Why is Steam so broken and buggy?

[Pumpkin_Eater]

Before I wade into the shitstorm: OP, did the remedy I mentioned help?

Steam used to be terrible. In the 90s and into the early 2000s it was an unbearable annoyance, and it would be hard to find criticism of it that was unjustified; that being said, this is 2011. As DRM goes, Steam really isn't that bad: it's also a back up, a cloud service, a discount gaming store, online community, shopping buddy, and free game distributor. Valve has also done more for indy game developers than any other company, not only as a distribution channel, but as a promoter, advertising other developers' titles and in some cases offering incentives for purchasing them (Monday Night Combat was a perfect example of this). It's also loose enough with its restrictions that it can effectively be used for piracy with the account owner's assistance (it won't even tattle on you; is EA that lenient with its customers?). DRM that can be used as a piracy tool: think about that for a second.

Valve is good at getting peoples' money, true. The reason that they're so effective is that they have wide selection, low prices, and provide good services, which has generated a vibrant and diverse community.

Before anyone asks, no I won't tell you how to use it for piracy; I only brought it up to illustrate how serious Valve is about not burdening their customers.

 

[darkcommanderq]

yup, the gaming gods decided to smite you. No idea, run steam every day and its fine.

 

[SammiYin]

Well it is run by Valve

Hehehe. *Runs away*

*thumbs up*

It makes matters worse when a game requires bot Steam AND games for windows live....

A sure fire way to make sure you never get to play the game -.-

 

[Woodsey]

they release the worst and most restrictive DRM of it's time, slap on some buggy social gimmicks like a friendlist, and tell people it's the greatest thing ever for them.

lol.

Before I wade into the shitstorm: OP, did the remedy I mentioned help?

Steam used to be terrible. In the 90s and into the early 2000s it was an unbearable annoyance,

It launched in 2004 xD

OT: Sounds like something's misfiring - that's an issue with The Witcher 2 because of how the files are put together or something, but I've never had it with L4D2.

Put a ticket through to Steam support. It may take a while but you'll get a human.

 

[Pumpkin_Eater]

It launched in 2004 xD

OT: Sounds like something's misfiring - that's an issue with The Witcher 2 because of how the files are put together or something, but I've never had it with L4D2.

Put a ticket through to Steam support. It may take a while but you'll get a human.

The original Counter Strike came with its predecessor; it had the same name and was awful.

 

[bawkbawkboo1]

I had a bug yesterday where it was saying I was still playing the Sims 3 after I exited the game. It did this until I restarted my PC for an update. When I went back on Steam my playtime for the Sims 3 has been bumped up 10 hours.

I think that's more to do with Sims 3 than Steam, but I could be wrong. There are a lot of applications that take a while to fully kill their processes even after the user has exited and there an no active windows; firefox has always taken an unreasonable amount of time, for example. If you wait, say, 120 seconds (that should be way more than enough) before trying to close steam again, and it still doesn't work, you might have to go to the task manager and kill any Sim 3-related processes. That's a messy way to do it, obviously, but at least it works.

 

[Kathinka]

snip

unfortunately this is no longer true. a ton of high profile games require steam to work in the last months i bought: brink, empire:total war, shogun 2, black ops, modern warfare2...that's all i can think of right now of the top of my head without thinking about it. all of them require steam to work, some of them require it to be online for me to play, even if i play offline.

snip

they already did revolutionize region locking. by making it possible.
before steam there was not a single region locked game i could think of. maybe they only do what the publishers tell them to, but they are their willing henchman, enforcing their questionable practices and gladly giving them new tools. they are the IG farben to the publisher reich, if you'll excuse the godwin-tastuc analogy.
what you said is also untrue; all the items on my list are pretty much exclusively enforced by steam. before steam i've never seen any of those. not a single one. ever.

fortunately i live in a country where downloading copyrighted material is perfectly legal, so i'm not forced to buy a single game that's not worth it. still, i would gladly see them get their shit together and get rid of all those restrictions. if this was to happen, i would also gladly pay lots and lots of money to play their games.
way for a drm-scheme to backfire.

 

[Pumpkin_Eater]

they already did revolutionize region locking. by making it possible.

All you need to do it is have different sets of CD keys and knowledge of how IP addresses work, neither of which require Steam. If an activation server received a Russian key from a US IP it could refuse to accept it, log the address, even upload a file that added hoops to subsequent activation attempts. Just because something wasn't done, doesn't mean it couldn't have been done.

 

[Kathinka]

they already did revolutionize region locking. by making it possible.

