"so that we don't get to a future where STEAM is the only way to play games at all" And that future came in the end.
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Actually, he didnt fail at all. You can get games elsewhere. Steam is not a monopoly.
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So true. I love Steam, but any monopoly is a bad thing.
Apart from all policies and ToS Valve can keep adding by the time, imagine what would happen if Valve crashes, or decides that Steam is not profitable anymore?
What happen with our games / accounts?
At best you'll be able to download them and keep them on ur own...but thats pretty much it.
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The day Steam won't be profitable is the day the PC industry will end, as long as the PC industry is alive Steam can't be not profitable and can't fail, the only one that can fail is the company that runs it. Steam is like the Google of search engines, it has a huge monopoly but you can't help but love it and depend on it.
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No guys, it's defferent. Steam is PC, so it's okay since PC gamers are different and better. XBox is a console, and it's not a retailer, and they're also spying on you because I'm paranoid, so it's awful and it sucks while Steam is better even though it's almost the exact same thing except on PC.
(That was sarcasm, by the way. I have a net zero opinion on the XBox one.)
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It is a little buggy. Some games won't launch in it because they require the internet, and sometimes offline mode gives an error saying you have no internet connection and Steam won't start. Might be a bit better now though, haven't used it in a while.
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most games do, i think you require internet for the final installation after you have donwloaded it, but then you can keep playing it in offline mode as much as you want, there are some that dont let you like counter strike global offensive
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I think it was pretty buggy, same with Steam in general, back then though.
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Yeah it was a clunky piece of crap. I remember how we had to use xfire, hlsw and other external tools just to organize our team.
And then the friend list was introduced and people went apeshit crazy.
Pretty much the same happened with every major upgrade.
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Offline mode only works if you were actually signed into steam before you disconnected from the net and had it set to remember your login and password. Least thats the error message I got last time that happened.
If you have 2 or 3 accounts in a house (dad, mom, one for each kid) on one computer, then offline mode doesn't work all that great.
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After being offline for awhile, maybe a week of using offline mode only, I'd come back to my computer having last been in offline mode the previous day, and I'd get a message when I try to open steam that I can't use offline mode because my credentials weren't stored on the computer. I think an update might have messed with that coz that never used to happen to me and now it does, all the time.
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Steam was pretty clunky to start with and mainly there to enforce its DRM on users. IIRC the offline mode was either non-existent or temperamental, and that nasty grey/green interface was one that only a mother could love...
Despite the excitable delivery, many of those arguments still hold true today, that the game changed when Steam arrived, and we stopped actually owning the games we bought, and lost the right to re-sell them (or even play them if Valve decided to pull the plug).
While in many ways, Steam is a great thing (crazily cheap sale prices, a viable market for small indie developers, a range of games that no "bricks & mortar" shop could dream of competing with, a digital delivery system ensuring automatic patching and downloads to any computer with an internet connection, so no "Dude, where's my disc" moments), it does have its downsides, and you'd have to be something of a simpleton not to recognise both ends of the argument.
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Sure, but Ebay, Trademe and a number of independent stores were awash with second hand games, not to mention the option of swapping/giving them to your mates.
It's a re-write of history to suggest that trading second hand PC games, whether formally or informally, wasn't a thriving activity pre-Valve.
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I'm not sure if I'd say thriving, and I know this is anecdotal, but before Steam I would never buy a PC game secondhand. Activation limits or at least needing a serial to play online was almost always a thing (Alone in the Dark on floppy disk had DRM). Steam has added quite a bit of security to PC game reselling despite not being able to sell games that you've activated yourself, which, granted, is a pretty major flaw but is better than having only a black and gray market.
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I don't know. I guess we grew up in different places, so the experience wasn't the same for everyone, but where I lived, even before the advent of Ebay and Trademe, there were several second hand shops in town which stocked a ton of boxed games for PC, Amiga, Atari ST, etc. Added to that, I and my friends were always swapping games that we had become bored of, completed, or just weren't really that interested in. Newspaper ads were still chock full of lists of games for sale, and you could barely walk down a medium-length street without being accosted by at least one man in a long trenchcoat, whose pockets were lined with a cornucopia of low-price boxed games of dubious origin...
When Steam first arrived, many people were still on dial-up, if they had an internet connection at all. Computer games generally meant CDs in boxes, and for many initial buyers Half Life 2 was a boxed copy with Steam activation as additional DRM.
