Why does everyone hate steam?

[Cpt Tenacious]

Seriously whats the issue? I mean it has all the half-life games known to man and you can play them easily and I find it to be great. So why do you hate steam?

[Sneaki]

I don't hate steam, I just get extremely slow download speeds on it. I think most people with decent internet speed love steam.

[Jintor]

Damn straight. I only hate it when I'm capped.

[Qonfused]

I only hate it when it doesn't work.

[Llama]

Steam ****ing owns.

/Thread.

[Nicky 0123]

Steam = Better
Live = Good but worse and sometimes annoying
PSN = Terrible

I don't hate steam, its the best distriputer of games out there.

[AciD]

I <3 Steam.

[Link]

Basically, steam was really buggy when it came out abouit 50 years ago, and lots of people hated it. This has caused it to be fashionable to hate steam, which means whenever someone has something go wrong with steam, usually caused by thier own stupidity/inability to maintain thier PC, they get on a forum and blame steam, with the usual attacks. Then, because its fashionable to knock steam, lots of people come on and say "Yeah, I hate steam to, arn't we cool".

Slowly, the balance is shifting, mostly down to increased broadband penetration (Slow downloads being one of the main arguments used to attack steam) and people are starting to realise that people complaining about steam are either on dial up, which is thier problem, or that they have ****ed up thier computer, which is their fault.

[Operator]

<3's for Steam

[Rapstah]

PSN = Terrible

Have you even ever used that? D: I find it really handy.

[Xendance]

I love Steam.

[Beerdude26]

Steam > you

[Eejit]

Steam's quite good, downloads are pretty slow though (i.e. compared to most torrents I can get)

[Xendance]

Steam's quite good, downloads are pretty slow though (i.e. compared to most torrents I can get)

What about that update which improved download speeds? Did that not change anything for you?

It did for me:bounce:

[Eejit]

Somewhat, still only a fraction of the speeds I can get other things at though.

[Iron Kat]

I would say I sometimes dislike Steam (when it doesn't work, when it keeps screwing up my game, etc.) but I wouldn't go as far as to say I hate it. That's my opinion.

[Lucid]

Steam can be a serious pain in the balls 90% of the time.

But as far as usefulness goes, it has an autoupdater... which is good.
And a great server browser.

Not to mention their nazi forums.

[joule]

Who is everyone? I downright love Steam.

[Hectic Glenn]

It used to be a huge following, but they die away more each year. The people you only see complaining about Steam are those having problems either due to their own set-up / firewall issues or an issue Valve is yet to resolve (which they always fix pretty quickly). The other 15 million people are using it just fine, and it's brilliant. As Joule said...who is everyone!?

[SeBBeN]

I love steam! with it i can access all my games easily.

[RyanG]

While it has its issues, Steam is actually pretty good. I think it's a good DRM solution that integrates copy protection with communities and achievements.

[Cpt Tenacious]

Kind of a topic change for this thread. Ok since everyone doesn't really hate Steam, tell me why you love it.

[MattyDienhoff]

Three reasons why I love Steam:

* The games are good value, digital distribution cuts out the middle man meaning lower prices overall. (Although some prices are ridiculous, CoD4 is more expensive on Steam than some shops here in Aus.)

* Auto-updates

* The Steam community in-game overlay, which I've found to be easier to use than Xfire and, in some ways, more reliable, even though it's not quite as functional.

[XAVIER]

i used to hate steam.. becuase i forgot the anwser to my secret question, and i ended up loosing my counterstrike game, i kinda dont like that if i loose mya ccount i loose all my games and i cant play them, but it realy is pretty awsome, the games take like 0 harddrive space and you dont need the CD for any of them.

i even put my no steam games on my game list cause i realy like steam now :D

[joule]

i used to hate steam.. becuase i forgot the anwser to my secret question, and i ended up loosing my counterstrike game, i kinda dont like that if i loose mya ccount i loose all my games and i cant play them, but it realy is pretty awsome, the games take like 0 harddrive space and you dont need the CD for any of them.

i even put my no steam games on my game list cause i realy like steam now :D

If you happen to have forgotten your secret answer to your secret question, you should have submitted a support ticket to Steam support. You'd have retrieved your account within 3-5 working days.

