Games from Steam
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No it's supposed to be a joke. Here in romania(Easter Europe in general) the rate of piracy is high. So we say the "romanian" version insted of the torrented one. :)
I bug
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
At first glance I expected to see some Rube GOldberg-esque steam powered video game contraption... :doh:
Will Rogers never met me.
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been using it for years, no problems.
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
How massively are they DRMed?
why would this matter ?
+1 I've been using it since HL2 and love the ease of finding and installing games. Recently installed the Mac version and it works just as well as on Windows. Decent supply of Win+Mac games. Playing Portal and World of Goo on the Mac. Good stuff.
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
The only problems I've had are that that steam app opens very slow on my computer, when downloading, it sometimes doesn't seem to throttle well and my son and I have different accounts and Steam doesn't support XP account specific logins (is this different on Windows 7 because it sure is lame.) On the flip side, steampowered often has fantastic sales--I bought Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts for $4.99--and it's sure nice not to have to worry about DVDs/CDs.
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Quite a few games now, Left 4 Dead 1 + 2, Aliens vs Predator, Plants vs Zombies, Couple of RTS's, all worked perfectly and were way cheaper than say their console counterparts. Like, more than half price. Downside is that Steam Voice Chat can be shit ingame so we usually rely on our own ventrilo server. I had to scrap an old computer which was my Steam machine, installed Steam on a new computer, logged in with my details, set it to download my games again overnight, bam, good as new.
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I have around 20 games there. a) you cannot resell games you own and there's no refund if the game doesn't work for you, b) you're screwed if someone steals your account, c) sometimes it takes longer to start your game, depending on how good your connection is. On a plus side you can play your games from any computer you want, just remember to log-out after you done since you can be logged-in only on one computer at a time. In addition to that there's nice backup feature, which allows you to put your game(s) on a portable drive and install them on another computer, so you don't have to download it again. Now DRM issues, largely depends on game (publisher), because Steam allows developers/publishers to use their own DRM scheme. For instance, this is why I skipped newest Settlers edition.
Mladen Jankovic wrote:
c) sometimes it takes longer to start your game, depending on how good your connection is.
If this gets to be a pain in single player games, you can turn steam to offline mode and most games will work just fine. And this steam cloud things is promising to be dangerous, it lets you load save games up to steam and download them onto another machine by logging into your steam account. I'm just happy my laptop can't play Civ5.
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I have around 20 games there. a) you cannot resell games you own and there's no refund if the game doesn't work for you, b) you're screwed if someone steals your account, c) sometimes it takes longer to start your game, depending on how good your connection is. On a plus side you can play your games from any computer you want, just remember to log-out after you done since you can be logged-in only on one computer at a time. In addition to that there's nice backup feature, which allows you to put your game(s) on a portable drive and install them on another computer, so you don't have to download it again. Now DRM issues, largely depends on game (publisher), because Steam allows developers/publishers to use their own DRM scheme. For instance, this is why I skipped newest Settlers edition.
Mladen Jankovic wrote:
a) you cannot resell games you own and there's no refund if the game doesn't work for you, b) you're screwed if someone steals your account, c) sometimes it takes longer to start your game, depending on how good your connection is.
a. True b. No, you can recover your account, they have instructions on how to do this and its easily done. I have a friend that had this happen and he's fine now, although he procrastinated recovering it for a while because he didn't know recovery was possible. He is a non-technical type that fell for a phishing scam, I doubt it would have happened to most folks reading this board. c. Steam itself only requires internet connection to install the game. A few game publishers put DRM in that doesn't work in Steam offline mode, but that's the game publisher and has nothing to do with Steam.
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
I bought HL2 and installed it, Steam re-downloaded the entire DVD (Updates) took four days before I could attempt to play, but then the bugger told me the license was no good, I provided the receipt, nope, you need to buy another license. took the game back to the store where I bought it, nope, already opened. Now I know why they call it steam, because I was plenty STEAMED. After much e-mailing to Target and Steam finally get a license that worked. needed re-re-download the DVD (I know I should pay premium pricing for faster internet blah blah, and get with it, blah blah... But I'm not going to)
_______________________________ "It was broke, so I fixed it"
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+1 I've been using it since HL2 and love the ease of finding and installing games. Recently installed the Mac version and it works just as well as on Windows. Decent supply of Win+Mac games. Playing Portal and World of Goo on the Mac. Good stuff.
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Please note, you do not "buy" the games through steam, but, according to steam subscriber agrement, you "subscribe" to the "services, software and other content". Further, see paragraph 9c: C. NO GUARANTEES. VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S). On the other hand, there are events on the steam, which allow you to buy games very cheap. Keep remembering though, your steam asset is not actually "yours".