A little homework or "street knowledge" usually identified the games which had additional DRM, and when Steam first arrived DRM over the internet was still a rarity. We were only just over the hilariously bad Lenslok, and the dark old days of turning to page 37, paragraph 2, word 9 in the instruction manual, only to discover pages 30-42 were missing because the increasingly geriatric and notoriously loose-stooled "Mr Socks-Tesla" had mistaken the pile of scattered games in a dark corner of the bedroom for an impromptu kitty litter.
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Granted I've had my share of problems/crashes in the 2+ years I've been using Steam steadily but the benefits and convenience of having most of my games in a single library and all of the other little odds and ends (achievements etc) greatly out weigh the drawbacks of Steam by far.
Although if Valve ever decided for some strange reason to shut Steam down I would be gutted. o_O (Since I can't even hold all of the games I own on my current pathetically small 320GB laptop HDD. I'll have a desktop with more than enough storage in a few months and then I would only be mildly upset)
Hilarious comments though. lol
People always overreact when writing reviews on sites like that.
Edit: ROFL @ HL2 selling used for $.95 :p (It's making me wonder who I got my copy from now. oO Wish I could remember who I traded and what I traded for it. >< )
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Yeah, I use offline mode all the time, I have one of the worst ISP's on the east coast (PA) so I lose internet connection for hours, sometimes days at a time with no explanation what so ever from them... >_>
I honestly have no fear of Valve going anywhere anytime soon either. lol
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That said, it goes without saying that if Valve quit the game (or were forced out of it) they would almost definitely shut their legion of servers down, so no more downloads. That would mean that when Steam derps (as it frequently does for me) and convinces itself it needs to download either part or all of a game (for no valid reason, since it hasn't been patched since Gaben was on a diet of rusks and kiddie cola) then that would be goodnight Vienna unless some philanthropic 3rd party was prepared (and legally sanctioned) to host vast amounts of data and make it accessible to the entire Steam user base at no cost...
Also, don't mention the ClientRegistry.blob file...
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Steam changed with time. from being a drm to becoming an awesome community tool, that not feels like drm anymore. Thats how I feel about it. I was never hating steam, but today I really love it. When I buy PC games and they are available on steam and I can get one without steam I'm always like: without steam, without me. :P Steam today is somehow my PC games collection.
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I'm think the same, for me PC gaming always means Steam, if i heard that some cool game is on desura i always think "i will wait for steam relase" ;)
It's very possible that from Xbox One will arise also something good, there is no reason to prejudice and express opinions that are similar to those on Steam 7 years ago.
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While I agree that in many ways Steam has been a good thing for gaming, I would also argue that any deliberate erosion of consumer rights should be met with scorn, derision, dug-in heels and closed wallets.
Sadly the gaming community is largely one which prefers to moan vociferously on forums rather than forego the chance to play the latest and shiniest AAA titles, so we get what we deserve, which is usually a slap-up feast of DRM, followed by a generous dessert of "bend over" and "open your wallets nice and wide"...
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Sadly, this is true. Very few people actually dig in and stick to their guns. Ive abandoned many games that I had wanted because the DRM was just so crap, or the company ballsed up so bad. Ubisoft with their Uplay requirements, before that was their always online requirements. EA with their origin requirements and their god awful approach to DLC.
Huge fan of ME, didnt buy number 3.
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tbh Steam was great for me, as it allowed my copy of HL2 to come with DoDS & CSS included. I got all 3 games for barely any price at all. At the time though, plenty of my friends HATED Steam.
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Steam is different. It changed a lot since it's release. It's great for community, has great sales. The question is, why there are sales? Because there is competition. You have a choice, to buy a game on Steam or a retail key. They don't get money frome retail keys IIRC.
It won't be the same with X1. Microsoft will rule the X1 market. M$ will get money for every game you buy. Why would they make sales then? Actually, there's no point of having games on disc that way. Once you put the disc in the console, it becomes pretty much useless. And DRM is only one of all bad things about new Xbox.
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You going on the assumption that Xbox one well sale of, but if not? Remamber that many people now want to buy PS4, this can force MS to start make biger sales off. MS will not want to lose to Sony, and price of games may be the ultimate salvation.
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I don't think it would change that much. Even if they will make big sales, it might not help them. If X1 won't sell well, they would have to make the console cheaper, make sales. They would lose much money that way. They can afford it, it's Microsoft. But they might just kill the console, close the servers and say good bye to X1 and start working on the new console. In that situation, all your games go to hell. If X1 won't get hacked (or emulated), you won't be able to play these games anymore.
