Why Steam sucks badly:
- They could add some more information in their FAQ. What rights do I have, as customer? Can I play the game offline?
- Does downloading some stuff really need 30-90% of my CPU?
- Do I have to ask for permission everytime I wanna play? (Reminds me of the lowest difficulty level in Doom 1: Mommy, can I play?)
- The security update each time I connect to a server takes 20s (at least).
Alternatives to Steam
Urban Terror
Thanks guys for this awesome mod. Only one drawback for me: It’s not that realistic, the action is too fast-paced (yeah, Quake 3 style). Players jump around all the time to avoid bullets. But it’s far better than waiting for steam.
If you have alternatives to steam, please post them.
Leave a Reply
June 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I agree with PsyCho 200%! You guys from the UK, Europe and the USA have a far better telecoms infrastructure than we have in South Africa. What you need to understand is that if you compare the average paycheck in South Africa with yourselves, you will find that South Africa is far behind you. Currently in our country our economy is in a depression. Now before you rip my head off and shuv it up my ass, I know that the whole world is battling with higher fuel and food prices. What makes our so-called rainbow-nation different, is the joke of a government of ours have stakes in our ONLY telecoms provider (Telkom - read Total Fucking Loosers), and also have a major control over our ONLY electricity provider ESKOM.
So now we have paychecks that basicaly stays the same every year (you’re lucky if you get a 5% anual increase), but the fuel & food prices constantly increases. If that was not bad enough, Eskom just raises the cost of electricity in South Africa by an average of 37% (because the assholes running the place fucked up and now cannot meet the increasing demand) so they can build more power stations - total mismanagement. Then you add the rediculous monopoly of Telkom - every single internet provider HAVE to get their bandwidth from Telkom. Telkom still uses alot of ancient copper wire underground lines - which has to be replaced just about every month because their brother rip them out the ground to sell again.
The point I wanna make is that we get a realy crap deal in terms of service delivery from the big money hungry players in South Africa. Bandwidth is expensive and precious to us. LOL - don’t take this personally, but if you are 14 then you don’t yet earn a paycheck and would not understand what it feels like to feel cheated by STEAM because they don’t give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut that some of their customers don’t have the internet infrustructure that the Europeans and Americans have. Some day when you have to work hard for your own money, pay your own bills, and then BUY YOUR “OWN” version of a steam game, only to find out that you do not actually own the damn game, then you can come here and tell us how happy you are with STEAM.
Anyway PsyCho, just wanted to say I stand with you on this, STEAM needs to fuck off. The only and last Steam game I bought was Halflife 2. Brilliant game, but it ended up costing me almost 400% more than the retail price I paid for it, and I still got the worst service ever. Life’s hard enough as it is in South Africa. We don’t need this kind of bullshit. I say everone that has been done in by Steam should stand together, sign a massive world-wide petition, and then file a world-wide class-action lawsuit against the company, demanding our money we paid for their crap back. Let the fuckers feel for a change where it hurts most, in their filthy little pockets, and lets remind them what the term CUSTOMER SATISFACTION & SERVICE realy means.
DOWN WITH STEAM!
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Alright so let me clear this up for you all.
1.) Yes, steam has its problems its all very prevelant
2.) Steam has no affiliation with individual communication (internet) providers around the world and absolutely no affiliation or influence on them.
3.) Valve is completely different from Steam, though they are related (Valve develops games, steam sells them)
4.) If your download is slow (usually in areas outside of North and Middle North America and the UK and surrounding regions) odds are there isn’t a server that is close by.
5.) Steam does not control the economy of individual countries and can not be held responsible for that.
6.) If your not able to open the game for 8 hours or forever how long, either you have screwed up the installation, there was an error during to installation, Your hardware is to antiquated to run the game, or your system is barley able to run the game. (Yes minimum requirements mean lowest graphics with barley manageable fps, as well as long load times. Deal with it)
7.) Yes steams customer support blows, but do you think a single company can deal with millions of complaints from technology illiterate people. No its physically impossible, there just isn’t enough man power available. So there for they have to sacrifice some of that to computers, which do make mistakes.
Well all know that steam is not perfect, as is no application or company. Shit happens, deal with it. I myself have had my my fare share of problems with steam, but in most cases had absolutely nothing to do with Valve or Steam, they were with a small, simple error on my part.