[Xendance]

* The Steam community in-game overlay, which I've found to be easier to use than Xfire and, in some ways, more reliable, even though it's not quite as functional.

I disagree. The overlay sometimes doesn't even respond in big games such as Team Fortress 2, and become frustrated because I cannot speak to someone.

Even still, Steam is great. I sacrifice small waiting times (ie installing from a disc) just to get it stuck to my account so I can access it wherever. Or if I lose my disc, or it becomes scratched.

The Steam Community is great. It brought the Halflife2.net community much closer, I believe. We can organise matches of TF2, play Ricochet with one another etc. We're all like one big family.

Auto-updates. Well, I've never been one to go round searching for patches on unorganised websites (since, well, I was really young back then) but from what I have heard, it was an absolute pain. Steam just does the job for me.

However, there are some things which annoy me about Steam. One small thing is in the Steam Community settings for your page, there is one saying "Customization" ... then underneath it says, "Coming soon!" It has said that since last August.

When restarting Steam, you right click it in the system tray and click "exit". But when you go to open it again a couple of seconds it says something like, "Whoops! Sorry, Steam is already open." forcing me to end the process in the task manager.

More cons, but I cannot be bothered to explain.

This post may seem like a big review of Steam, but I didn't mean it to be.

tl;dr: Steam is great.

[FrostXian]

I don't get it, steam downloads things at about 200kb/s, that's ok for me..

[99.vikram]

I f*cing love Steam and here's why. A while after I bought HL2, one of the 5 CDs got scratched. The same thing happenend to my Comanche 3 and it was game over. But Steam let me redownload a legal HL2 and back it up to disk.

Incidentally, I got my Comanche 3 back from another source.

[kacation_man]

I love steam, but the download speed is really the only bad thing for me. lately its been ok, but i also havent tried downloading the full source engine/half life 2. When i need to reinstall counter strike, or even on a friends pc ( because for some reason they just reinstall windows when they get some stuipd little spy ware instead of trying to fix it ). I'll pop in the HL2: EP1 disk, install HL2: DM, just to get the basic source engine, then install CSS through steam and it takes about less then an hour. found thats much faster then playing with five disks from 2004 and spending an hour updating :P .

in short, steam is great :D

[Trevelyan]

I've had two annoying moments with Steam. 1. When Half Life 2 got released and the subsequent heart attack it had. 2. It had a bug where downloading would pause itself, but i think thats been fixed.

I do think its the best thing since sliced bread most of the time:cheese:

[RyanG]

It had a bug where downloading would pause itself, but i think thats been fixed.

That happens to me sometimes, I have to coax it into resuming it by double clicking on it to bring up the download status bar in a new window.

[PvtRyan]

The only thing that ever really bugged me with Steam was the crappy Offline Mode, never seemed to work right for me. But don't know if that has improved, haven't used it for a while. Other than that, I <3 Steam.

[Rashak]

I love steam, with it, i don't need to keep track of my CDs and i can share my games with my friends(to some extent)

[LackingSaint]

As i've said before, Steam gives you lots of reallly good games to play, the only problem is that for some of the wrose computers, it freezes up and refuses to work properly. It's not 'fashionable' to hate Steam, it's just inconvienient when I wait a day for a game to download, and Steam freezes when I double-click on the game.

I'm getting pretty sick of people putting people into groups because of their likes and dislikes. I like to go on the computer, am I a nerd? I personally think the PS3 is gonna become the best console pretty soon, Am I a sony fanboy? No, it's just an opinion defined by my tastes, and what i've experienced through the specific thing.