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When I first had to move to steam from the WON network, I was locked out of playing any of my HL1 based games for over 2 weeks. It just would not load and gave me lots of error messages.
Steam is not perfect. A proper offline mode where you didn't have to be signed in before you started it would be nice. Being able to disconnect a game from an account, and get the serial number used or even better put it into inventory (though there should be some safe guards. no trading or seeing the serial number for at least 15 to 20 days after disconnecting it from an account. Only 1 game disconnect every 15 or 20 days. This would help against an account being hacked and having all the games removed and resold).
But over all steam is decent. It keeps my games updated, it lets me know of some decent sales. It doesn't mean I don't want it to change more though, the above changes would certainly be nice.
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I actually held back until December 2005 until I got Steam, because both Steam and my life was really crappy those days. I didn't know where I'm gonna be living every next month and whether there will be any Internet connection at all. Downloading some games with average connection would take several nights back then. And I saw Steam at my friend's computer, it was slowing the machine down, crashed frequently and no one knew how long this steam thing is going to last, everyone was afraid to lose his game if service closes in a few years. Those were different times and Valve was quite a pioneer, paving way for less courageus companies.
Today, Steam is something of an icon. No one really believes anymore that Steam might be just shut down. Client is rock solid, I can't remember when was the last time it crashed. It changed the whole business once, when it introduced succesful digital distribution system, second time when it introduced new business model with sales, daily deals and bundles. Now it's doing it for a third time, supplementing, maybe even replacing demo versions with free weekends, open and early access betas - companies like Bethesda can no loger cover their laziness and disrespect for their clients saying that they game is made in a way that makes demo impossible. Oh, and let's not forget about a greenlight. That's another revolution.
And it all started with a service no one wanted and eveybody hated.
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But Steam WAS a shit program in 2004. It continued being a shit program until 2008 or so when third party developers started showing interest in getting their games onto Steam, Valve started adding new features that made using Steam worthwhile, and optimized it so it doesn't take up 50% of your memory.
The Xbox One, however, is made by Microsoft who I wouldn't trust to make anything any better.
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If microsoft can cut the price of individual digital download games up to 75% on almost daily basis then we'll talk again. Cheers.
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Valve did something that nobody did before, but theres plenty of drm right now and lots of experience on what you should do and what you should not. And Microsoft is like "Derpity derp, look at this completely new thing that we just created and its awesome! YES! Yes? Yeeeeah? Sigh."
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Well i didnt say that its completely bad, the point is Microsoft dont want to use that accumulated experience on how to do that the best way, they just do it how they want (you can see that in other products like MSOffice for example, they just fuck up the interface harder and harder with each new release, IE, even Windows). Or maybe i just dont like anything new, lol. My opinion that is.
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Yes they fucked up Office, but i've got frind that do office work, and they say that the new GUI is better after get used to it. But I use free Libra Office and it's a shit, but it;s free :P
They do what they want with WP8, and i think that METRO gui for phones and smartphones is something great. So sometimes they got good idea.
I like steam so i like idea from MS. But is this be grat like steam? It's hard to say, MS an fucked up this realy hard... I think that with Windows 9 they will make share market place for PC and xbox, to make competition for steam. (They start with this on Windows 8)
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Oh yeah, they can totally integrate their DRM into windows and implement some weird protection and maybe even restrictions for other DRM (not sure about the last thing) and new users wont even know that there is glorious Steam. But they got IE and its shit and i believe only the newest users use it, so maybe its not THAT grim. Time will show who is right and who will be killed by Microsoft corporation ninja cyborg assassins(C).
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It's always like this. remember Windows XP? At launch it was hated so much with its bright and slow GUI... After that, it has been the best and most used Windows for about 10 years. Then Vista was released, and it was hated very much. Microsoft patched it, called it "Windows 7" and it replaced Windows XP as best and most used Windows. In 1 or 2 years, everyone will love Windows 8 (maybe it's a patched version called "Windows 9" at that time)
People just don't like new things and especially not modifications of existing things, regardless whether they're better or worse. It takes time for them to get used to it, and after that they don't want to go back but any further changes will be still bad
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Well, Steam changed and became awesome because of complaints (such as those you showed) and feedback. That's what Microsoft has to do, listen to their community and improve their console.
You know what else is funny? Steam started off with the only option to play games (I guess, you didn't have chatting and Community stuff back there, did you?) and added everything else eventually. But XBone(r) is marked as an "entertainment system", with a lot of irrelevant crap, like Skype messages, movies and Kinect.