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
I have over 120 games on my main steam account (and about 25 on my media centre pc account - saves me logging in and out, and have duplicate copies for the occasional in-house multiplayer game) and I get on well with it. It has some flaws (what system, either virtual or physical, doesnt??) but its positives are good: Game always belongs to you (dont worry about losing that pesky cd) Use on multiple computers (not at the same time, but no install restrictions) Really good deals and "special offer" days Portability/backup (i know someone else mentioned this) I know the flaws exist: Have to download the game... games like GTA IV took a little while, weighing in at 16GB - and lots more games are being released with huge installs... but bandwidth is becoming more available, and driving to a store or ordering online for delivery also takes time... DRM - Steam oriented games (not just bought on steam but developed around it - e.g. MW2, TF2 etc) will ONLY work on the correct steam account, and some only with an internet connection. Other games (e.g. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare) work once downloaded thru steam, and do not require steam to even be running. I backup my steam folder occasionally, and keep it on a seperate drive to my OS so i can reinstall without issue (my steam folder is 300+GB so i dont wanna have to download it all again in a hurry) and have no trouble with changing PC, or reinstalling windows. Can you imagine the agro of reinstalling 100+ games from DVD... not to mention your config's and save games all being lost. I have my issues with steam, but on the whole im for it. Hosey^
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
I live in Zimbabwe so therefore have a very slow, very intermittent link to the internet. When it comes to this setup, Steam is HORRIBLE. It's net code is shocking. It's continually updating and the download servers are so slow it's unbelievable. It takes somewhere between 3 and 15 minutes to log in when everything is up to date (which has only every happened to me once. It was a Tuesday...) I bought Modern Warfare 2, used my friends media to install it, then had to update the game. This took me 4 weeks. I finally got to play and the next day there was a 200 meg update. Well sod playing for another 2 days. The number of games I have bought on Steam and then pirated so I can play the offline, single player is not insignificant for this very reason. I guess (but don't know) if you live in a country with real internet, then these problems go away. Apart from that, I find the Steam interface somewhat buggy and it crashes quite frequently. You often have to wait a long time for games to load and Steam will just die on you for no reason. What I'm saying is, if you can buy a game from somewhere other than Steam, do so. It's worth paying extra to get the crap out of the way.
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Please note, you do not "buy" the games through steam, but, according to steam subscriber agrement, you "subscribe" to the "services, software and other content". Further, see paragraph 9c: C. NO GUARANTEES. VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S). On the other hand, there are events on the steam, which allow you to buy games very cheap. Keep remembering though, your steam asset is not actually "yours".
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
I may be old school, but I like having the box and the DVD of the game I buy. I guess the youngens are 100% fine with downloading everything and having no proof of ownership other than what's in the cloud, but I'm not into it YET. They do give great discounts if you know when to look. I still prefer to buy the hard copy and install it the old fashioned way. Plus, downloading a 5GB+ game isnt quite as speedy as loading up the DVD.
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Anyone ever bought games from Steam? Any downsides? How massively are they DRMed?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Steam was fine until my kids got old enough to start wanting to play the games I bought on Steam: Steam's DRM requires you to be logged in. There's an offline mode, but you have to be logged in to activate it, so if your net connection dies, you're stuck and can't activate the offline mode. The offline mode also seems to occasionally decide you need to log in again, at which point you can't use your Steam games until you've logged in. Further, you can only have one computer logged into Steam at any time, so if you log in from a second computer, your first computer is immediately logged out (and it'll usually kick you out of the game). So you can't play a game on Steam while your child/wife/girlfriend plays an entirely different Steam game on a different computer - unless you monkey with the offline mode on the two. Now imaging adding a 3rd or 4th computer to the mix.
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vsysolts wrote:
Keep remembering though, your steam asset is not actually "yours".
That's the same with any bloody software; software licensing is an absolute joke and a rip off.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Euhemerus wrote:
software licensing is an absolute joke and a rip off
Hey hey hey! Quiet down there, most of us here make our livelihood off of software licensing, there are plenty of good reasons why our industry has to operate the way it does if we want to make any money and avoid the clutches of evil lawyers who would cripple the industry if it wasn't for the licensing agreements.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Steam was fine until my kids got old enough to start wanting to play the games I bought on Steam: Steam's DRM requires you to be logged in. There's an offline mode, but you have to be logged in to activate it, so if your net connection dies, you're stuck and can't activate the offline mode. The offline mode also seems to occasionally decide you need to log in again, at which point you can't use your Steam games until you've logged in. Further, you can only have one computer logged into Steam at any time, so if you log in from a second computer, your first computer is immediately logged out (and it'll usually kick you out of the game). So you can't play a game on Steam while your child/wife/girlfriend plays an entirely different Steam game on a different computer - unless you monkey with the offline mode on the two. Now imaging adding a 3rd or 4th computer to the mix.
Not all games purchased on steam need to be run thru steam. To find out which go to your steam folder (X:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps) and in there you should have a folder for each of your logins and a "Common" folder. Some of the games installed to the common folder can be run straight from that folder - once you have located the main .exe (so far i've done this with a couple of mine) without steam even running. Exceptions include games like Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2 - that was built to only run through the steam network - but Modern Warfare 1 (COD4) will run like this. Worth checking out in case you can create some shortcuts for the games your kids like to play...
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Not all games purchased on steam need to be run thru steam. To find out which go to your steam folder (X:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps) and in there you should have a folder for each of your logins and a "Common" folder. Some of the games installed to the common folder can be run straight from that folder - once you have located the main .exe (so far i've done this with a couple of mine) without steam even running. Exceptions include games like Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2 - that was built to only run through the steam network - but Modern Warfare 1 (COD4) will run like this. Worth checking out in case you can create some shortcuts for the games your kids like to play...
You may not have to *start* them via the Steam gui, but every one I've seen requires Steam to be running in the background, even if you are in offline mode. Steam modifies the game executables to require this so the games fire up Steam even when you directly click on the game executable. I have around 80 Steam-based games now and have yet to see one that doesn't work that way. Not even for indie games that would have no DRM or just a serial key if I had purchased them outside of Steam.
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You may not have to *start* them via the Steam gui, but every one I've seen requires Steam to be running in the background, even if you are in offline mode. Steam modifies the game executables to require this so the games fire up Steam even when you directly click on the game executable. I have around 80 Steam-based games now and have yet to see one that doesn't work that way. Not even for indie games that would have no DRM or just a serial key if I had purchased them outside of Steam.
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Interesting. I guess because its just me that uses this pc, and I rarely close steam I havent noticed that it wouldnt work without steam running. Thats a shame, still it was worth a try.