i think it did you some good by not allowing you to install Rome 2. you know since it's still broken/not good after 6 months of patching.