What are the problems with Steam?

[ToastiestZombie]

ALL DRM IS SHIT STEAM IS SHIT... Is what would be posted if this wasn't the well thought out thread that it is. Well done OP!

OT: I have had some bad experiences with steam, but most of them are mainly just me being really impatient of stupid. Still, New Vegas for 3 pounds pretty much makes all those problems obsolete.

So the only real problem with steam is the massive amount of really, really good sales. They just literally take money from peoples wallets.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I think it's great. The Steam Sales are really what's won me over. Sure, I don't technically own the game, but I'm paying $5 or less for it so it's worth the tradeoff. Not worrying about discs is wonderful as well.

If you can avoid any base tendencies to act like a ***k to your fellow human beings and have no desire to cheat then I don't see the problem, short of Valve going out of business or something.

It really is pretty slick. Slightly irritating if you have a dodgey internet connection as offline is sometimes a pain, but other than that I've really enjoyed it.

It does tend to work like a cancer though...my library started very small but those "Oh, it's 75% off and I've been meaning to check this out" sales add up. I think I have 5-6 backlogged games sitting there waiting for my attention.

Damn you Skyrim - you're really skewing my gameplay schedule...

Gabe Newell stated that if Valve were to every shut down, then all steam games will be made DRM free somehow. You think having 5 to 6 games in your backlog is bad? Try having 150! Your'e right about steam sales being cancerous, but they are so so addictive!

Welcome to the Escapist BTW, hope you enjoy your time here!

 

[tomvw]

It's been mentioned here a few times, but I thought I'd say it again, offline mode kinda sucks, especially if you get disconnected unexpectedly. Certain games REALLY don't like to be run offline... it's kinda annoying.
Also, if you leave the window open, it can be kind of a memory hog, going up to 200Mb. If you have more than 4Gb RAM that shouldn't be a real problem though.
I personally haven't had any major stability issues with Steam before, but it does sometimes freeze a few seconds when a download finishes or Cloud syncing kicks in.

I hope that helps you make a decision

 

[Odbarc]

I discovered I can turn steam in offline mode and play Skyrim like that, so I'm doing that from now on until I read about something from this website describing something else I could be doing instead.

 

[CarbonEagle]

The games are too damn cheap and I over spend. I still haven't played all the games I bought last Christmas.
Its a little laggy sometimes. Especially the in-game UI.
If your internet goes down offline mode probably wont kick in so you are stuck with no steam games. If you turn offline mode on, then restart your computer, offline mode also probably wont let you on either. If your going somewhere with no internet and want to play steam games, you had better hope your laptop battery lasts the whole trip.

The biggest problem I had was with Rush. When I bought it steam wouldn't let me play it due to some glitch, but it got fixed the next day so it wasn't too bad.

 

[harvz]

steam has a lot of technical problems for me, it locks up sometimes and i have to stop the process and start it again, its laggy alot of the time and on occasion, it will refuse to launch my games.

 

[wooty]

[quote post="9.326213.13324673"]

Ive been having problems with steam(ing shit) for 10+ years or so now.

The current ones are the steam platform keeps crashing on me and I cant play games because of some bullshit cloud problem. Didnt ask for it, dont need it.

10+? Its only been out for 8-![/quote]

I remember the old beta and the veeeery early counter strike days, which I'm sure were about 10 years ago. Now that beta period was certainly a time to be allowed to rage at steam, brings back nightmares.

 

[catalyst8]

No problem here over the last 7 years or so.

I know a lot of people have been having trouble with Steam lately [...] I've heard some horror stories about people losing HUGE libraries of some 200+ games with literally no reason given other than their computer was suspected to have "suspicious" programs on it [...]

I'd also like some sources to support this, since I can't find any reference on-line generally, on the Steam forums, or in any of the on-line gaming magazines. If true, & assuming the '"suspicious" programs' are innocuous, it would raise some interesting legal questions.

