Steam is a big fat piece of smelly shit

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:07 am

Maybe this belongs in the games thread, but maybe not.

I want to say I fucking hate "Steam". Every game that I have ever even remotely interacted with, or even spoken to others about that has had anything to do with Steam is rendered into an unstable uninstallable inconvenient piece of shit by the Steam system.

I say this because fucking Empire Total War has gone "online registration/install" required through fucking STEAM. You know if they had a big steam label on the box (or ANY steam label) I (and half the market) would have turned that piece of shit down rather than buying it.

That's it, PC gaming IS dead. It wasn't the gamers who left the industry, it was the Industry that fucked itself over.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:34 am

What's all wrong with STEAM exactly and how would you have fixed things exactly?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:16 am

Absolutely everything is wrong with Steam, especially for this particular application.

They SHOULD have removed all intrusive performance and stability damaging DRM and just sold a functional product that stands on its own.

Instead I have to run an annoying intrusive mini application that eats bandwidth, and memory and bugs me with annoying messages.

All in order to play my SINGLE PLAYER game.

It decreases the stability of games and I have never had a good experience installing a Steam game without added difficulties nor have I heard of anyone who has.

I know Half Life fanatics who walked from their favourite franchise because of this piece of shit app.

Meanwhile everything about the DRM here is atrocious. Online activation (and checks on start up) when I'm on poor bandwidth in a rural area. A god damn activation reciept I may one day need to force the fuckers to reactivate my game after a reinstall that offered no document or file version but asked me to print it and I haven't got a god damn printer on this machine.

And ultimately in the future if I want to install and play this in 5 years like my other games there is no gaurantee it will permit an additional online activation due to either DRM greed on limited install/machine activations, or just plain technical issues due to it becoming out dated.

Hell there is no guarantee that steam will even fucking be there. I HOPE it won't be there those fucks.

I mean I hate Star Dock but at least THEY function.

Edit: Oh and might I add, steam installs I have now discovered also convert most of the application data to wierd ass fucking steam formats, so I can't just go and adjust human readable config files and apparently all the game data is compressed so that my machine gets to labour uncompressing it at the same time as trying to use it.

FUCK STEAM.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:35 am

PL, you're talking to someone who doesn't use their computer for any tasks more challenging than running SNES ROMs.

Break it down for me.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 6:07 am

Where's the performance damaging thing, exactly?

At any given moment when I check how much processor time Steam is using, it's invariably 0 when I'm not starting up a game. In addition, its memory footprint is not only extremely low already (< 28 megs), it can be (and is) swapped out pretty much at will because Steam is never doing anything when I'm not starting up a game.

PhoneLobster wrote:It decreases the stability of games and I have never had a good experience installing a Steam game without added difficulties nor have I heard of anyone who has.

You must not have looked very hard. I've had nothing but good experiences, and the way it streamlines the patch process is incredibly wonderful; I also know that I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I've never had a game get destabilized because of Steam, either. Unless the game uses VAC it pretty much gets itself out of the way once the game is launched.

PhoneLobster wrote:Meanwhile everything about the DRM here is atrocious. Online activation (and checks on start up) when I'm on poor bandwidth in a rural area. A god damn activation reciept I may one day need to force the fuckers to reactivate my game after a reinstall that offered no document or file version but asked me to print it and I haven't got a god damn printer on this machine.

Not that it's any consolation, but you can print to a file. I think this thing about receipts not coming as documents is a computer-industry-wide problem that needs to be fixed immediately.

The thing about authentication for single-player games is a completely valid complaint and is something that Valve needs to get its shit together about post-haste.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:11 am

Why would valve want to get it together about that? It's a key selling point of steam from the point of publishers.

But I don't really play single player games much these days because I prefer multi. Btw: Empire has strategy map multiplayer and thats a key selling point for me.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:43 am

Steam isn't a big deal lately for multiplayer games. I've had no issues.

What I hate is having any shit like that on single player games. Fuck that and fuck you software publishers. Its often easier to just pirate the damn game and avoid fucking around with DRM even if you bought a copy.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:57 am

I think it's funny when Steam updates on the game I play because if something goes wrong with the update, the Steam users are screwed. They can't go back to the last playable version, nor can they merely 'not' update if their save file won't be supported because Steam auto-updates...

But I don't believe it has anything to do with game stability or take extra process time, it's just a little call-home script, nothing like Shield or Guardian or whatever it is Blizzard uses to snoop around.

-Crissa

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:06 am

They claim steam doesn't impact on stability and performance significantly (or rather Steam makes that claim about specific aspects of its impact on performance and stability)

Apparently it has a rather small memory footprint and only phones home on and off. But... in practice every time I've had that evil little app on my system I've noticed observable increases in boot up for my system and decreases in performance for high end games. And as small as it's bandwidth impact, anything is too much when I'm lucky to get dial up modem speeds on my supposed ADSL2.

But meanwhile Steam very specifically has significant impacts on performance and stability for the games it delivers due to its eccentric proprietary formats. Like that business I was talking about with compressed files and such.

