STEAM SELLS BROKEN GAMES!

[DasDestroyer]

I heartily agree! I recently bought a couple of books at the bookstore which turned out to be absolutely sub-par!

Examples:
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment - unreadably boring
Shakespeare's Hamlet - It seems that the printer was running out of ink on pages 35-38, as a result the text on these pages is more difficult to read
The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Kubla Khan didn't even come close to making sense, feels like he was high when he wrote it -_-
The works of Edgar Allan Poe and many more...

These books are being sold in modern bookstores, and they are unreadable right off the shelf. Is that fair to readers? I know these are older titles, but it is absolutely the bookstore's responsibility to fix books to be readable by modern people, who are often very much not into classic literature, BEFORE selling them.

I love the concept of a bookstore, and that is what makes me so mad about this. A bookstore is supposed to be representing literature, and their magic 'open it' service delivers you an unreadable book? Bookstore, this is a SERIOUS PROBLEM. FIX THIS NOW, or give us our refunds.

 

[viranimus]

wELL I am not going to entirely agree with the OP, but I do understand at least a portion of the position. Steam as an added layer has the ability to inhibit and out right prevent the end user from applying fixes that can allow a game to work. So yes there are times when Steam as a distributor has a hand in perpetuating the inability to play certain titles. There are literally situations where the only thing preventing you from playing a game is the fact its a steam version that will not allow/accept modifications required.

Now.. that essentially does get canceled out when consumer fails to read the system requirements of the game before purchase. If you know that there are certain games steam will not allow you to modify to a working state, and dont check the system requirements to see if its going to work without modification, then the only responsible party is you.

 

[Conza]

Who cares? It's STEEEEEEEAM! It could knee me in the groin, steal my wallet, and cut off my arms, and I would thank it!

This is all forgivable, if they put a disclaimer with the problem (once someone has made them aware).

Solution. Forward these details onto them, and tell them that they must put these bugs as a disclaimer on selling the software. It is likely you've put 2+2 together, they are so cheap; because of these issues, but they chose to lower the price and sweep the problems under the rug.

Otherwise, its just a co-incidence.

Coincidence.

Anyway, Valve has an F with the BBB for a reason. They don't give a damn about customer service issues.

Most people don't care, because they have sweet deals and don't have a technical problem, but contacting them and expecting any change is like pissing into the wind and expecting not to get wet.

If done correctly, you can piss into the wind, and not only keep yourself dry, but wet another target without even facing it.

Needless to say, one customer complaint is more than none, and the degree to which they take it seriously is for them to decide and for us to only speculate. They may contact the developers and let them know of the fault, resulting in a patch or two to a couple of the games, if its worth it to the consumers.

You're right, they could just take the money and run, but that nearly never works more than once now does it?

 

[Febel]

This is great. Like 2 pages of people correcting one foolish mistake. Makes me happy...

 

[Aurgelmir]

Sounds to me that your computer might have an Audio problem, considering how manye issues you have with audio.

 

[Zay-el]

I heartily agree! I recently bought a couple of books at the books store which turned out to be absolutely sub-par!

Examples:
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment - unreadably boring
Shakespeare's Hamlet - It seems that the printer was running out of ink on pages 35-38, as a result the text on these pages is more difficult to read
The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Kubla Khan didn't even come close to making sense, feels like he haw high when he wrote it -_-
The works of Edgar Allan Poe and many more...

These books are being sold in modern bookstores, and they are unreadable right off the shelf. Is that fair to readers? I know these are older titles, but it is absolutely the bookstore's responsibility to fix books to be readable by modern people, who are often very much not into classic literature, BEFORE selling them.

I love the concept of a bookstore, and that is what makes me so mad about this. A bookstore is supposed to be representing literature, and their magic 'open it' service delivers you an unreadable book? Bookstore, this is a SERIOUS PROBLEM. FIX THIS NOW, or give us our refunds.

You win today's internetz.

And yeah, as most others have said as well, this is not Steam's fault. It's a distributing platform, which has absolutely no input as to how the game has actually been designed. Also, it's very nice of you to point out games of several generations ago, especially ones that are notorious for not working well. Stubbs the Zombie refuses to work on anything XP+, for instance. If you already know you wish to buy a reportedly old game though, usually you should have enough marbles to check whether there would be any conflicts along the way. Google isn't really that difficult to use.

As a responsible customer, you should do at least a little bit of research, before making a purchase like this.

 

[Sgt. Dante]

I've never had any of those problems. But at the end of the line Steam is a distributor. You wouldn't complain to Game stop because you have compability issues, much less ask them to FIX the game instead of the developer. I think you got your priorities way wrong.