I suspect that it isn't the case since whenever anything like that happens, especially to a high profile entity like Steam, it makes a big splash in the news & forums. Just look at the recent furore over EA's Origin debacle [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/ea-forum-bans-are-still-affecting-games/], also here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114273-Questions-Still-Swirl-Around-EAs-Origin-Bans], & here [http://www.pcgamer.com/tag/origin/].

 

[Dark Prophet]

I have had Steam I think from the end of 2004 and for the longest time I only had Half-Life games on it and I had no problems with it. When I started getting more games on it some problems emerged, like patching and Steam crashing while doing it, but I think it was partially my fault cause I had piss poor internet connection. Now I have around 20 games on it and a good connection and only minor problems.
1. sometimes Steam fails to launch (like once a week, but I go on and offline pretty often.
2. some games will sometimes not start in the offline mode (it happens very rearly but is still annoying.
3. if playing online it pulls that "sorry steam is going to have a maintenance" bullshit and cuts off my perfectly nice killstreak.
4. some games crash but that I think is more the games fault then Steams.
5. but by far the biggest complaint I have is the fucking TF2 updates there is one like in every fucking day, I think there have been 2 or 3 GB worth of updates to TF2 this month alone. WTF?

 

[Ubermetalhed]

It takes my money.

Deals like New vegas for just over £3 I can't refuse.

 

[Cabamacadaf]

I'm just having difficulty connecting to steam lately, but I'm pretty sure that's on my side and not their.

 

[lacktheknack]

I had an issue with a key that didn't take, but the support actually shined through and they gave me a new key.

Other then that, just the offline mode, which works whenever there's an available connection, and never when there isn't.

 

[Project_Xii]

That's some strange things you've been hearing there. Sounds more like the rambling ravings of the stubborn people who still bitterly fight against Steam and need to back up their reasons for not using it with outlandish accusations. Ignore them dude. Get steam. There's a sale going on right now and you'll probably poop your pants and empty your wallet over it.

 

[Worgen]

Really the only problem I currently have with steam is that its customer support kinda sucks, I would much rather have a phone system, plus Im worried about what will happen to it when Gabe Newell retires.

 

[Sectan]

I like steam itself, but it can get annoying. Slow load times with any source games while third party games work like a charm. My brother has an account and I have a TF2 account so I have my own items. If I buy a game I always gift it to him so we have our games in one spot. I can't play LAN with my brothers with any steam games and if I have to reformat I get to download multiple gigs of data which can be a bit of a time waster. It's really handy and has great deals, but requires a reliable and fast internet connection. Plus since it's all online I am afraid that I'll log in one day and my account will just be gone.

 

[DarkRyter]

I had an account that got locked.

Though, to be honest, I kept passing that account around to friends and whatnot, and it kept getting hacked, so it's really my own damn fault.

And there was that incident with the credit card info getting hacked.

But it was heavily encrypted enough so that no one had that much to worry about.

And you know, sometimes having to be online to play a game is pretty weird.

Though, chances are, you like me and haven't been offline since that camping trip in 2007.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

there was some problems with loadout/item servers in TF2.I never actually had the Warhammer problem, but TF2 made it so you couldn't use your non-stock items from time to time.

That's an issue with the server you're playing, not steam. Unless you're saying you couldn't see your items even when you weren't connected to a server.

 

[Dfskelleton]

Only one thing really. It feels very strict. At times, it seems that my account could get banned for even the smallest things.
Other than that, the only problem is that during Christmas time and other Holidays, money seems to dissapear from my pockets whenever I look at the steam store.

 

[QUINTIX]

Steam took up processing power and watched what he did.

Srsly!? There are less benign and unintrusive antivirus suites.

 

[Zhukov]

I love me some Steam and I use it all the time, but I do have some gripes:
- Offline mode can be pretty glitchy. Although I once went a couple of months without internet and was able to play my games just fine.
- The auto-updates. I like the feature, but I really wish it would ask first and tell me how big the download is going to be.
- Those damn sales that take all my... hang on... is that L.A. Noire at 50% off? Don't mind if I do!