Steam can go suck my Valve

The BBQ Pit
1

I went shopping on Tuesday and picked up Half-Life 2 from a computer store. I had enjoyed the original half-life and had played a number of the offshoots as well.

I got it home, installed it, and it was only then that I realized that internet access is required to play the game. Not suggested. Not recommended. REQUIRED. This is a game that’s wholly self-sufficient as a game on a CD but Steam makes you log on and register with them before you can even open up a single program on the disc.

I have a dial-up modem on this computer. To log online, register the product, download the updates, download the patches (for a product only two months old), and decrypt the files took literally 3 hours. Three hours on a phone line that was probably not meant to be tied up for such a long length of time. And the process took so much user input it would have been impossible to do it automatically while I slept.

But I got it all done. But I still couldn’t play the game. Then, and only then, did the game tell me that my graphics card was not up to its minimum requirements. Yeah, the graphics card is a basic one that comes with the computer but the computer is only a little over a year old! For that to be so out of date the game refuses to even start seemed a bit mind boggling.

But I got a new card. Installed it. And now problem #3 arises: the game refuses to play when I’m offline. I cannot convince the computer to play in an offline mode. The game is not defaulted to offline mode!

See, apparently, the programmers at Steam and Valve believe every computer in the country runs on a GeForceFX 6800 Ultra graphics card with 3.0 gigs of RAM and a dedicated t1 connection. Sadly, this just isn’t the case.

Look, I can understand the assumption that most users have a cable modem. I really can. But why in the world would a game where you don’t actually need to be online to play have a default that says “if you’re not online, you cannot play!”
That makes no sense at all.

But there’s more! I’ve done everything they’ve asked to try to convince the computer that I really do want to play in offline mode. No good.
I’ve tried calling up Valve: they don’t offer technical support at all.
I’ve tried calling up Steam: They don’t offer technical support through the phones.
I’ve tried writting Steam: I completed their form 99% of the way and, because I missed one stupid requirement on their forms it wouldn’t let me send it off. So when I went back to the form it had all erased! Everything!

God damn this pisses me off. Three days and hundreds of dollars later and I still can’t play. I just want to fucking play the game. Why is this such an obscene request?

2

Steam could have used some more thought and better execution, but I think it’s more tied to Vivendi than to Valve.

Once registered, you can look out on the web for ways to play the game completely offline, although it sucks that you have to look up ways to play an offline game offline. What if I want to club some manhacks when I’m flying crosscountry? Poor execution.

Lastly, you can pit the fact that companies don’t like to give their products away for free, yet there is a thriving, non-profit industry who’s only goal is to provide companies products for free. I truly wish all software companies didn’t have to jump through the anti-piracy hoops they do just to get paid for their work. All this activation bullshit is annoying as hell, and it’s not Microsoft’s, Vivendi’s, McAfee’s, Norton’s or any other software provider’s fault.

3

IIRC, you can play the game offline by selecting the “remember my password” option when you log in online.

(And, even though it’s a hassle, it is very, very worth it. Half-Life 2 is gorgeous (I bought it a couple days ago). )

4

Although I hate the idea of steam and I have not bothered to touch HL2, the box DOES clearly have it’s requirements on the box including the NEED (not the recommendation) for Internet access. It also clealy states the hardware needed. An one year old “basic” computer video subsystem is NOT going to play one of the highest rated, top of the line videogames of the year.

You can play off line. There should be several hundred forums regarding this. Make those changes and never speak of steam again. Becareful of installing other HL titles on your computer while Steam is installed. It will also try to get online to patch (and Steam-ize) your other HL games.
BTW, Steam had no real affect on game piracy. HL2 was quite available in several pirated rips online. Most people understand that pirated games cannot get online play so for people who just wanted to play single player off line, the pirated version was actually BETTER than the official version in regards to installation.

5

Only then? Go back to school, dude, because the game box has a huge “INTERNET CONNECTION REQUIRED” notice right on the box.

Pfft. Consumers.

6

I think the whole Steam thing sucks and I sincerely hope it is not the wave of the future though I suspect it is.

Still, once you’ve gone through the initial online crap, here’s what to do to get Steam off your back:

“Playing Half Life 2 offline: Once installed, verified and updated online, you can play Half Life 2 without having to be connected to the Internet. To do this, follow the Steam Configuration instructions further below. Then whenever you want to play offline, make sure you don’t have an active Internet connection and launch Half Life 2. When prompted, select the ‘Play in Offline Mode’ option and the game will load and play offline.”

From Tweakguides.com

7

Sorry, should have added that the Steam Configuration instructions referred to in the extract are in the link I gave.

8

I am holding the HL2 DVD case in my hands right now. The minimum graphics card requirements are “DirectX 7 level graphics card”. Clear as mud :rolleyes:

9

Sadly, I’m sure this is true anymore. The people who would steal the games can do so more easily than ever, while all the security crap just pisses off the people who don’t deserve it.

