Steam Sale Nightmare

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

So I finally seized the opportunity to buy something on steam.
I don't like the pricing tag as in my country the prices are about 30% more expensive. But when Steam has a sale the prices are almost okay.

So, I bought
Ghost Master
and
Ghostbusters
for roughly $5

Yes, laugh all you want but I didn't want to spent more for licenses without even holding a cd, manual and box art in my hands.


First of all, Steam didn't want my money at first.
The Paypal thing didn't work very well, I had to try about a dozen times (over an entire day) before the connection was finally established.

Second Ghost Master doesn't work on my system. (Windows 7/x64) My drivers are up to date and every other game is working fine. My specifications excel those mentioned as recommend requirements. Probably the game is too old for an i7 Multi Core and Win7 64bit. "Run as Administrator/Win XP ServicePack3 Emulation" didn't work at all. I saw that coming all along but well, it's not that Steam offers a demo or something...

Third Ghostbusters installed itself in the wrong language. I just want to have English language. What's the problem with that? Steam is running in English as well, there is no option for me to change the language of the game though. Nope no config.ini files in the folder. On Steam it says it supports different languages, but it doesn't say you are only allowed to play the game in the language Steam choses for you.

I thought Steam is doing things right but now it starts to annoy me. I'm just happy I only wasted about 5 bucks for "nothing but trouble" but I seriously no longer want to buy games at Steam because the risks of them not working the way they should is too high for my tastes. I wonder if they have an actual solution or will take those games back and offer a refund or something.

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

Next time, check the forums before you make a purchase. Just because is on Steam doesn't mean a game will work on modern PCs.

Yes, actually that would have been the normal procedure if the games had been more expensive. I was aware that was getting "crap" for less than $5 bucks but at least I thought I might double click it and play for five minutes to acknowledge that.

 

[DazZ.]

Same problems would occur whether or not they were bought on Steam then?

Why are you blaming Steam exactly?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Just think how annoyed you'd have been if they were on Amazon/Game Stop for double that price and exactly the same thing happened.

Oh.

 

[babinro]

Same problems would occur whether or not they were bought on Steam then?

Why are you blaming Steam exactly?

Because Steam has the moral and ethical obligation to notify its customers what the games will play on since they offer no form of store credit or refund. They essentially follow a legal practice that is incredibly shady and put no effort whatsoever in correcting this.

 

[DazZ.]

Same problems would occur whether or not they were bought on Steam then?

Why are you blaming Steam exactly?

Because Steam has the moral and ethical obligation to notify its customers what the games will play on since they offer no form of store credit or refund. They essentially follow a legal practice that is incredibly shady and put no effort whatsoever in correcting this.

Again, no different from shops that sell PC games and don't offer refunds because of the way CD keys work.

Which was also happening before Steam was even around.

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

[...]
For the language just go to the Game Library/List, rightclick your game and go to Properties --> Language, then choose the language you want to play in...

Thanks for trying to help, but I've tried that already and Ghostbusters doesn't have that language options, Ghost Master does though, but it doesn't start anyhow.

Same problems would occur whether or not they were bought on Steam then?

Why are you blaming Steam exactly?

Well I have several issues with Steam but the one I adress here are:
a) Steam said Ghostbusters has different languages but I can't chose them myself and
b) The normal pricing of games on Steam seems exessively expensive (in comparison with other online vendors)

Just think how annoyed you'd have been if they were on Amazon/Game Stop for double that price and exactly the same thing happened.

Oh.

Uhm, I would send the games back to Amazon, I guess, never had problems with refunds and Amazon thus far. Never had problems with wrong language choice so far as well. Last but not least Amazon is cheaper most of the time. I would have posted the same thing if it happened with Amazon though. I'm just wondering what am I doing wrong or if that is supposed to be happening.
As I said, I didn't spend that much but it still is kind of unsatisfactory. I had some good experiences with Steam and I don't hate it at all but I'm still disappointed.

Edit: Before this discussion escalates: In my country as a dealer selling a product (in this case the license) not functioning the way it should you have two options: take the product back and giving a full refund to the customer or mend the product so that it will work the way it should. You can probably imagine that I won't contact my lawyer for 5$ but I'm most certainly entitled not to buy anything from steam if they don't have a solution and if I chose to do so...