[Acepilotf14]

I don't hate it, I just hate when it crashes randomly. Or when it takes 20 minutes to fire up CoD4, then I give up, come back an hour later, try it, and it comes up instantly.
wtf.

[stintage]

I hate steam because i usually run Ubuntu so imagine all the load time of Linux+All the load time of steam
Yea It's like that

[Parky]

I used to hate steam till i got a new computer. Used to have 512 RAM. Used to slow the pc down like a fat amputee.

[CyberPitz]

Steam screws your mother, kills your dad, pulls your sisters hair, and punts the dog.

[Pesmerga]

Steam punts your mother, screws your dog, kills your sister's hair, and pulls your dad.

[6Three]

Steam Steam Steam DARKSIDE!

[Rapstah]

I hate steam because i usually run Ubuntu so imagine all the load time of Linux+All the load time of steam
Yea It's like that

...Steam doesn't run under Linux, right?

[99.vikram]

I hate steam because i usually run Ubuntu so imagine all the load time of Linux+All the load time of steam
Yea It's like that
Ubuntu is one of the slowest distros around. Fact. Linux itself is generally snappier than Windows.

Get a distro that runs faster, if this is an issue for you.

[And1]

the more weaker the dollar, the better steam xD

[Crash]

Steam screws your mother, kills your dad, pulls your sisters hair, and punts the dog.

Steam punts your mother, screws your dog, kills your sister's hair, and pulls your dad.

Damn, sense Steam is gonna do all that, there go my plans for the evening.....

[stintage]

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4493/amidoinitritegd8.png (http://imageshack.us)

[Dalamari]

WON was a big load of douche and Steam is 10000x better

the word of the lord

[Krynn72]

+ 1 <3 to steam. I love not needing disks to install my games. I get 700kb/s download speeds, so thats not an issue with me. I love being able to reformat and then just install steam, let things download over night, and wham, got all my games again for the very next day. Ive never had any problems with the community overlay, and love not needing some 3rd party app to communicate with people. Plus Steam has a shit ton of awesome games for sale, and with more and more companies selling through it, I can foresee a future where ALL my purchases are through steam.

God damnit I love steam.

[Naph]

The "Steam can't complete this task in Offline mode" error when entering Offline mode always gets me.

[Pesmerga]

WON was cute and I remember crying in my sleep when it was shutdown.

[Apocalypse89]

I don't see too many complaints about Steam these days, now that Valve have ironed out most of the problems with it. I joined the HL2 community in early 2005, and back then people were complaining all the time about Steam and writing cute mini-essays about how it violates their human rights and Valve are Nazis/Commies and how Steam will ultimately fail(lol, guess how that turned out). I don't even want to know how people were pre-HL2 when Steam was truly flawed.

The only valid complaints about Steam that you can make nowadays are that it takes up system resources while playing games and doesn't support 56k users very well. And the first one will soon become a non-issue as the average amount of RAM and CPU power in computers rapidly increases.

[Cpl.Dogmeat]

I bought the old half life series on disc as well as steam.

i love steam, i thinkl its great that i dont have to go out to the shop to buy a game thats proberbly sold out or they dont sell it anymore instead i can get a shower while its downloading. Great stuff.

[Chabo]

I mainly use Windows for Steam, but on occasion I'll try it out on my Gentoo Linux machine under Wine. It works pretty well for HL1 games, but I haven't tried HL2 games on it yet, cause the hardware's kinda meager (FX5200, 512MB ram, etc).

[[RE]Leon]

STEAM OWNS! I CAN OPEN UP STEAM AND BE LIKE

"BOOM HEADSHOT"

but seriously folks, <3 Steam just as much as you love the Boston Bruins (lol /bostonfan)

[Saturos]

Who is everyone?Everone that lives away from civilization with no high-speed access, like me.