10

Just out of interest, Steam is very much Valve’s creation. Indeed, I believe it’s a major bone of contention in the ongoing legal shenanigans between the two, since Vivendi think Valve are using it to undermine their publishing rights.

Either way, it sucks, and not least because it means you can’t re-sell your copy of HL2 when you’re finished with it, unless you give the buyer access to your Steam account, which violates the Ts&Cs, allowing Valve to summarily block your account. Oh, you do have the option to get Valve to de-link your HL2 key from your steam account, but you have to pay them a tenner for the privilege. Charming.

11

Don’t even get me started. I bought the gold copy of HL2 for my brother who requested it for Christmas. The only way to get it was to buy it online. Now, they wouldn’t be so horrifically stupid as to make it so you can only buy the gold copy for your own computer would they?? Unfortunately, they are. I ended up having to buy another copy for my siblings and am left hoping they come out with a game I want to/actually can play so I can finally use the waste of space I have been unable to get a refund for. Oh, and the articles that came with that gold copy of HL2 I ordered back in NOVEMBER didn’t arrive until yesterday. :smack:

I have many more horror stories, but I will spare you and instead only say this - To whoever was responsible for making such a POS system, I hope you burn in a hell filled with script kiddies, TKers, laggy systems and impossibly long load times.

12

You’re absolutely right. It was on the box. Second to last in the list minimum system requirements and nowhere else, but it was on the box. Still, if you consider 8 point type to be huge more power to you.

13

Impossibly long load times seem to be another issue. While I know I’ve downloaded the latest updates from Steam, I’m still receiving the “stuttering issue” and load times that last more than a minute between levels and reincarnation.
I have enough RAM to satisfy the minimum system requirements as stated on the box so I don’t think that’s the issue either and my processor is even better than the recommended system requirements. So I’m at a loss as to what it could be.
The game does seem enjoyable but I can’t sit around for 5 minutes between deaths waiting for the game to reload again.

14

And, as others have pointed out, this industry continues to thrive despite Steam. There are multiple cracked copies of HL2 available of a variety of P2P networks, and it seems that the main result of the whole Steam process has been to piss off legitimate buyers. Go over to the Steam message boards and check out the myriad complaints about long activation times, difficulty in playing offline (even thought it’s meant to be possible), incompatabilty of software (even when it officially meets the requirements), problems logging on to the Steam netwrok, etc., etc., etc.

15

You’re wrong. Unlike virtually every other major game, HL2 was not available to play online until the official, worldwide online/retail release date: something they could nto have engineered without Steam. One of the major causes of piracy is games not being available for purchase at the same time in different parts of the world. Why wait to buy the game, with people in America already enjoying it, when you can download it right away?! The Steam release ended that motive.

The Steam messageboards are notoriously stupid.

16

Hey, you’re the retard that doesn’t look at what he’s buying. You coulda bought a head of lettuce and be here bitching about Valve’s shitty green proprietary storage format.

17

You can nitpick all day long about how big the fonts on the box should be and whether Directx7 is an accurate representation of what the game needs to run.

The fact is the OP is right. Steam is a piece of shit and the people at Valve are assholes.

It reminds me of this story my grandmother used to tell me when I was a kid. It’s about a guy whom i shall name joe (the real name is joohaa).

Joe goes to the market and hears a salesmen shouting : " Understanding pills! Get your understanding pills! Eat one and you will understand!"
Joe is intrigued so he goes over and sees a smiling salesman standing next to a bunch of small white balls.

Joe: What’s the deal is with these “understanding pills”. Do they make you smart or something?

Salesman: you will understand once you try one.Only a dollar each! All you have to do is put it in your mouth and suck on it and you will understand!

Joe: Alright, i’ll take one.

Salesman: there you go, thank you for your purchase.

Joe: mmhhh, it’s sweet. Doesn’t taste bad at all. Kinda sugary. Oh wait…it’s not tasting sweet anymore…it’s kind of bitter. Actually, it’s starting to taste very bad…WHAT THE HELL! This is goat shit rolled in sugar!!!

Salesman: now you understand!
Now i’m not sure what the moral of this story is (or if it even has one) but steam is very much like goat shit rolled in sugar to make it easier for people to swallow.

It’s easier for you to get updates and since your ownership of the games is tied to an online account, you can play on any other pc without having to lug your cds around.

That’s the sugar. And even that sugar doesn’t taste very sweet.

Sure, you can update your games but the steam servers will give you really crappy speed and you have no other alternatives. With normal games, you can go browsing game sites and pick a fast server to download from. An update or an addon that takes me 12 hours to download with steam, I could usually get in 1 or 2 from gamershell or any of another dozen websites. That’s because steam uses maybe 10-15% of the available BW on my standard broadband connection.