In nice non technical speak steam delivers a game to you ONLY if it gets to wrap it up in a very special package. This means there are increased problems installing the game because the guys who put the package on it aren't the guys who made it and they don't give a shit about stability or performance only the security of the package against people trying to open it.

Then they arrange the package so it constantly closes it self (in fact never fully opens) and only Steam can open for you in future, at whatever cost that again incurs to stability and performance.

Much like the CD/DVD based DRM systems that would check if you had the right DVD in your drive on a second by second basis this has a genuine cost because you are adding significant additional levels of complexity that cause performance losses and risk instability all for no actual benefit to the user because the applications only goal is to screw you and limit your use of the software.

The online multiplayer match making and other bullshit it offers is inconsequential, I don't want it, I can't really use it, and frankly you don't need the rest of Steam to do it, everyone and their brother can do online matchmaking.

The online game purchasing aspect is annoying because of their mode of delivery, my bandwidth, and the fact that whenever I have experimented with them even their weeny little fucking demo's haven't successfully downloaded and installed let alone a 15 gigabyte single player game like this. And I've made games from those morons at gamers gate download and install, and those guys are total wankers who couldn't organise and orgy in a hooker factory.

On a side note, online polls are pretty unreliable things, but one of the major Total War community forums I stumbled across today, on the first day of a release many are already describing as a debacle (thanks primarily to VARIOUS issues with Steam, any one of which would have been pretty bad) has a poll up. There were hundreds of votes on that thing, 56% want Creative Assembly to bitch slap Steam to the curb now and for all future projects.

Remember these are fan boys on that forum, it's like having 56% of WOTC posters with more than 60 posts under their belt voting to get WOTC to boot 4th edition to the curb. On the first day of it's release.

Edit: Oh yeah, and empire total war has a number of, ah, technical issues, even independent of Steam. But then once a release goes with Steam you know they don't give a shit about stability in general...

Manxome · Post by **Manxome** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:28 am

Dare I point out that Steam has an "offline mode" you can use if you want to play a single-player game without it calling home?

For the record, I've never personally noticed any problems with Steam, except being unable to play/update multiplayer games once or twice when their servers were down, and I've found it an efficient and convenient way to install a game on multiple machines several times. Though most games that I've played on Steam, I've only played on Steam, so I suppose I can't make a direct comparison...

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:15 am

Manxome wrote:Dare I point out that Steam has an "offline mode" you can use if you want to play a single-player game without it calling home?

If the install compression works like I'm told it does then many of the worst problems will remain.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:36 pm

Manxome wrote:For the record, I've never personally noticed any problems with Steam, except being unable to play/update multiplayer games once or twice when their servers were down, and I've found it an efficient and convenient way to install a game on multiple machines several times.

Its much nicer in countries with real broadband. Over here we only get a fixed amount of bandwidth per month, I'm on 12GB getting screwed by Telstra. If I was to get ADSL2 from a non-shit provider it'd be 25GB for about $50AU. Games these days are large enough to use 20% of a decent plan's allowance just to download the damn thing.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:58 pm

You should know PL, that two days ago they released an update for Steam to fix a lot of issues it had with Empire: Total War.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:31 pm

Surgo wrote:You should know PL, that two days ago they released an update for Steam to fix a lot of issues it had with Empire: Total War.

I can't help but know, since I've installed steam its been giving me annoying daily news updates I don't want to hear.

And the update you are talking about primarily fixed issues to do with downloading an online purchased version of the game, NOT installing and running a retail boxed version. So no help to improving my performance or removing the other annoying issues of Steam running as intended.

But alarmingly apparently they had several different MAJOR problems with online delivery of game content (the supposed main mission in steams life it has had HOW many years to get right now?).

However their fix on that front is far too late. Many Total War fans who were stupid enough to trust Steam paid up front because they were supposed to be able to download the game prior to release and activate it as soon as the release date passed.

But the "preloading" of the game WASN'T activated and all the foaming fan boys who paid for the luxury of getting it a few hours sooner effectively paid Steam for the luxury of STARTING the download at the release date and only getting the game up and running many hours or even days AFTER the guys who just drove out to the shops once they were open on release day.

I luckily opted for the drive out. But still once again and in several ways Fuck Steam.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:39 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:I can't help but know, since I've installed steam its been giving me annoying daily news updates I don't want to hear.

You can turn that off, last option under Settings.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:46 pm

Draco_Argentum wrote:
Manxome wrote:For the record, I've never personally noticed any problems with Steam, except being unable to play/update multiplayer games once or twice when their servers were down, and I've found it an efficient and convenient way to install a game on multiple machines several times.
Its much nicer in countries with real broadband. Over here we only get a fixed amount of bandwidth per month, I'm on 12GB getting screwed by Telstra. If I was to get ADSL2 from a non-shit provider it'd be 25GB for about $50AU. Games these days are large enough to use 20% of a decent plan's allowance just to download the damn thing.

Broadband comparisons are interesting globally - the cable deals offered by US and UK companies are illegal under ACCC's interpretation of the fair practices act because 'unlimited' broadband deals that are not actually unlimited actually need defined limits, which has lead to the onpeak/off-peak caps and shaping that is popular in Australia.

