I pit Valve Software's "Steam".

The BBQ Pit
1

… because it’s a STEAMing pile of SHIT.

I pre-ordered Half-Life 2, and picked it up yesterday at Gamestop. “Great! A new game I’ve been waiting forever to get my grubby paws on!”, I thought. I get home, start the install (with the expectation that it’s going to take a while since it’s 5 CD’s.

The game installs after a bit of frustration (CD version has an ‘issue’ where you MUST install Counter Strike or it fails on disk 4). I load up Steam and… 30 minutes later I finally get to login. No biggie, right? The game is brand new and everyone is trying to get into it!

Activation starts. I get wood! It’s almost time to… wait… this is taking forever. Commence shrinkage as I amble off to play Burnout 3 on my Xbox. All said, Activation took over an hour. Steam is starting to piss me off…

Finally, Steam Activation completes and ‘Half-Life 2’ is ready to play! Hoo-diggity, this is going to be GREAT! I right click on Half-Life 2 in the menu and select “Lauch Game…” -
A window pops up. I wipe a tear of joy from my eye.

Preparing to start game…

Preparing to start game…

Preparing to start game…

What the…

Preparing to start game…

Fuck.

That window disappear and another one pops up. I’m now pissed.

“The game is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.”

I flip my computer the bird and mumble various terms of endearment towards Steam and Valve Software. I restart my PC in the hopes this bypasses the issue.

Preparing to start game…

“The game is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.”

You piece of fucking horseshit. Fuck you Valve. Let’s try again!

Preparing to start game…

“COULD NOT AUTHENTICATE ORIGINAL DISC”

Oh, it’s on now, you son of a bitch. I eject the CD chuck it back in the box and head back down to gamestop for a replacement. I get the replacement CD’s and scoot back home to try again.

“The game is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.”

What the fuck do you mean it’s unavailable? I just bought the Og damned thing and the CD is IN THE FUCKING DRIVE! I decide to check my favorite site… http://www.nvnews.net/ for similar problems and find one post about it. And no solutions.

I think to myself, “Maybe I can skip steam and start it from HERE!” I select HL2 from the Programs list after closing Steam.

“Logging into Steam”
“Starting game…”

HOLY SHIT! I’m in the game. Three. Fucking. Hours. Later. Any other game, I would have been playing 5 seconds after completing the install, but no… I had to: Autheticate the game (1 hour), wrestle with a non-function Steam Launcher (1 hour)+go get replacement disks (1 hour).

At least the game is good.

So, without further introduction, I present to you:

Fuck you, Valve. Fuck your Steam software. Fuck authenticating games and requiring a fucking network connection to even start the game AFTER YOU’VE ALREADY BOUGHT IT! I hope your fucking company goes under.

If you do the right thing and remove the authentication requirement for your fucking games, i will reverse this entire post and spread nothing but love and joy for you.

Until that day…

Fuck you!

2

They lost my sale with this shit. My games machine is not connected to the internet and I hate being pissed around. Plenty of other games to play though. Hell, I feel like pirating it just on principle. :wink:

3

While not having your problems it did take way to long to get playing. I’m playing on my work comp so connections to Steam were blocked by the firewall. as to bring my desktop to a open dsl connection to sort it out. Then it registered me and started to decrypt. Took fucking ages. I was close to an hour sorting waiting and I had not true problems.

Now to play it I have to

1: Launch and wait for Stream to time out so I can play in offline mode (a few minutes)
or
2: Disconnect my desktop from the LAN before starting which speeds up the launching of the game but is a pain in the arse to do every time.

They need to sort this out.

great fucking game though :slight_smile:

4

English dear boy. I was close to an hour waiting and I had no true problems

5

Amen. Yet another example of a copy protection mechanism that pisses off legitimate users far more than it ever will the pirates. I “only” had to wait an hour between installation and being able to play, though, so I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. On the other hand, I can see it being more effective than most copyright schemes in terms of piracy prevention, so it’ll be interesting to see how it works out. Even if it does take a week or two to crack, they’ll have avoided the initial surge of piracy Doom 3 and the like saw, so it’ll be worth it in their eyes. Man, it’s annoying though.

6

Game has already been cracked and packed from what I’ve seen, so their authentication/protection is pointless anyway.

I applaud Valve for coming out with a system that lets them get away with Self-Distribution, hence putting more money in their pockets… but when I want to play a game that I paid for… then I damn well want to play it. I don’t want to log in and auth. I don’t want to launch a launcer to launch my game!

I spent $50 for this game, and spent the better portion of my availabe evening just installing it. That’s what pissed me off most of all, since I absolutely abhor any waste of time (relative to want I wish to do). Being that the game was purchased on CD, it shouldn’t require decryption or even a download of important files to play the game. Everything should be there and ready to go.

What happens when Valve disappears/Steam fails? Will they release a patch to avoid it, or will people have a suddenly useless game that they can’t play anymore due to Steam not being there?

I have to say, Gabe Newell is not exactly the brightest light on the strand… though his games are genius, some of his ideas are absurd. Steam is a prime example of mental retardation when it comes to distribution technology/desires of endusers.

7

This sort of thing is why one of the first things I always do when I buy a new game is to crack it. I’ve had a few games that had problems from the copy protection scheme. Kotor, for example, crashed incessantly until I applied the crack. Luckily hackers are far more diligent than the game companies themselves…

8

For some reason, Steam couldn’t authenticate our copy. Thats okay, however, they said they’d “let” us play our game. I thought that was awfully nice of them…letting us play the game we just spent fifty dollars.

