Koki on 5/6/2011 at 13:40
Of course to play the game you need to download it first. Are you stupid? But this has nothing to do with having or not having a constant online access.
TheGrimSmile on 5/6/2011 at 16:18
Quote Posted by Koki
Of course to play the game you need to download it first. Are you stupid? But this has nothing to do with having or not having a constant online access.
I reference Cardia because he made a board about it a bit ago.
The problem is that when you have pay-as-you-go internet access on a dial-up connection, downloads in general, let alone of entire games, will take a long time and cost a lot of money. There are Thief fans all over the world (including, as I understand it, a large base in Russia) who have to deal with this. Even buying a game retail that requires Steam activation can be a problem.
jtr: I suppose my opinions of Steam have been sunny since I've had bitter experiences buying games retail that I could have gotten on Steam. Ah well, as long as the games can be bought independently, I certainly wouldn't mind them being available both ways.
mr. hermit on 6/6/2011 at 05:14
steam isn't cheap it's expensive. they can also close your account and you have no recourse. that means to play the games you paid for, dumb dumb, you need to be in good standing with steam.
Renzatic on 6/6/2011 at 05:32
If you're buying brand new or newish games, Steam can be a little expensive. Sometimes they'll still have a game marked full price when it's on sale everywhere else. But when you consider the tons and tons and tons of sales they constantly have like practically every other day, it's a stretch to say they're more expensive in general.
And other than trying to run a pirated game through the client while online, or some other similarly dipshitty thing, I can't think of any situation where Valve will ban you from all your games outright.
Cavalorn on 6/6/2011 at 16:40
I love Steam. Sure, its expensive as hell, for example Alpha Protocol costs 5 euro in my local store while on Steam its still 30 euro. That's why I only buy games which are on sale but at least I can have all my games at one place and don't even have to carry any CDs or DVDs with myself if I am going somewhere. And they have plenty of sales. :thumb:
I am always connected to the net so it doesn't bother me that it needs constant internet connection.
Koki on 6/6/2011 at 17:06
Quote Posted by mr. hermit
steam isn't cheap it's expensive.
Get out of here.
lost_soul on 6/6/2011 at 17:18
Quote Posted by TheGrimSmile
There does seem to be a lot of hatred for Steam on the forums.
I can certainly understand people who, like Cardia, who don't have constant online access, but I don't really understand complaints about the client itself. Steam is convenient, cheap, and it hasn't failed me yet.
I'm just curious, where does the hate come from?
This has been asked and answered a million times. They could shut down the service in a few years and take access to our purchased games away. Given that the devs of games from 1999 like SS2 don't even give a crap about their honest customers and remove disk checks so we can use our games on modern portable PCs, why should I believe that anyone would keep an authentication server running for a decade or more?
On the subject of TDS, I can't believe I paid full-price for that game when it first came out. A sucker is me! It isn't a terrible game, but the amount of game breaking bugs just put me off of replaying it or checking out the fan missions. The bugs could be fixed, but again the devs/publisher don't care.
I'm talking about things like this. (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfYLJM_bsJw)
specifically at 1 minute. Sure it is hilarious when you first see it, but game breaking when it happens for the fifth time.
Renzatic on 6/6/2011 at 18:37
Are you still griping about SS2? Why didn't you get the nocd crack like everyone told you to? :mad:
Koki on 7/6/2011 at 05:59
Quote Posted by lost_soul
This has been asked and answered a million times. They could shut down the service in a few years and take access to our purchased games away.
And I could find out where you live and shit on your door.
lost_soul on 7/6/2011 at 13:54
Oh come on, that has *zero* to do with my point. Shutting down servers is inevitable. Nobody expects them to keep any servers up forever. What I would expect is an official patch at the end to remove the need for a phone home to function. There is no way to guarantee this. Moreover, some music services like MSN Music already shut down, making it impossible for customers to authenticate their purchases. Their recommendation? Burn to CD and re-rip and flush sound quality down the toilet even more than the 128 kbps file already has been.
You can't even do that with a game. So basically, unless they unlock the purchase at the end, rather than being left with a double-compressed file that sounds like crap, I would be left with a blob of useless data.
(
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9926741-7.html)