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:30 am
Ok #86 I agree with what some of what your saying but every other game I have had trouble with I usually get a response from technical support. VALVE doesn’t have any support, VALVE created STEAM. STEAM is part of VALVE. you try get any type of support about anything on teh STEAM forums and the Mods and ADMINs don’t even know people at VALVE. some of the responses are completely useless or non existent, in the case of VAC BANS for instance, you cannot even get heard. even if you have proof that you didn’t hack/cheat they don’t listen, they just delete your post.
what about people that have had games they paid for just disappear from their STEAM account??
what about people who get VAC BANNED for no reason?
what about selling a product that you have to download. (now that does effect 3rd world countries)
what about people that have had their accounts locked for no reason???
what about people that have purchased a game and then to activate them they have to have the internet. (again effects poor countries and people who cannot afford Broadband)
Those people that wanna play the single player games have to wait for the game to be updated then goto offline mode which sometimes still wants the internet connection during the first luanch of each game. (again effects 3rd world countries)
what about the LAW. Do we own that copy of the game or is it on a rent basis?
If someone looses their password and forgets the magic key word, they don’t care. even if you can prove you paid for the games.
if someone looses their email address for some reason, like ISP goes down (bankrupt etc.. etc..) and you have forgotten your password. where will VALVE/STEAM send the info you need.
Where is a Support phone number?
Where is a Support email?
STEAM Site is hard to navigate for less knowledegable people.
and just because you know how to use a PC better than most, As do I, Does that mean the 100’s if not 1000’s of people that don’t must just suffer???
Your a complete BAKA, and shouldn’t have even posted.
The whole VALVE STEAM setup is a good idea but there are too many unknowns and problems.
why not distribute Retail Packages of the Games??? Once activated then be playable on or offline until a reinstall is needed, just like every other games distributor does it.
STEAM doesn’t stop piracy either if that was the whole plan from the beginning.
and please don’t tell me they don’t care because we don’t contribute enough in 3rd world countries.
on HLstatX shows how many people in SA alone play CSS or TF2 and take that number and X by the amount they paid for the game….. That’s quite a shitload, then goto HLstatX India…. Etc… etc… WE DESERVE SUPPORT, EVEN MORE SO THAN THE US.
The fact that they can disable a persons account and BAN you from playing on VAC servers (and yes you can play on cracked or non VAC secured servers, but have you found one that is descent to play on??????)anyone who says their computer system is full Proof like they say their VAC system is, is a fucken liar. there is not one PC system that is full proof.
I’m sorry but that is utter bullshit.
Something really need to be done about it.
AND THANK YOU #85 Jackal. YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:48 am
Like I said its not a perfect system, as for the locks and the disappearing games and VAC bans those are all automated, and as we all know everything automated has its flaws.
And just to let you know, you can buy most of the games on steam at retail stores where downloading isn’t necessary, that is how I have my games, because I choose to not wait for the crappy steam servers to shove crap at me.. They are slow.
And since you say that their customer support sucks, how would you deal with several million people all complaining at you day and night 24/7? Not trying to be rude, but if you can offer up a better idea that actually will work, then and only then do you have the right to complain about the system.
Also, the name calling is completely unwarranted. Because I have just as much of a right to make a post as you do. Just because you can speak a foreign language that you think I may not understand. (and if I don’t I take the time to learn what is actually being said) Gives you no right to call me names.
I never said that 3rd world or 2nd world countries don’t deserve support, I believe you do, in fact much more than you are currently getting. But the “Big Business” model will give support to where the densest customer region is, which unfortunately doesn’t apply to 3rd world countries.
I’ve never stated that any automated system is perfect, I have worked with many and know many of their problems. Most of the people who have steam know that VAC is a joke and should just be replaced with Punkbuster or something that actually works.
When I was talking about computer illiterate people I was in reference to the people who need to walk through how to find the control panel, or how to find the program list. Those are the people who tend to make the most mistakes.
So you can make all the complaints that you feel will make you better, but until you can provide a better system that will work with the amount of people currently using steam, your cries will remain unheard and unjustified. Because any person can sit and complain, but it is the people who actually do something about it who are heard and make changes.
