“Fantastic Idea. Good in Principle. The reality Sucks”
Online distribution of media is certainly the way to go, but when I try to play a game that’s tens years old on Steam and I get told “The Servers are too busy to handle your request. Please try again later” I start to think the world’s not ready for such advanced technology.
X-Com TFTD is not exactly demanding in itself, there is no reason why you would need to contact any server when I want to play this game. The only explanation is you’ve build your system around your own needs, not the customers.
So, fuck you to Valve, fuck Steam, and fuck every single person who ever came up with a good idea and failed to live up to expectations.
I use Steam almost exclusively for PC gaming, and I’ve never seen that happen. Not lately, anyway. When Steam was brand spankin’ new it had all kinds of problems, but it seems rock solid now. Are you sure you don’t have a firewall or something blocking it from getting out to contact the mothership?
One of the reason’s it pisses me off so much is that the problems are out of the blue.
I’ve not changed anything, my internet is working for other Multiplayer Online games, but Steam is just being stupid.
It’s not the first time it’s caused trouble without a good reason.
I’m a steam user as well and never encountered such a problem. The closes I can think of is one time that it took a long time to download a game from their servers.
Nary a problem here, though admittedly I’m not trying to play X-Com through it.
I think you are right though…like America it depends on one’s perspective and level of whine as to the scope of the problem. While it works for most people, it doesn’t work for everyone…but sometimes it’s User Head Space that is the real issue.
(Just kidding…no idea what the problem you are having is. I’d check my firewall again or maybe with your ISP and see if they have made any port level changes to their access system)
Zebra: Last I checked, only TFTD–but there’s a patch for X-COM Gold that lets you run your legal copy on at least Windows XP 64-bit, which I’m doing now.
I bought Half Life 2 a couple months ago because I finally got around to getting a PC/Video card that would do it justice.
I can’t play it, because Steam won’t install properly on my system. I guess I’ll download a cracked version sometime and hope it doesn’t have a bunch of malware bundled with it. :rolleyes:
In the meantime, I’m playing Doom III. Not as good, but at least I can get it to run.
I used to love Valve. I spent many a day playing Half-Life, and even built a system around Half-Life 2 just so I could play it.
And then…I encountered Steam for the first time. Even though I had like a 5-CD box, for some reason I couldn’t just play the fucking game I bought - I had to first download about 5 GB (no shit) of “necessary files”, and then reboot numerous times, only to have…well, nothing. It didn’t work. Three days of frustration later and zero technical support, and I returned the game, getting a full refund only after I threatened to dispute the credit card transaction.
There is no fucking excuse for requiring a net connection to play a single-player offline game. And there is especially no excuse for a multi-day session of pain when you first buy the product.
Data point: I’d downloaded Portal, played it through, then wanted to play with developer’s commentary. It wouldn’t start, and I got the same “server too busy” message. WTF?! thought I. No changes to firewall/settings, just wouldn’t play. I don’t mind if the servers are too busy to update or something, but to block it starting? I was fortunate enough in that it started up in an hour or so (found other distractions, then tried it again), but it makes me want to look into finding out how to default into play offline mode for all games.
I guess I can live with the aftermath of the war between hackers and producers (have to, since I’ve had my share of cracked-ware, dating back to M.U.L.E.), but once I’ve cleared activation and ass-kissing, cutting out a game because it can’t call home is too far. I’ve written Steam/Valve, and won’t buy a game through them if I can avoid it.
ETA: Oh, and on top of it all, the fucking cake is a lie!
No more necessary than posting on the boards generally, no.
It seemed an apt way to express my opinion. A concept others could grasp and understand what I was really saying
I’ve never had any problems with Steam. In fact, I downloaded Call of Duty last night in less time than it took to smoke a cigarette.
I will admit that I was a little pissy when I first bought HL2- which I had to buy a DVD drive for- and got it home, only to find out that none of the fucking game files were on the DVD anyway- but once I realized I no longer had to go out and buy game disks anymore, I realized just how awesome the whole thing is.
Especially considering I got Episode 2 for free from our very own (awesome) Talon Karrde (sp?)
I didn’t discover the whole offline mode thing until last week when our cable was out, but yeah, it’s not difficult- disable your network connection and restart Steam, and hey presto, server-issue-free gaming. Of course, you’ll have to make sure you’ve downloaded the game itself first.
(Just kidding…no idea what the problem you are having is. I’d check my firewall again or maybe with your ISP and see if they have made any port level changes to their access system)
