What are the problems with Steam?

Some_weirdGuy

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Nov 25, 2010
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Xanadu84 said:
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

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Apr 6, 2010
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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.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
13,769
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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!
 

Trull

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Nov 12, 2010
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I've never had a problem with steam, and all the people who hate it and have problems with it somewhere back in my head a little man in a suit tells me it's their fault, not steams...


Which, could be true :p

I CAN PLAY ON STEAM PERFECTLY FINE, I AM THE ... 46%?
 

Digitaldreamer7

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Sep 30, 2008
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isometry said:
The only problem I've had in using it for a few years is with their awesome sales causing me to make unplanned game purchases.
OMFG this. The ridiculous amount of savings has caused my games library to explode over the years. It's causing me to even buy games on PC that I own for Xbox because we all know that consoles change.

Sectan said:
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.
Get a cheap 2nd hard drive or an external and just copy the steam folder to it. Steam can be stand alone. when you reformat your main HDD and load windows, just go to the other drive and double click the steam exe and it rebuilds the registry stuff it needs and run's like a charm. I have an external that I keep my steam install on for my laptop. I have close to 2TB of games that reside on a second HDD in my desktop as well just so I don't have to worry about reformatting or my main HDD crashing.
 

Handbag1992

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Apr 20, 2009
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Digitaldreamer7 said:
isometry said:
The only problem I've had in using it for a few years is with their awesome sales causing me to make unplanned game purchases.
OMFG this. The ridiculous amount of savings has caused my games library to explode over the years. It's causing me to even buy games on PC that I own for Xbox because we all know that consoles change.
Indeed, the current autumn sale has already taken 15 of my Great British Pounds, and will no-doubt take more with each passing day.

Actually its so bad that I considered re-buying Fallout New-Vegas just because it was under £4. I already have the bloody game on steam.
 

Zeh Don

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Jul 27, 2008
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The issue I have with Steam is less about "Steam" and more about the behind-the-scenes stuff, that gamers don't get to see.

For example, Steamworks bundles the Steam Store Client with all Steamwork enabled games. Even for retail purchases.
This means that everyone who purchased Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Civilization V, etc., on the PC are now Valve customers whether they wanted to be or not.
Valve trumpets it's 30,000,000 accounts like kind of achievement. I ask: how many of those accounts were forced to be made so someone could actually use the game they just paid honest money for?

Another issue is that Steam makes all games Online Only. It's Offline mode simply doesn't work unless you can connect to the internet first.
The logical falacy of that is mind numbing: if I could connect to the internet, why would I need an offline mode?

The last issue is of course the impending Steam monopoly: thanks to Steamworks, all other Digital Distribution serices are essentially Steam Re-sellers, doing little more than selling Steam Serial Numbers.
The problem is that all Steamwork games launch the Steam Store Client first: if I buy a Steamworks game on Impulse, it launches Steam, forces me to make a Steam Account, and downloads my game from there.

Steam, in the current business climate, have to be nice to their customers to retain them. As everyone apart from GOG.com now sells Steamworks games, that "be nice" phase is coming to an end.

For example, Valve pulled several EA titles from Steam because they were selling DLC in-game. This meant that Valve couldn't take their 30% cut, and so decided to fuck it's customers and pull those games and all support for it.

Another solid example is that Valve have enforced the Terms of Service upon Bethesda Softworks when it was discovered Skyrim was capable of running without Steam launching first - a direct violation of the Terms of Service for Steamworks.
Bethesda were forced to patch their game, and screw their customers who needed to modify the game in order for it to run, otherwise Valve would pull the game from Steam. Because the game was Steamworks enabled, this meant customers who purchased the game in stores would be unable to even install their legally purchased games.

Valve are making their move. It won't be long before Valve are as hated as Activision - but by then, it'll be too late: they'll have all your games.
 

major_chaos

Ruining videogames
Feb 3, 2011
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Oh thank you OP I've been waiting for this thread, believe me I have a list of problems with steam but the highlights are:

Awful UI makes browsing a pain

Can't chose where to install games

Terrible customer support that has twice given me a response that equates to "fuck off"

Several games do not like the overlay and will glitch/crash if I use it.

It slows down my start up massively by bringing my comp to a screeching halt for 2-3 minuets after I start steam.

The servers are powered by hamsters so whenever there is a usage spike the store becomes unusable and popular games tend to download slowly on launch day.

The community is awful with forums one step above 4chan and steam exclusive games (namely CS and TF2) have attracted player bases way worse than CoD at its worst.

The fact that valve (a company I have no trust or respect for) can take away all my games, at any time, forever, for any reason.