July 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am
My, my, this looks like its gonna turn into a boxing match pretty soon. I like a good fight! Mr Mountain Dew here (or is it Mrs or Miss?) seems to think that Steam is actually a good thing. Well may I ask you this, what would happen if every single game developer decides to use Steam to push their products or, heaven forbid, come up with their own Steam-like crap? Will you be happy to spend more hours in front of your PC downloading updates, phoning for support and battling with getting kicked off the networks because their systems are not “perfect”? Would you be happy to part with more of your hard-earned cash after you already “paid” the retail price of your games that you are supposed to “own” a license for?
Oh, and let’s say the rest of the software developers decide that something like steam is good for them too! What if, one day, the only way to run any form of software application can only be done with steam-like systems that requires a permanent internet connection to function. Would you then still think these systems are “OK”.
I live in the same country as PsyCho, and I am one of the “lucky” computer-litterate people you are referring to. I own my own IT business, have been in the IT industry since 1994, have designed a few websites over the years and I am a software developer myself. I mention this, not to blow my own trumpet, but so you can understand from what point of view I am looking at this. My personal view of Steam is that the concept is completely absurd, the system is totally flawed and impractical, and to be quite honest, I don’t think it will last. If I was part of the management team of Steam, and my support lines can’t cope with the millions of complaints, like you stated, then I will be extremely concerned. If millions of my customers, that technically paid millions of dollars for my product, is unhappy with my product and/or service, then I need to re-think my strategy a bit.
The point we trying to make is this. I have already paid the full retail price on a game that I would like to take home and enjoy. I do this for entertainment. It is not like I need this game to manage my accounts or run my business. Bottom line is, if I had to go through all this trouble to set up and run the game, and in the process have to spend more money than I had to, then they can keep their game. There are thousands of good games out there that me and my son can play, WITHOUT all the crap systems like Steam. And that is what I am doing. What am I complaining about then, you may ask. The idea of it all, and what it one day may turn into. And it is my god-given right to complain as a paying customer.
You wanted suggestions to alternatives. What about the old-fassioned method of phoning the company to ACTIVATE the product. What about using the internet to ACTIVATE the product. Note, I emphisized ACTIVATE, not update and run the game over the internet. There are lots of ways to protect your software product against piracy. It comes with the territory. These Big Business companies you talk about must accept piracy as something they will always battle, and deal with it. Not scare their customers off with crap like Steam. A game is something you are going to play for a few weeks or at most a couple of months. If Steam is where gaming is heading, then the gaming industry is officially fucked.
Hey PsyCho, what’s up brother! Don’t you think that was a “nice” response to Mr Mountain “Blowing steam out my ass” Dew. If you are over-sensitive about the content of these posts Mr Mountain Dew (what a pretty name!) then it’s best you go to the forums on the Teletubbies website and tell someone who cares. We stand by our views on Steam, and if you’re not with us, then you can go dump your own pile of steam and sit in it and cry, we REALLY DONT CARE!
Good day Mr Mountain Dew, we all love you……………NOT! Untill the next round!
Big Up brother PsyCho, keep boxing the dew off the mountain. Praat weer later!!!
July 7th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Ok, I have several problems with Steam:
I have a P4 2.4gHz, Geforce 6200 256mb, and 512mb of RAM. Steam would take about 5 minutes to get to My Games, then another 5 minutes so I could play Half-Life 2. With my new configuration, which is a Core 2 Duo 1.8gHz, 2gb of RAM, and Geforce 8800, it still takes me 10-15 minutes to play Half-Life 2! Also, it still uses at least 90% of my CPU, when Photoshop uses 20-40%. What sense does that make?
And, Valve never took into account people running WiFi signals. My Wifi crashes if too much information is sent (large YouTube videos, some Download Managers that use multiple threads) and getting a game to patch is annoying. It gets to about 20%, crashes, then starts back off at 11%, on a file I’ve already downloaded. What the hell?…
Really, I’ve used a nice program called CFToolbox to update my files, works alright.
The last complaint is pretty big. I want to find the Valve Employee who said, “Why don’t we package all our Steam games into a special file type, and have Steam unpack them for us!” I’m talking, of course, about the .GCF files. Steam takes those files, unpacks most of the parts into your RAM, and puts the material files on your hard drive. This allows you to have Mods, but stops you from easily cracking the game. Main problem is that Steam may be relatively fast at unpacking 3gb of files, it’s still unpacking 3GB OF FILES. And, the biggest problem for those of us who have A LOT of Steam games is this: Your hard drive has to support the 3gb .GCF file and the 1.5gb of material/misc files too. This means that a 3gb game takes up 4.5gb. Now, that’s not a lot, but say that there was a 10gb game (some games are) and 8gb is materials. You just DOUBLED your game file size, and 75% of that is just the same thing.
