Deathwalker, on 25 June 2012 - 12:56 PM, said:
Ok noth, DOES STEAM HAVE SOME OVERHEAD? I"M NOT ASKING HOW SMALL IT IS OR HOW MUCH ITS NOT INTERFEARING WITH ANY PROGRAM. WHEN YOU START IT UP DOES IT USE ANY AND I MEAN ANY RESOURCES ON THE SYSTEM
you are just dead set on trying to make it seem like there is nothing going on at all when you start steam. TURN OFF YOU TUNNEL VISION and tell people the truth like I have.
Steam DOES have overhead SMALL AS IT MAY BE just like every other game!
Now since that is the second time, you tell them the truth and admit the Steam is running just like any other program on your system and does in fact use some system resources.
While this is true, why is this post written in the style of those websites who think jet trails are government conspiracies to turn us all into lizard people?
Also Steam uses less system resources than any IM client on my entire system when in direct use.
Ozric, on 26 June 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:
Steam??? Noooooooooooooooo!
Seriously though it's annoying as hell. A nasty and intrusive program that probably kills a fairy every time somebody uses it.
mho ofc
I'm constantly shocked by the ignorance about Steam on the MWO forums; it's not like that on pretty much any other forum anywhere, and I don't know why.
Most everything people hate about Steam hasn't been true about it ever, or since the beginning. Let me back up: Back in the days of Counter-Strike betas when WON was replaced with Steam, I like many others hated it; it was buggy, it had problems. Before that they suggested it'd become a "rental" system, not a purchase system, with the intent of doing away with buying games (opposed to renting them for a monthly fee). There were many things I hated about it.
Well, the bugs got worked out, the horrible ideas never came to pass and rapidly Steam expanded from being Valve's service to the thing that brought digital distro to the forefront and literally saved PC gaming as a viable market. It brought us back from an horrendous brink and lead to a day where two F2P PC games (MWO and Planetside 2) took away Best of Show awards and nominations. That just wasn't possible before Steam.
On top of that, Valve is super fair to the developers and publishers on their service and they constantly improve the service for users.
Regardless if MWO comes to Steam or not (which I assume is a business decision with PGI's publisher), this Steam hate really grates my nerves. There's no objective reason to hate it. It's not intrusive at all either; it asks you if you want to submit system specs, and inside of Valve titles it heat maps certain info so they can adjust the games accordingly (where most people die, etc). Past that it's entirely benign and the heat mapping thing is Valve games specifically, anyway, not really Steam itself. It just provides a UI to see some interesting details (like how many times you've fired a specific gun in L4D).
So really Steam hate comes down to a few groups:
- Internet hipsters who hate it because it's popular. If it's popular it can't be good!
- Hardcore players who can't stand using ANY resources more than necessary, even if it includes a huge value when integrated to the game. Most of which have mid-spec computers that won't be impacted in-game at all by it one way or the other.
- Conspiracy theorists who keep thinking Steam will suddenly pull their games or invite horrendous DRM or anti-cheat measures. All of these problems on Steam AREN'T steam; VAC is one of the best anti-cheats in the business, for example, but people keep using crap like Punkbuster which randomly kicks legit people making the community eat a placebo. Also the "few installs and it'll never install again" thing is again, non-Steam extra DRM which Steam's game info page warns you about. Steam itself NEVER prevents you from reinstalling a title you own. Also the game allows disc backups and Valve has promised that if Steam were to shut down, they would unlock all games you've purchased first. Also even when they've pulled games from the store they've NEVER pulled them from player installation.
- People who hate Valve for some reason. Most people who hate Valve do so because Valve has a reputation for lots of free support for their games post launch, and if they feel that their title didn't get enough, start hating them like entitled brats.
- Finally - what I think the majority is here - are people who are simply ignorant of Steam. They heard bad things from the above crowds; they remember it being bad when it first came out and the craze to keep WON alive instead; they've never done digital downloads and aren't familiar with how it works. As such they attack it without looking into why.
Again, PGI has stated MWO will not initially be on Steam and they've got no plan to go there in the future. That's fine. There ARE marketing and contractual obligations to consider and I'm not insisting every single game be on Steam (even if it would be nice in my case). I am saying that there is no - I mean absolutely zero - detriment to the customer by Steam supporting a game, in particular if there are alternative ways to play it as well. There is literally NO downside to a game co-existing on Steam and honestly, almost no downside to it exclusively being on Steam.
If you guys want to go hate a crappy DRM filled buggy resource hog of a digital distribution network, please for the love of God go pick on EA's steaming pile of crap. That deserves all the ire you guys are giving Steam and then some. The irony is they pulled their games from the Steam store to compete with Origin, which if you've ever dealt with it, makes you realize just how much Steam should be appreciated.
EDIT: Also, go hate on Ubisoft's DD network too. If you even experience a second's worth of lag, it'll kick you out of the game. Steam even features an off-line mode, by comparison! Good God there's a lot of bad DD networks out there; only Battle.net and Steam are worth anything at all. Stop misplacing your hate.
Uller Phrost, on 26 June 2012 - 12:43 PM, said:
I have installed 1 game with Steam and will never let any product that intrusive into my machine. It took days to find all the files it hid and removing them from boot up and directories was a pain. I bought a game on disk and it wouldn't run unless I went online everytime I loaded that game. Worthless on a laptop in the woods.
This is both massively inaccurate and wrong. For your second complaint, there is a full featured offline mode for playing games on laptops. I know, because I use it extensively.
Unless the game came with extra DRM on top of Steam, which can happen at a publisher's request (See 2K Games horrendous DRM) this is not Steam's fault.
Second, Steam is
extremely modular and doesn't go about hiding files around on your system. You can copy your Steam folder, with all games intact, straight to a flash drive or USB hard drive, plug them into a computer and run them straight from there without
ANY INSTALLATION PROBLEMS AT ALL. Everytime I've upgraded my hard drive, I've done this and it's worked
great! I haven't done Steam re-installation in 3 computers now.
By contrast if you install these games via other methods, they're going to make all kinds of major edits, and merely copying them to a new location will almost positively break them. If anything hid stuff on your system, it was either the game or an add-on DRM to the game. Valve does
not force developers to use it's DRM or VAC, both of which are very fair and don't pull "X number of installations" crap and the like; this often unfairly gets a misplaced accusation against Steam.
So in a nutshell everything you just said is misinformed, badly.
Edited by Victor Morson, 26 June 2012 - 03:09 PM.
1
I'm just pointing out the short falls of Steam and some people are defending it like the holy crusade.