All you need to do it is have different sets of CD keys and knowledge of how IP addresses work, neither of which require Steam. If an activation server received a Russian key from a US IP it could refuse to accept it, log the address, even upload a file that added hoops to subsequent activation attempts. Just because something wasn't done, doesn't mean it couldn't have been done.

i know it could have been done before. the point is that no one before was shameless enough to actually do it, make tools for it avaiable.
and the method you described wouldn't even be a problem. activation only from the home turf well and good. but after activating it at home, i can't even play my perfectly legaly bought copy of portal 2 abroad! sorry, but if you are going to attempt to defend that or somehow now make up some convoluted excuse again that it isn't steams fault, i will have to asume that heavy fanboyism is at work here.^^

 

[Kathinka]

because they tricked the masses into liking it.

they release the worst and most restrictive DRM of it's time, slap on some buggy social gimmicks like a friendlist, and tell people it's the greatest thing ever for them.
and we sheep believe it and don't mind the most agressive copy protection in the history of ever on our pc's.

/ragefueled rant

How...what...why...never mind. Nonfactual statements are nonfactual.

indeed they are...especially when not even supported by a single line of argument or such..

 

[Kenjitsuka]

The worst thing about Steam is that you cannot specify a disk to install to!
I don't want every game on my sweet SSD you know, Valve! :\

 

[UNHchabo]

It launched in 2004 xD

OT: Sounds like something's misfiring - that's an issue with The Witcher 2 because of how the files are put together or something, but I've never had it with L4D2.

Put a ticket through to Steam support. It may take a while but you'll get a human.

The original Counter Strike came with its predecessor; it had the same name and was awful.

Steam was launched in 2003, with the release of Counter-strike 1.6.

Previous versions of Counter-strike used WON, the World Opponent Network. WON didn't use any form of DRM, and relied entirely on the same style of CD Key system as pretty much any other online game of the era.

There was huge controversy when Valve released Steam; many people refused to switch over, and continued to play CS 1.5. Hell, some people even went so far as to implement a new version of WON after Valve shut down the WON servers, called WON2.

Just because you bought a retail copy of Counter-strike, and the 1.6 patch forced you to install Steam, does not mean that Steam was released at the same time as CS Retail. I know; I've been playing CS since the M4 had a scope, and even a toe-shot from the AWP was an insta-kill.

 

[UNHchabo]

The worst thing about Steam is that you cannot specify a disk to install to!
I don't want every game on my sweet SSD you know, Valve! :\

I did it; I installed Steam to "D:\Steam" instead of "C:\Program Files\Steam". Easy.

 

[lacktheknack]

because they tricked the masses into liking it.

they release the worst and most restrictive DRM of it's time, slap on some buggy social gimmicks like a friendlist, and tell people it's the greatest thing ever for them.
and we sheep believe it and don't mind the most agressive copy protection in the history of ever on our pc's.

/ragefueled rant

Inaccurate. The DRM has NEVER gotten in my way, unlike, say, Ubisoft's Everconnect DRM.

If it REALLY ticks you off that much, try GoG.

 

[Pumpkin_Eater]

i know it could have been done before. the point is that no one before was shameless enough to actually do it, make tools for it avaiable.
and the method you described wouldn't even be a problem. activation only from the home turf well and good. but after activating it at home, i can't even play my perfectly legaly bought copy of portal 2 abroad! sorry, but if you are going to attempt to defend that or somehow now make up some convoluted excuse again that it isn't steams fault, i will have to asume that heavy fanboyism is at work here.^^

1. Buy Portal 2
2. Log into Steam account, or just boot it in offline mode
3. ...
4. Cake

 

[bit_crusherrr]

I had a bug yesterday where it was saying I was still playing the Sims 3 after I exited the game. It did this until I restarted my PC for an update. When I went back on Steam my playtime for the Sims 3 has been bumped up 10 hours.

Thats a problem with the sims, not steam. Sims3.exe must not of closed properly so Steam assumed you where still ingame.

 

[Fooz]

I had a bug yesterday where it was saying I was still playing the Sims 3 after I exited the game. It did this until I restarted my PC for an update. When I went back on Steam my playtime for the Sims 3 has been bumped up 10 hours.

it did that to me for magicka, i had played like 5 hours and i left my PC on overnight, came back and it said i had been playing for 32 hours

i had messages from friends saying stuff like "get off that game you have been on for like 18 hours"

 

[ExileNZ]

I can't say I've had any real 'bug' problems with Steam. It's got its annoying moments (a number of games, particularly older ones like Myst and Riven, simply don't fucking work because they never updated the exe for modern machines) but I wouldn't call it broken.

Also, any bug-fix effort that includes "I don't want to do X because it's too annoying" is a lackluster effort. Sure, I often do the same, but in those cases I have no one but myself to blame.