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having a camera on your room that is actively tracking and violating your privacy is going to become the norm. Nevermind that it's immoral, some immoral things already happen nowadays, is adding another item to the list that wrong?
yes.Yes it is, Mr paid internet Shill.
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Good thing the Xbone has other problems. Problems that should be far more important than DRM. Problems like the Kinect camera meaning it will only take a software change to turn it into a telescreen from 1984. Even if you trust MS not to do that (despite the latest revelations of NSA spying), the Xbone will be hacked at some point. Do you trust whoever hacks it to not use the camera to watch you ?
Problems like the limited number of countries it will work in. Even if you are in one of those countries, some of the developers on Xbone games aren't. How do you think those developers will test their Xbone port ?
What will it take a developer to sign an exclusivity deal for the Xbone when they know how much of the world that deal will close to them ?
Then there will be lawsuits. One over privacy when someone does spy through the Kinect camera. Another from EU regarding the artificial and illegal barriers MS is putting up between different parts of the EU. MS is already a repeat offender in the eyes of EU courts. How will these courts react ?
Will they ban the Xbone ?
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1.) Not everyone keeps there phone cam pointed at themselves 16/8hrs a day. A better example would be a webcam which have been hacked as opposed to cellphone cams AFAIK.
2.) Not all phones run the same OS, have the same hardware config/ or the same camera hardware.
2.5) Not all phones have the same carrier.
3.) Not all phones have a blasted camera.
4.) I dont know about you, but I dont take naked pictures of myself.
My fiance sees me naked more then my cellphone camera/any cam, and Id be willing to bet that anyone who owns a smartphone and uses the camera on it is a human and seems themselves naked more then their phone does.
Check and mate.
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"One over privacy when someone does spy through the Kinect camera." Not gone to happen, you got camera in tablets, smartphone, laptops, no lawsuits there.
"Another from EU regarding the artificial and illegal barriers MS is putting up between different parts of the EU" I regret that but this not going to happen too. I live in poland and many services don't work here or are limited and there is no lawsuits becose EU law don't prohibited this.
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Also please understand that you cannot simply compare the innovation back in 2003 and present day. What happens today in tech industry become the new standard. Example: If somebody created a lookalike itunes application with functionality matches the 2001 version, customers will be laughing at it. You cannot simply say "hey apple got it right eventually, so give me some time and I'll make it right." You need to have at least the same set of features as the newest itunes in order to have a slight chance of success. Same principle applies to xbox1/steam
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I was really pleased when Steam came out with Half Life 2. Admitting you're a homosexual is, I am sure, no easy thing in a world still so addled with prejudice. Steam was very brave. And to admit to the world its lengthy, on-going relationship with Half Life was so wonderful.
It's such a shame that the irrational fear Steam had led to him calling it all off before Half Life turned 3. They got together for a couple of spells after that, but again, Steam called it a day after the second. That was shocking enough, but when I found out Steam had been having it away with Portal and Team Fortress behind Half Life's back, well I was flabbergasted! To think, the same irrational fear led to the ends of those affairs too!
Still, happy Steam came out.
shakes head and stares into the distance wistfully
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Steam is a sordid old hussy, but it's hard to find a much cheaper source of entertainment.
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Soo there are many bad reaction about MS and new xbox, and something they remind me. These are real quotes from Amazon (HL2).
"This could be a Terrific game,if there was no STEAM activation WDF..there
are many companies that invest millions in software and they don't get
you through Damn Sh... activation thing.PERIOD."
"Valve has the perfect con going. They charge you forty bucks to buy a game that you can't play UNLESS you use steam to verify that you actually bought it but since STEAM may make your computer crash or freeze your system so you can't actually play the game and since you opened the box you can't return it to the the store and get your money back. INTELLECTUAL COPYRIGHT FASCISM has led to this state of affairs where crooks like VALVE can sell you products that don't work and YOU don't have the right to get your money back. Boycott VALVE and don't ever download games (from any company) so that we don't get to a future where STEAM is the only way to play games at all. That is the future these INTELLECTUAL COPYRIGHT HOLDER FASCISTS are drooling over. Don't give it to them."
THE BEST:
"You MUST have an Internet connection to play. If anybody got hold of your CD key number before you, you will never be able to play the game, and Valve will NOT help you if you bought the game on eBay. I never thought I'd say this, but Valve is worse than Microsoft."
Is that looks familiar? ;)
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