I think Valve has to seriously rethink Steam, and I think that in their attempt to completely destroy piracy, they’re just giving one more reason for those customers to pirate the game. It’s definitely faster then Steam.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Mountain Dew, instead of arguing about technical issues (blabbering about countries and infrastructures when it’s clear that if I want to update something I can do it once I have everything - by downloading an installer - instead of waiting hours) why don’t you touch the legal issues about the ownership of a good and the right to use it?
I’m curious since from your words it appears that we are just a bunch of IT retarded who can not cope with a “good digital delivery system” (lol) because of our hardware problems.
P.S. = Guess what? I own a good machine that runs latest game but I live in a part of Italy that doesn’t have hi-speed connection. Do I have to provide a better system?
No seriously, thousands of users pay for a service that lacks of several “customer’s ownership” rights and I have to find out a better system,?
Fine, I complain and I quit Steam. That’s the best STEAM allows to it’s so called customers.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Speaking of this STEAMing pile of SHIT…i go to play Team fortress 2 and ever since i got it every other time it either doesnt load at all, says the network is busy,or show me server listings that couldnt be any more wrong! I’m tired of having to put up wth this fucking shit! they sure as fuck had no problem taking my money, but now when i want some kind of service “Oh,No!”. Steam can lick my balls and suck out the entire contents of my asshole out through a crazy straw. HOW THE FUCK DOES THE SERVER BEING BUSY HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ME GETTING WHAT I PAYED FOR?! BULL-FUCKING SHIT!!!
July 12th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I wanted to play Half-Life 2 20 minutes, yet here I am still waiting for the game update scan to finish. Valve, STEAM is bullshit.
July 13th, 2008 at 11:10 am
steam is some motherfucking piece of shit… fucking updates take forever… SCREWED CUSTOMER service and such… and the dedicated servers dont work WTF. They pile up shit progs that take up so much fuckign space in the comp… god damn steam and VALVe
July 16th, 2008 at 4:13 am
i bought css with the intention of playing it cents it is a world renound game and all. I tried to load install it, now yes i have dial up but its not my fault the road 50 feet away has high speed but some bullshit ceo say ha ha you dont get any, so any way i load the game only to find STEAM sitting on my desktop looking at my like a hooker saying “trust me i wont bite” well thats some shit. 2 weeks later after leaving the internet on over night a number of times css left at 86 percent no moving up. To you few people who come to this site and then leave a comment oh i love steam i am their bitch, look at the site it says steam sucks not I love steam. So why cry when u get a message yelling at you. One more thing if anyone finds a way to remove steam and still play the game even if it is only offline it is a novel accomplishment and should be shared because in the end we need to stop the economic rapists of valve and steam from burning our crops and poisoning our water!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh yea and if there are any good hackers who dont mind possible gail time does all a favore and kill steam pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeeeeeee.:0
July 17th, 2008 at 6:16 am
I agree with PsyCho also… we need to come together as Rightfully Legit Customer and shut down valve steam bullshit company… now im not saying it will happen but it is what i personally believe. i think it will happen one day
July 17th, 2008 at 8:58 am
About the comment i just posted, i didnt mean that STEAM ROCKS
July 17th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I am so pissed off by Steam when I read what it all “needs” and “wants” and what it “helps”.
It needs a internet connection for updates and updates and updates that don’t end?!
It wants to lower the amount of pirated software and jsut scares the users away from their STEAM-”Supported”-Shitware.
It helps to…seemingly to nothing. You can emulate Fake-Steam, somehow. You can buy WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better games than the whole STEAM-”supported” ones. And the only game where it is actually sad not to buy is HL2 with Gmod.
And I actually thought to buy HL2 and then, maybe Gmod, too. But I won’t install a game taht actually is good, but is delivered with a pile of crap(STEAM) that can disable your account at will (Without any good reason, of course) for you having to buy a legal owned game again just for them to get even more money.
I’d say the anger should not be against Valve and STEAM, more only against STEAM for it going down into the deep abyss of destroyed companies.
Whoever might read this, I don’t own any STEAM-Su(ck)pported games and therefore I’d like to say, I AM VOMITING ALREADY WHEN I ONLY SMELL OR READ STEAM!