...and people whose local phone company sucks because they won't support DSL or cable, thus being limited to slow dial-up speeds. :P This is the only reason why I don't like Steam, otherwise I would probably be addicted to it's easy access to games like a crack/cocaine junkie. :| Quoted from a similar thread I responed to recently. The concept of Steam is great and I would truly love it if it just wasn't so far ahead of it's time. Technology needs to catch up so everyone can have access to hi-speed. Guarantee you there would be far less complaints about Steam if this was accomplished.

[Jintor]

Saturos, it's not that we're all better than you. It's just that you suck. XD

Kidding. But Steam is just so awesome when you have hi-speed interwebs.

[ThunderDawg]

I had not played Steam/Valve for over three years. But now I have a much better computer, monitor and intarweb connection. Not bragging but 3.2 GHz HyperThreading, 2 GB RAM, x1300 256 MB ATI card, and Dell FP2001 20" LCD, together with ComCast HSI 2 MB download speed.

When I finally decided to try playing HL2 again, it was a completely different experience from the *relatively* slow 200 Kb DSL I had before, and 2 GHz P3 with a half GB RAM and <dear God how did I live without a video card before?>

AnyHoo, all my downloads only took a half hour before I was playing again. I was shocked, SHOCKED I tells ya, that I could reinstall it on my new machine :cheers:

I never finished HL2 back then because there were updates every frickin day and they took an hour or two every time I started up. Again, now that I have 2 MB down (and sometimes even way faster) it is much more pleasurable:afro:

[kacation_man]

I mainly use Windows for Steam, but on occasion I'll try it out on my Gentoo Linux machine under Wine. It works pretty well for HL1 games, but I haven't tried HL2 games on it yet, cause the hardware's kinda meager (FX5200, 512MB ram, etc).

You should be able to play with that card. as far as driver support goes I dont know. but i had a ubuntu system running a 1.6Ghz processor 512mb of ram, and an nvidia fx4000. Granted it was fairly slow, it was running running steam and css through wine. I was oddly getting a fairly playable 12-18 fps, broken windows would render as wire frame, but other then that it ran. so i should think it would work.

[Druckles]

Not bragging but 3.2 GHz HyperThreading, 2 GB RAM, x1300 256 MB ATI card, and Dell FP2001 20" LCD, together with ComCast HSI 2 MB download speed.

You're really not, are you?

:p

[TheIdler]

Steam is the future! Piracy will be a lot harder once everyone sells games through applications such as Steam, and viola PC gaming will be the huge market it should be.

Seriously, I love steam and it gives me 750+kbs download speeds so no complaints here.

[DEATH eVADER]

I'm just wondering how well Stardock's Impulse will compare when its released in the next month

[NeoGenesis10]

I dislike Steam purely because its unnecessary for standalone shop-bought games yet forces you to use it anyway. I can buy a copy of most non-Steam games and install them in a matter of minutes. Many have a one-off online verification (such as Bioshock), but Steam requires a constant internet connection while it downloads hundreds of megabytes of updates for your game whether you want them or not.

As an example, I recently bought the Orange box and had to spend hours watching the installation bar creep up because Steam is downloading every update under the sun -- for an OFFLINE game! I shouldn't need to tell you how bothersome it is when you just want to install it and start playing. Granted online games need to be updated in order to keep things uniform amongst players, but Steam tars every game with the same brush. And yes I know there's an offline mode, but it doesn't seem to work for initial installations.

So, while I wait for my updates to crawl along at a ridiculously slow pace (Seriously, are they using pocket calculators for a server!?) I have to be content with enjoying my other Steamless games in the interim while a certain application hogs my system resources.

Its fun to play Devil's Advocate!

[Lucid]

For some reason the Steam store has no scroll bars now, so I'm forced to highlight downward/upward/left & right to even see anything.

What.

[Xendance]

I dislike Steam purely because its unnecessary for standalone shop-bought games yet forces you to use it anyway. I can buy a copy of most non-Steam games and install them in a matter of minutes. Many have a one-off online verification (such as Bioshock), but Steam requires a constant internet connection while it downloads hundreds of megabytes of updates for your game whether you want them or not.