In the UK, you just have a crap shoot in what package you actually get for your money because all deals are 'unlimited' except when the network is heavily loaded and you are a heavy user, in which case you get shaped.

once you factor that in its not to bad - for ~50 AU dollars a month you get ADSL2+ w/ a 50 GB data allowance (no onpeak/offpeak split) according to the UK equiv of whirlpool (one of their highly ranked deals) which in Oz will get you 35 gigs no caps, and either a 30/30 split or a 10/50 split

Its not great here obviously, but its not that terrible either.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 1:51 am

But a total limit is not the same as a daily limit or hourly limit like you get in the US.

Also, my mother pays for the same service as I do. Same company. Similar modem, router. She gets 14M down, 3M up. I get 2M down and 3M up.

'not available in all areas'

-Crissa

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 1:56 am

oh no, there are two things that contribute to a plan

Connection speed: Which is ADSL, VDSL DSL, ADSL2+ etc which is your bandwidth

i.e. 14M/3M or 2M/3M

But there is also total bandwidth limits - we have monthly caps typically, as the UK is starting to phase in as the watchdog gets antsy because of what Tiscali in particular is doing.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:00 am

Comcast is adding in tiers, as people have complained they'd pay more for more speed and use, which is true.

Although, so far in most areas, you can only buy the 'highest' tier, which is usually the lowest service. I really wish they weren't allowed to advertise stuff that's not available to most of their potential customers.

-Crissa

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:36 am

I didn't realize that so many games had this sort of nonsense now. I don't buy many games, and when I do I buy them after they've been out for a while. This, really sucks, I mean, buying a game that you don't actually own.

Why not return it and get something else?

This sort of reminds me of how Fallout 3's core launcher isn't very good at loading multiple addons, b/c it's slightly buggy. At 15 or 20+ addons it's very buggy and crashes immediately after loading your game and trying to apply the new mods. Unfortunately, the core launcher will also crash when there are no mods, very infrequently, but it can still happen.

So I'm using a mod manager/application launcher that displays mods cleanly, and doesn't crash like a drunk whether it's been tanked on mods, or sober and using only the core files.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:54 pm

Judging__Eagle wrote: Why not return it and get something else?

Because you can't. It's become reasonably common store policy to not give refunds or anything except a direct replacement.

Also, steam is one of the least bad ones. At least it doesn't randomly fail to believe in your CD or only let you perform 3 5 installations, counting the ones where the servers are down and it breaks. That actually happened. It's not even the worst.

Also, steam at least provides a service to go with it's DRM, what with the whole auto-updating and direct download purchasing.

Manxome · Post by **Manxome** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:51 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:If the install compression works like I'm told it does then many of the worst problems will remain.

So have you considered trying it out, and then complaining only about the remaining problems, rather than making a laundry list of complaints of which some unknown (but likely non-empty) subset are fixable with the push of a button if you actually bothered to try?

PhoneLobster wrote:But alarmingly apparently they had several different MAJOR problems with online delivery of game content (the supposed main mission in steams life it has had HOW many years to get right now?).

However their fix on that front is far too late. Many Total War fans who were stupid enough to trust Steam paid up front because they were supposed to be able to download the game prior to release and activate it as soon as the release date passed.

But the "preloading" of the game WASN'T activated and all the foaming fan boys who paid for the luxury of getting it a few hours sooner effectively paid Steam for the luxury of STARTING the download at the release date and only getting the game up and running many hours or even days AFTER the guys who just drove out to the shops once they were open on release day.

I've preloaded other games and had them work perfectly. Unless you have a long list of games that have had these sorts of problems, my inclination is to blame it on a freak fluke or on the specific game's developer, rather than Steam's technology. But then, I've never developed for Steam, so I don't know what's involved.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:19 pm

Manxome wrote:So have you considered trying it out,

Perhaps you should consider trying it out (which oddly you claim to since you fail to get this right), then you would know that I certainly have because Steam updates itself automatically. The load screen issues attributed by various reports to Steam compression shenanigans remain, they can hardly NOT remain because like I said, the update specifically didn't relate to them.

And meanwhile default settings ARE an issue, so what if I can turn off two or three of the most minor annoying things Steam does, they all default to on I have to track them down and turn them off. On top of all the other inconvenience.

I mean once validated the first time I can tell Steam not to log into the internet for game start up validation and it will actually still work! I have to manually tell it to do that, and (if it's still like it was about a year ago last time I encountered the fucker) I have to go offline while online otherwise it enters a safe state of failing to fucking start up at all and give access to the offline option...

Manxome wrote:I've preloaded other games and had them work perfectly... my inclination is to blame it on a freak fluke or on the specific game's developer, rather than Steam's technology.

Official press releases are blaming it on technical issues on behalf of Steam and not Creative Assembly. Considering we have just now been talking about an update to the steam client that very specifically states it addresses various technical issues with downloading and installing this game, well, to try and kiss Steam's ass and blame the game developer is pretty high on fanboyism.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 3:05 am

My antivirus does not work with Steam. I have to turn it off while playing, and it pisses me off.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:45 am

That's really a problem with your antivirus, not Steam.

-Crissa