PS:
I tried to stay as calm as possible when facing a such crappy thing like STEAM.
July 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Well I for one think STEAM is a great idea. I think their “login before you play” is an excellent idea.
The concept should be implemented in all forms of business. As a matter of fact the real estate company I just bought my house from uses that same policy. If I ever want to go inside and watch tv or take a shower, cook food, or take a nap on my nice comfy sofa, all I have to do is make a daily trip over to the company and borrow the key. Yes sometimes it takes a while for the key to actually work but I don’t mind fresh air and rain is good for me.
Every now and then I have problems with my house, pipes burst, toilets don’t flush, etc. but I don’t complain cause I know the house is my responsibility. Well I did complain once about rain getting in through a hole in the roof. They didn’t respond but I know it’s because they are busy counting all the money that I paid them for the house. That can take a long time to so I understand why they haven’t called me back.
It’s okay though I know in my heart that they are good masters and have my best interests at heart. I have to go now and return my house key,(i hope that someone will be in the office tomorrow, I plan to go to my house and play all the new STEAM powered games I just bought!!!) but I hope you all will one day open your hearts to STEAM and all the joys it has to offer. Life can be so wonderful if you just let them in. Peace and and love and “LET THERE BE STEAM” - Jonesey
July 29th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Hey PsyCho & Jackal
You guys must please start to understand that these non SA gamers don’t understand what the fuck we are talking about here. We have crap bandwith, caps, and Eskom problems. Everything here is SA is damn expensive. The average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment is more than the salary the average worker gets. I can almost buy 2 copies of any standard PC for same price it costs to fill my damn car. At the end of the day you come home from your lame underpaying job, hardly surviving day 2 day living and all you want to is unwind infront of your computer and play a game you really like. Nope, does not work like that! By the time I’m allowed to play the damn game I have to be back at work already.
This is my PC! My files! My money! My crap expensive lifestyle! and I don’t want some stupid “take over your PC software” ruining the experience. Steam is suppose to help with piracy…bleh! It makes it even worse. I know about 10 people who own HL2…9 of them have cracked copies and the other poor fellow who has the legit copy can’t even play his damn game. Nevermind that shit, I the kinda person who likes to disable unwanted resource programs while playing games since I don’t have the money to buy a decent PC. Pffft…Imagine disabling Steam to play the Valve games. I have bought the Orange Box and found it to be utter useless most of the time. I could freak out and state that from now on I will pirate all valve based games but to be honest I won’t. I’ll just sell the piece of shit software to some local secondhand store and use the money to go buy some proper decent non Steam games like Ubisoft Exclusives or something. The PC gaming market is already weak against consoles and Steam’s just added fuel to the fire. Luckily there are many many games to choose from so I don’t have to sit and break my head over this retarted software that costs me almost the price (due to internet usage) of 5-10 decent PC games. Thank you Blizzard for not being such idiots…. Diablo 3, here I come..HL Episode 3…you’re not getting a cent of my hard earned cash.
August 6th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Hello GUYS
I am facing a shit error of steam validation rejected i have made a server now i am facing a problem for which i am not getting any solution from net even i register with many forums but i did not get any solution from someone and problem is that when i start my server and try to enter it gives me error of “steam validation rejected” my one friend who has steam account he can join it but non of other my friends because in our country most of people dont have steam account is there some patch / crack or i have to make chaneges in server.cfg to fix this problem and other error is that every time my external ip wan ip always change when i connect to internet again but yet my main issue which is disturbing me is steam validation rejected error now plsssssssss help me if there is any way how to i configure my this server for non steam users plssssssssssss plsssssssssss help me it will be great if you send email me on smokeinsoul@hotmail.com
regards
GURU
August 11th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Steam is the best! Your account is your OWN responsibility after all. How dare you ignorant, unworthy scum say such vile things a bout the greatest games company in the world! I hope you all choke on your mothers’ penis.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Thank-you, I, for your comment.
As for everyone else who has posted a negative comment about our service, we work our hardest to provide the best service possible. Our updates allow users to experience the full quality of our games. We apologise if any customers are dissatisfied with our service, but we are constantly working towards providing the best gaming esperience possible. As the last poster quite rightly said, “Your account is your OWN responsibility”, and we are not to be held responsible for the misplacement of your account recovery details.