As an example, I recently bought the Orange box and had to spend hours watching the installation bar creep up because Steam is downloading every update under the sun -- for an OFFLINE game! I shouldn't need to tell you how bothersome it is when you just want to install it and start playing. Granted online games need to be updated in order to keep things uniform amongst players, but Steam tars every game with the same brush. And yes I know there's an offline mode, but it doesn't seem to work for initial installations.

So, while I wait for my updates to crawl along at a ridiculously slow pace (Seriously, are they using pocket calculators for a server!?) I have to be content with enjoying my other Steamless games in the interim while a certain application hogs my system resources.

Its fun to play Devil's Advocate!

Oh, so you think because you're getting slow speeds, that MUST mean their servers are crap.

I manage to get up to 800kbps - other members get much higher, so I don't think there is something wrong with Steam. With you? Yes.

[NeoGenesis10]

Considering my usual download speed on just about every other website or service, there's clearly SOMETHING along the Steam lines which is causing a slowdown. Perhaps my firewall hates steam or perhaps its their servers, who knows.

But there are plenty of good reasons to hate Steam. My favourite is the "This game is not ready to be played Offline" error on games like Portal -- an OFFLINE game. This ultimately FORCES you to update the game whether you want to or not, even though I've clearly set the option for not updating in the games menu.

Steam sucks. Its a means to an end, and a poor one. But its the only way I'll get to play through Half-Life 2 and Portal, so im stuck with it sadly.

[The Mild Gatsby]

Could not connect to Steam Network. Start in Offline Mode?

"Fair enough, let's start in offline mode."

/clicks Offline Mode

ERROR ERROR ERROR THIS OPERATION CANNOT BE COMPLETED WHILE STEAM IS OFFLINE

"But the entire idea is to-"

COULD NOT CONNECT TO THE STEAM NETWORK. PLEASE RESET.

/goes outside

EVERYTHING JUST BROKE. START IN OFFLINE MODE?

/crickets

[Cpt Tenacious]

Why does everyone keep bringing this thread back?

[chimpmunk]

I think we are nostalgic of WON.

[Acepilotf14]

Only thing I don't like is how the Overlay sometimes doesn't work properly in non-steam games. Also, if I go into a chat, leave it or get disconnected, and try to get back it won't work. I have to restart all of steam.

[Lizardizzle]

pff, steam phails. WON's where it's at








kidding, i hated WON, if any of you even rember those days. ;)

[rc009]

****warning long RANT****


The reason i dont like steam is cause... lets see...
First it all started several years ago.
Me and my bros want to play hldm online.
Start up gamespy click hl and try to start a game...
cant intailize won severs ??? wtf...
find out ooo hldm is useing something called steam?
find website and start downloading create account... try and start up a lan game... we cant even Find each others severs... we start an online game we cant join eachother severs wtf? cant remember much of what happend we had about 4 copys of hl. about a year later of using steam. something happens to our accounts our cd keys are rejected or somthing... we use our other cdkeys they are invalid??? wth? they want use to buy a new copy of hl?
We go through support they say we need to ship our cds to valve to get new cdkeys... to much of a hassel and not worth it... somehow my brother gets a couple of accounts for steam not sure how, that lasts us for a while untill he losses the passwords...(think they wernt legit accounts)
i stop playing hldm online and start playing it lan only cause u dont need steam for that =P.
we had about 5 ppl playing in one game and its awesome best way to play...
couple years goes by hl2 comes out i buy it get a new account... i install it play it beat it get hl2dm for free =) play that (there are many bugs) lots of crashes something with my datacachefile or something...i get css for free also.
my brother buys the game then trades it for an account that has hl1 then losses that account XD... he then gets his old account back. during these times ive had lots of internet problems from dsl...
everyonce in a while our internet would shutdown... and i wouldnt be able to play anything... i try to go into offline mode, wtf??? i cant go in offline mode cause im not connected to the internet? and sometimes when i can go into offline mode only one game would work... and that would be css? wth would be the point in that... if i dont have internet... alll the other games say unplayable in offline mode or something... when internet is on i check online why io cant play certain games... the reason is cause i have to verify the game before going offline... wtf...
the offline thing is broke... couple years later my brother downloads cod4 on steam... i start playing his account for it then 2 days after downloading it its doesnt work... i cant remeber the error it just didnt work... i had to aventualy had to reinstall it which toke forever since downloading on steam sucks... ( i had comcast at this time yay 2mbs) 2 days later i was playing again...
i also got pretty good on hl2dm but there were tons i mean tons of bugs witch havent been fixed... and rly buggy slams... and i still had the datachache error witch is found to be a problem with steam.
i ifxed that by takeing one gig of ram outta my computer and so far hl2dm hasnt crashed.
i still love steam im not sure what i would do without it cause i lost all my hl2 cds and there cdkeys... downloading from steam has gotten alot better and the future for steam is looking bright... but also when the friends thing first came out i had so many problems lol...