Basically this;

However I might suggest looking into a new soundcard. sounds like yours is pretty rubbish tbh.

As for rockstar games, they're almost as well known as bethesda for their buggy releases. So that's nothing to do with steam.


You can complain all you like but as was said before, it's daft to think that gamestop should be responsible for fixing broken games, it only sells the product in the version it's given to them.

 

[Zantos]

My copy of Oblivion that I bought from Steam wouldn't work without the disk. If I'd known I'd need a disk anyway I'd have just bought the bloody boxed version.

 

[JediMB]

You should be reporting these issues to Steam's support, and not bitching about them on forums... which accomplishes nothing.

If it's a problem with the game, it might just get fixed. If it's a compatibility problem with your configuration, you could very well get a refund for the affected titles.

 

[JediMB]

My copy of Oblivion that I bought from Steam wouldn't work without the disk. If I'd known I'd need a disk anyway I'd have just bought the bloody boxed version.

I bought my brother and a friend Oblivion on Steam, and neither of them had any issues with running the game.

 

[snagli]

After this many replies that don't exactly agree with what he says, I doubt Mr McLeod will ever dare to post on these forums again.

 

[Zantos]

My copy of Oblivion that I bought from Steam wouldn't work without the disk. If I'd known I'd need a disk anyway I'd have just bought the bloody boxed version.

You got a disk from steam?

No, I borrowed my flatmate until we figured out how to write registry keys for it. I eventually had to give it back, it still doesn't work without ridiculous work arounds though.

My copy of Oblivion that I bought from Steam wouldn't work without the disk. If I'd known I'd need a disk anyway I'd have just bought the bloody boxed version.

I bought my brother and a friend Oblivion on Steam, and neither of them had any issues with running the game.

That's fantastic for them, but it doesn't make me feel better about the fact that a game I bought I had to fix myself because they were no help what-so-ever.

 

[Kathinka]

steam is to blame for many, many bad things. but bugs in games are hardly their fault.

now, in my case things look different. if i try to start mw2 it tells me that this game is not avaiable right now. a complete reinstallation of the game, steam and even the operating system did not help, and steam support is unable to fix the issue. in the end, i had to apply a non-steam-crack just to be able to play a game i legally own.

this one they did cock up. and then they wonder why people pirate shit.

 

[Chris Sutherland]

The following is a direct reply to OP.

This is a cry to please, for the love of all that is holy, get your facts straight before ranting.

Firstly, Steam is a distributor. Steam began as a distribution platforms for Valve games, designed and published by Valve. Steam staff do choose which titles are distributed via the platform, but only in very rare cases do they refuse titles. Steam offers developers *and* publishers a chance to speak directly to the players for feedback and bug reports long after the game has been released.

Secondly, all of the games you mentioned have nothing to do with Steam other than the fact that you bought them from there. This isn't even taking into account the fact you are playing games like Max Payne and Commandos, which are games that were not built to run on Windows Vista/7. They may be available to purchase, but Steam can not take responsibility for bugs experienced within the game; they did not design it, and they did not publish it.

Here's something to consider, Mr McLeod; Steam sells you a product, and they take a percentage of the money you paid. The majority of the money goes back to the publisher. In the case of Max Payne, this happens to be Rockstar, seemingly a favourite publisher of yours. Now, if Steam had a refund system purely because "the game has game breaking bugs" (which, by the way, you would NOT get a refund for at a high street store), Steam will then have to give every single player back the money they got for SOLELY distributing the game.

Why not direct your hatred where it NEEDS to go and get at the publisher? It's like blaming BestBuy for your bugged copy of Modern Warefare 2 on Xbox 360. Not BestBuy's fault, is it?

 

[Chris Sutherland]

Edit: Urk, double post. Sorry.

 

[Klepa]

Never before has a publisher gotten away with such widespread distribution of essentially flawed/unplayable software.

I otherwise agree with you, except publishers have gotten away with publishing buggy unusable software since the dawn of internet, and the rise of the ubiquitous "we'll patch it after launch" development cycle.

To give you a few examples.

Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, RAGE, anything created by Obsidian Entertainment, Windows ME, PC versions of most games.

Edit: Of course, "everyone's doing it" is no excuse. It's a sad state of affairs. But it's hardly new, and the meat of the blame isn't on Valve.

 

[Valok]

Nothing else to say actually.

 

[Something Amyss]

You're right, they could just take the money and run, but that nearly never works more than once now does it?

It has before. For Valve.

Why would it not again?

The market has spoken. It has said "fuck customer service, we just want cheap games."

Of course he can still complain, but it's unlikely to have a different outcome.