Drew P Cock
Steam Customer Support Team
SCST
August 12th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Ya like your from steam customer support. Please. steam is a good concept but people should still have a choice. why make such a complicated system to play games? all the times steam has given me crap and had to restart it or restart a download. why such big cache files, then still have user data files, double the data???? doesn’t make sense. and of course our account is our responsibility but you still have an obligation to help those who get hacked or falsely accused of cheating. how can you let a computer decide what to do with a cheater or non cheater. then have the ghaul to get them to re buy the games again. bottom line. Valve makes great games but you’ve lost it somewhere.
how about a phone number where we can actually speak to a valve rep? or an email? that will get a response?
August 12th, 2008 at 2:43 am
for u steam admin i am sure u work hard but the fact of the matter is that u dont help directly u have steam support but is it really support all it is is a pop up that links u to frequently asked questions that have nothing to do with the very complicated or uncomplicated problem the used may have. we are not all computer programers so we cant do everything our selves. so first thing u need to do is create an email or chat based help line for us simple or pissed off folk. and too u i says u must be some queere who cant read the http says steam sucks not i love steam i want to suck their dick all day and just for posting a positive comment and a hatefull site u diserve to be called much worse by any one else, and that goes for anyone else with positve fairy comments. so steam admin listen to your customers and do as they please or u will fall off the map cuz one day fag i says will get a problem and try to contact u but u wont be there cuz u dont know he needs help so then his is back on this site bitching about how steam is gay and stuff.
Help the people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 13th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Hi all, haven’t been here for a while. Hmmmmm, what to make of Mr Drew P Cock? Either you are taking the piss out of all of us, or you are very unfortunate with your name, in which case I appologize for having a chuckle at your expense. If you are realy a Steam Administrator, like you claim, then why not do an extensive poll on your website, where your customers can rate your service on a scale of 1 to 10. But please do this in an honest manner that truly reflects the view of the people who take the poll. I suggest you test the views of the people on all levels of your service, not just in general. You can even make this a permanent feature on your website, and keep it public, so that potential new customers can make an informed decision if they want to make use of your service. I know for a fact that I used your service only for one game I bought, I had no problems with my account or anything to that nature, but it was still the last time I would use your service. My reason is simple. I already paid the retail price of your game, and refuse to be forced to use enormous amounts of bandwidth which in effect costs me more money. Your game turned out to be the most expensive game I ever bought. So thank you, but no thank you Steam. I will be spending my money on other games, that does not constantly require an internet connection to function.
If you were not who you said you were, and only you will know that, then go fuck yourself up the ass with a live electrical blowdryer in a bathtub filled with boiling hot water singing your own national anthem.
To the rest of the Anti-Steam gang, big up to you.
Peace!!!
August 24th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Steam is the biggest piece of shit in the fucking world. I have a fios 50/20 connection and I can’t even play fucking games because steam causes my router to reset every 3 minutes and/or other connection problems. Thanks for providing your wonderful work of coding. Great I can get decent ping, but what fucking good is it if its not stable. I can play any other game out there but that that requires steam. I even have fucking better luck with games in Linux. My advice is to reprogram your entire fucking system you suck at fucking providing customers with a decent service. Seriously you guys blow…BIG FUCKING TIME!
August 25th, 2008 at 2:06 am
what VALVE is doing just encourages more GAME PIRACY…
August 25th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I wanna play my games offline, I bought my fucking game, I own it, I am told you need an internet connection to activate, okay, I organised that, I’m told you can play offline once its activated, sweet! SO I organise all this is SOuth Africa before I go for a relaxed holiday in uganda for 2 months over christmas with my fam, yay, Hl2, CSS source with bots, who needs internet. I get there, I open steam: STEAM IS NOT AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. What? What the fuck did you just say to me? I checked you worked offline when I left! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TRYING TO DO DENYING MY THE RIGHT TO PLAY MY OWN FUCKING COPY, I DECIDED TO BY YOUR FUCKING GAME OVER MANY OTHERS AND NOW I HAVE NO GAMES TO PLAY FOR 2 SHITTY FUCKING MONTHS.