And those are just the highlights, lets not even get into Steam telling me my games are "unavailable" or any of the more minor issues I have with the platform.
 

TheYellowCellPhone

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Sep 26, 2009
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Pretty much every complaint I've heard is problems with product keys (usually caused by buying the game in store then installing it on the computer) or download times and cache verifications at inconvenient times.

Beats the hell outta using anything else, and its sales are to die for.
 

Cid Silverwing

Paladin of The Light
Jul 27, 2008
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I can name a few.

Like how the moderators responsible for banning cheaters consistently ignore the cheaters and ban legit players which robs them of many hundred, if not thousands, of dollars invested in games, which they will never ever be able to retrieve.

Also, and it never came to my attention until now, but all the games are forced-online. If you can't connect to your account, despite the games being downloaded locally, you can't play them, not even games that don't have online modes.

There's also an issue with adding friends, as in, half the time it won't recognize the names I'm searching for.

Blocking people is clunky too.

The Steam service also seems to have a nasty habit of randomly disconnecting for no reason. I dunno if Valve's servers are unstable because of traffic, but it happens at such a rate that it's certainly notable and inconvenient. Then there's the fact that it loves to tell you that your games are "unavailable", again for no reason.
 

Fiad

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Apr 3, 2010
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While I still had it(Haven't used it in around 2 years due to crappy pc) I always had the problem that it would never actually delete a game when I told it to, then when I finally gave up and just went and removed the files myself Steam would just reinstall them all without asking. And when it is installing an entire library of games onto an already small hard drive that just can't happen.
 

Xanadu84

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Apr 9, 2008
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Some_weirdGuy said:
Xanadu84 said:
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.
I don't remember if I checked (I think I did), but if it was a problem with the server, it was a very common server problem among several servers joined by both me and several of my friends.
 

ServebotFrank

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Jul 1, 2010
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Cid SilverWing said:
Also, and it never came to my attention until now, but all the games are forced-online. If you can't connect to your account, despite the games being downloaded locally, you can't play them, not even games that don't have online modes
Really? I could've sworn I've played my games while offline before. I know for a fact that if you can't log in you can play offline on any game. I did it with TF2 awhile ago. It wasn't fun playing with bots but you can do it.
 

Ramziez

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Dec 10, 2009
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ServebotFrank said:
Cid SilverWing said:
Also, and it never came to my attention until now, but all the games are forced-online. If you can't connect to your account, despite the games being downloaded locally, you can't play them, not even games that don't have online modes
Really? I could've sworn I've played my games while offline before. I know for a fact that if you can't log in you can play offline on any game. I did it with TF2 awhile ago. It wasn't fun playing with bots but you can do it.
You are correct you can play offline mode, granted some games are rubbish to play offline, like TF2, but anyway anything you own can be played offline as well as online.
 

luckshot

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Jul 18, 2008
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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![/quote]

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1680

this is a post that looks at some of the difficulties involved with doing that when your company is going down the drain...not that i'm particularly worried about a collapse of steam within the near future and having difficulty playing some of the games i bought just cause they were on sale and might be bored enough to try some day....

on topic: ive had occasional problems with steam crashing and having to find the problem and solve it, most of which is on my end

other than that i enjoy the services in steam
 

The Random One

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May 29, 2008
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Not a horror story, but it wouldn't let me sign up. It told me the name I had picked was available, and then gave me an error when I tried to sign up. I eventually gave up, which is good, because the first thing I would have done would be buy TF2 and that was about two months before it went free.

I eventually signed up with a different name; I figure that it wasn't actually checking my name's availability and the one I had chosen was already taken, which is why it continuously displayed an error.

I also take exception to how unintuitive it is to change your public player name and to how the default one appears to be your email address up to the @. Many people use their names for their emails and not everyone is cool with their real name being on display.
 

chawlie fair

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Jul 19, 2011
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Love steam, but there needs to be a way to download games to specific drives. Ive got two main drives, if i'm running out of room on C drive, I wanna put say LA Noire (just got :)) on F, I can't, it has to go to C unless i uninstall steam and re download everything to F. Not a huge problem, in the end I usually just delete games I don't play much, but I still should not have to do that.
 

Macgyvercas

Spice & Wolf Restored!
Feb 19, 2009
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Apart from my damn downloads not going in the order I would like (it's TES 3, then TES 4, THEN Painkiller!), I haven't had any problems.
 

Slythernite

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Jan 25, 2009
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Used for a few years now. Never had a problem. I own about 50 games on it, every one works just fine.