9

Or when someone hits their site with a DoS attack?

I’ve been looking forward to HL2, but I’ll be content to keep playing GTA San Andreas while the first few bugs get fixed. (Not like I have time for two new games at once, anyway.)

10

Just found out a friend of mine bought the game… apparently it was returned but he didn’t notice the tiny crease in the box lid.

He installed it, entered the code and… now his Steam account is banned for piracy/fraud. Even though he bought the game at the same Gamestop I got mine from. Isn’t that lovely?

Valve Software, you are a :wally

11

I’m not really a modern gamer (i have a PS1 with Tomb Raider games), so perhaps one of you could explain WTF you’re talking about.

Do you have to be connected to the internet just to play this game? What if you don’t have an internet connection? And what is the whole registration process all about? And what’s Steam and Valve?

Thanks.

12

Steam is Valve Software’s method of releasing a game and getting around a publisher. Valve Software developed the, rather ground-breaking, game known as Half-Life.

To play this game you must:

A.) Download/Install Steam from the Internet/Product CD.
B.) Register an account with SteamPowered.
C.) Install your game, enter your activation code and wait while it verifies it.
D.) Wait for the game to decrypt and download missing essential components (smart way to stop early game-play)
E.) Must be logged into Steam to play Half-Life unless you set it to Offline mode, and if you’re offline and don’t have “Save Password” checked… you can’t play Half-Life 2 as the game presumes you are a pirate.

HL2 box states: Internet Connection Required

13

Interesting.

So, is there a general sense among the gaming community that people are getting pissed off at being asked to jump through so many hoops just to play a game they’ve already shelled out 50 bucks for? Or is it just a few SDMB whiners? :slight_smile:

And is there any redress for someone like your friend, who has apparently had his account deactivated for “piracy” through no fault of his own?

14

It’s not just a few SDMB whiners. BioWare did a similar thing just last week with some “premium modules” released for NeverWinter Nights. These are even worse in that you have to have a live connection every time you load (although you can kill the connection between loads). They haven’t released any sales numbers, but I assume that it will work out the same as Half-Life 2. You would not believe the negative response on the NWN boards.

15

I can’t get it to run at all. I bought the DVD version, but apparently there are issues with the copy protection software not liking certain DVD drives and/or certain CD writing software being present on the machine. The store I bought from says they can’t do a refund after the game has been opened, so it looks like I either:
a) Accept that I am out £35 and can’t play the mose anticipated game of all time
b)Buy a new DVD drive, and hope I don’t have to uninstall everything on my machine to get it to run.

I had this problem with UT2004 as well, but fortunately Epic had had the sense to release a patch that didnt require the disc to be in the drive by the time I got it.

I know they have to do something to stop piracy, but can’t they find something that also lest legitimate users play the damned game?

16

I bought this yesterday. At 9:00 pm or so I installed the game and waited and waited while my dial up internet connection downloaded steamstuff, then I attempted to enter the verification code but you’re only supposed to enter part of the code or something. Finally I figured out only to enter the first line, and was told that Steam was too busy to verify my account but it would let me play and Steam would get back to me.

“Finally,” I think. I already feel bad enough about being a 37 year old guy playing a video game. Now I have to jump through hoops to play it, but here goes.

Nope.

Steam needs to download some more crap to unlock my game. More time goes by. Finally it’s done. I’m ready to play. I load it up and find out my video drivers are out of date. I have to go download 17.3 megabytes from Nvidia.

Crap! It’s midnight. I go to sleep.

Now I’ve put the kids to sleep. I am downloading from Nvidia. Somewhere around 10:30 I will be finished. Then I can play.

Or, maybe something else will happen.

As I sit here typing, and talking to you losers, I take bandwidth from my Nvidia connection increasing the amount of time for the download.

Did I call you all losers?

Well, I don’t see you guys spending two days downloading crapware for the privilege of playing a game you just paid for.

I guess that makes me the biggest loser.

That’s some consolation. I am king of the steamslaves.

17

Actually, i would believe it.

Just after my last post, i went and checked out the Steam forums, and there are plenty of very pissed-off people over there, quite a few of whom claim they will never buy any Valve software again.

18

Yeah, steam can go to hell.

I just wanted to play CS a few weeks ago. I own a copy. Installed it and upgraded it over several hours, and then steam comes up telling me to enter my CD key.

Well, my CD key doesn’t work anymore, because someone cracked the algorithm and registered an account under it already.

If I want to play the game I bought, I’ve got to do some ridiculous thing like take a picture of my CD, CD key, box, and original receipt and send it in. B.S.!

19

Well, you know what you’ve got to do folks.

Stop buying their software, so that the cost of losing slaes to bad management begins to exceed the cost of losing sales to piracy.

20

I was lucky in that it only took me forty minutes to install, autheticate, verify, unlock, decode, update, fingerprint, and perform a full body cavity search on my DVD-intalled copy of the game before it would let me play, but even so… this was a dumb idea poorly implemented. As with all copy-protection schemes, this does nothing to prevent piracy, and creates a huge headache for legitimate consumers. Give it up, already. You can’t stop piracy. It’s always going to be there, and it will always be one step ahead of the industry as a whole. Just factor it into your profit margins and fucking deal with it. Shit like this just drives away paying customers. Keep it up, and the only people left playing your games will be the pirates themselves.