This wouldn’t be so bad if steam didn’t lock you in. No more external sources for you and me. In fact, you can’t even PICK which of the 30+ steam content servers to download from. Valve will decide for you. Well, for me, they keep deciding wrong apparently. Either that or everyone else is getting shitty speed. Either way, my point is made.

As far as gaming on other pcs, It’s prohibitevly slow. Say I want to install HL2, CS, CS:Source and Team Fortress Classic. Each time I have to let steam download them from their servers which means a wait time of 24h+ . Not always an ideal scenario. Sometimes, lugging the cds around may be the better option.
And I’m just talking about the sugar. There is a LOT more goat shit underneath that I can talk about. From crippling Lan parties, to the dubious extortion-like licensing schemes for cybercafes and don’t get me started on customer support, broken promises and on and on and on. Valve is always talking about fan community, feedback, blah blah blah when in fact, they are among the least receptive and supporting within the online FPS world unlike, say, Epic with Unreal.

They do make great games (HL and HL2) and they are within their rights to do everything they do (or don’t) But the fact remains:

They are assholes and steam is a piece of shit.

18

How much RAM do you have, and what graphic settings are you trying to run at? 256MB may be the minimum to get the game running, but to run smoothly, you need to either turn down the detail levels, or get more RAM. It runs silky smooth on my machine, but I have 1GB of RAM. Also, what video card do you have - that makes a huge difference.

And finally, I can’t believe anyone would buy a PC game without looking at the freaking requirments on the box, and making sure they meet or exceed all of them. And realize that if you machine barely meets the minimum, the game will run, but poorly.

You must not have realized their is an option in Steam to back up each of the games to a CD or DVD (presuming you have a CD or DVD burner) - merely right click on the game you want to save in the “Play Games” window, and select the “Backup Game Files . . .” option.

Anyways, I haven’t had a single problem with Steam at all; I pre-orded HL2 back in October, got to play CS:Source early because of the pre-order, and had all the game files installed ahead of time, so I up and playing HL2 minutes after it was officially released. And I love having all the patches installed automatically, without having to hunt them down.

19

Steam seems poorly thought out and appears to rely on the fact that HL2 is the best game since…probably HL1. If HL2 was any less a game then Valve would be just another failed dot.com within a year. Sadly, the success of the game is likely to drive the continuation of Steam.

I don’t know games as well as others but I do know software, and for mass-market software intended to be sold in the millions of copies, the distribution system is supposed to be as painless and brainless as possible. There is no point to a 3-hour download - I cannot believe there was not some encryption key/account creation method that would work in under 10 minutes on a 56k modem.

I have a lot of respect for the quality of games Valve makes, but they’ve done much that is wrong with HL2:

  • delays and open lies about schedule (there’s a very lengthy interview out there where Gabe admits they did lie, many times)

  • the incredibly poor security they had and their hacking incident

  • the drawback from and removal of multiplayer as an option (not officially revealed until the product almost shipped)

  • the “demo” debacle which burned many people who had legitimately bought the full product

  • not having an optional female lead (I know it sounds petty, but I know a lot of women gamers that would really have enjoyed the game more if they just had that as an option - in their system it’s not hard at all, only requiring the recording of some new lines replacing “Gordon” with something else for the scripted bits)

  • and the entire Steam situation - lengthy downloads, failed and corrupted downloads, activation keys that don’t work, online/offline not working, “servers are down”, etc.

Any other company would probably be on the ash heap of history. They better hope the momentum keeps up.

20

To those asking, no I did not look at the system requirements before purchasing. I have no one to blame but myself for that. But, if you’re wondering, here’s the minimum requirements vs what my computer has:

  1. 1.2 GHz Processor…3.0 GHz Processor
  2. 256 MB RAM…256 MB RAM
  3. DirectX7 graphics card …Truth be told, I had absolutely no idea what kind of graphics card I had. After searching out cards in the store, I still have no clue what DirectX7 is, which company makes it, how fast it is or what it costs. But my curent card is the 9600 256 MB AGP
  4. 2000/XP/Me/98…XP
  5. 5.5 GB of available Hard drive space…Check
  6. Mouse…Hey, I have mice!
  7. Keyboard…Lord help me if my computer didn’t come with that.
  8. Internet connection required…I have this too! On this computer it’s a 56K dial-up, but I have the internet.
  9. DVD-ROM Drive…I have two.

So other than #3 which I would have had no clue at the store, nor would I have known when I got home to check, I met or exceeded all the system requirements for this game. It still took over 3 hours to download, update, debug and decrypt. It still runs with a lag. It still takes until 2006 to load a new level. But I do, in fact, meet every single requirement listed for their game, box reading or no.