[NyCxMike]

Steam = Better
Live = Good but worse and sometimes annoying
PSN = Terrible

I don't hate steam, its the best distriputer of games out there.

I think playstation network is coming into its own lately with downloadable games worth buying plus the online isnt laggy or anything so i dont know why youd call it terrible.

Secondly I've only recently started using steam for counterstrike and being a console gamer i probably wont really use it until i get a job and can upgrade my computer to handle the games (i'm only 15 and I'm broke) but yea it seems easy to use and convenient so far.

[PaoloM]

I love Steam, but in recent times I noticed a lack of good titles and some really weird and absurd price differences between european and american downloads. It seems that european publishers are trying to boycott digital distribution platforms to protect retail market. I know, it's not Steam's fault, but I feel that this phenomenon is influencing Steam more than other platforms.

[mocho loco]

no one really hates steam its just that it gets annoying soemtimes with allt the crashes and updates

[Iron Kat]

Why does everyone keep bringing this thread back?

My thoughts exactly. I think it's a noob thing. They don't seem to have grasped the idea that you DON'T BUMP THREADS!!!!!

[Sierra Oscar]

Deep down, everyone loves steam!:D

[Cpt Tenacious]

My thoughts exactly. I think it's a noob thing. They don't seem to have grasped the idea that you DON'T BUMP THREADS!!!!!

Seriously, almost every week this thread pops up.

[Fiberawptic]

i want to make love to steam... shit, this is old? in that case, delete this if you must. damn bumpers...

[kaleid]

I remember back in 2004 when I bought HL2, I used to have a dial-up connection so the overall waiting was really dreadful.
But even then I couldn't hate Steam, I was actually very surprised by the concept.
Now that I have fiber optic internet, nothing stands in my way :) Well, maybe just the funds.

So, I <3 Steam too.

[creepy_thing]

Steam rocks I have never had any problems with it and I get great download speeds those who don't should really think of switching from 56k...

[Druckles]

My thoughts exactly. I think it's a noob thing. They don't seem to have grasped the idea that you DON'T BUMP THREADS!!!!!

It is a noob thing. No-one grasps the idea that Steam is actually pretty good until they use it.

[The Monkey]

Back when HL2 was released it was cool to hate Steam. I remember quite a few people who loathed it then and yet claims to love it today.

[Vegeta897]

I remember when I first heard about Steam. I totally didn't understand what it was. I didn't get the point of it! This was before I realized WON was shutting down of course.

But man, if only I had got it and registered when I first heard about it.

I would have had a Steam ID even lower than 6 digits, which is what I have now. It'd be pretty valuable!

[B_MAN]

i love Steam
i just purchased Max Payne 2 for 5 bucks tax free! :)