Seriously, Valve, you must re-look your customer service, I mostly have no problems with steam, but I own my game, I have a right to play it, decide if I want to update it, and hack it if I damn well want to… I’m fine logging in if I’m playing online, but FUCK YOU DUDES, you dont need to monitor my system or my gameplay for singleplayer games, you have screwed me and a lot of friends more then once and I’m this close to dedicating my life to bad mouthing a company I used to really respect. Fix the problems soon, listen to your customers, before thousands of gamers get together and sue you for the ownership of their games. You can only treat us like this for so long, like Jackal said, your system runs poorly, lacks proper support infrastructure, and this many unsatisfied customers should make a light go on in your heads to do something. So Gabe Newell, YOU FAT PIECE OF SHIT, manage your company properly and stop eating half of america’s fast foods (and lose some fucking weight seriously, its fucking disgusting, nothing makes me wanna puke more then when your on the E3 videos, I vomit a little, seriously).
Looks like the money has finally gotten to your heads, I heard your finally open to selling the company, looks like we have another EA on our hands. I knew such great games were too good to be true.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Hi, I just have to agree with fellow 3rd country gamers (I’m from Mexico). I bought the Orange Box with an official retailer, and all. I also saw the “internet connection required”… ok, got that. But I never realised until I installed the game, that I need to literally ask Steam’s permission to play a GAME I OWN AND INSTALLED IN MY COMPUTER!!! It’s like if I wanted to have sex with my girlfriend, that lives with me, I had to phone call her parents for their permission. The idea itself is preposterous, I mean, what’s the big idea??? stop piracy? In Mexico piracy is rampant and HL2 is sold in every corner. I chose to buy the original game, because I really wanted to own the game, and give proper credit to the people that created it. Now, I want to play the game, and can’t because the server is unavailable.
To people defending Steam… I’m not saying that they are breaking the law(for that, there are disclaimers, agreements and stuff we don’t care to read before installing stuff, so Steam is covered there), I’m saying their service is unnecesarely complicated and inconvenient. And to not warn the mechanics of Steam beforehand CLEARLY* is on the line of legality. To kids and teenagers: wait until you know how hard is to earn money, to give an opinion.
People like us know that an internet based service won’t be available all the time. God, I know it, I work in a company of which product is entirely web-based. Servers go down all the time, and it’s understandable. But why in the world, playing a game INSTALLED in a computer IN MY HOUSE has to be web-based, if I have no or little interest in multiplayer? IT’S THE MOST INCONVENIENT THING I’VE EVER SEEN. And people was complaining about Windows activation! THIS IS TEN TIMES WORSE, at least they offer you phone activation with a Customer Service Rep. AND IT’S ONLY DONE ONCE.
Bottom line is: unless they change this stupid feature, I’m not buying any Steam’s game ever again. Not even Half Life 3. One last consideration: if it was such a great idea, why hasn’t Microsoft done the same with XBOX games? because they know that it’s not viable, unnecessary, and would piss off people.
*after examining the game box, I saw they put that you should examine the Steam Subscriber Agreement before buying the game. That, technically, lets you know how does this thing work…TECHNICALLY AND LEGALLY, but it’s not very practical, isn’t it??? why not just put “warning: you need to access the internet everytime you want to run the game, for more details and implications, READ the SSA agreement”. What are they hidding then? I bet they would lose most customers this way, so I’d say they make it unclear to avoid this.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Well, I have been running steam for about 3 months now…
and it’s at 96%. Yes it’s slow and yes I’ve mummbled a few words to my self, but at least it’s moving barely( in case you didn’t know I have 26.4kbps… so that’s why)
Also you should play America’s army,
Battle field serries.
Far cry,
and lots of others you should google FPS games/ open source FPS
September 1st, 2008 at 12:33 am
I love Valve. They make great great games. Half-Life 2 has an average score of 96/100. Then, they came up with Steam. Instead of using those fantastic programmers to make a great machine of form and function (As I have no doubt they could have), they rushed the fucking thing and put a bunch of piss-heads in charge of it.
Now, I live in America, so I cannot claim to have the connection or download times that the rest of you unfortunately do. But the program itself is, for lack of a better phrase, a steaming pile od donkey shit. Now, this could make me NOT want to murder everyone who developed Steam, if they had decent support, but they don’t. They really, really don’t.
Go to the Steam Support page. There is a “Usefulness” star rating next to every article. most of them are below 40%. 80% are under 25. Because of their clusterfuck with switching accounts, I’m out $150. All this simply because I got a newer, faster computer to run my awesome Valve games even better than before.
God, I hate Steam.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:11 am
yea im just wondering if anyone out there knows a better way to update the games on steam, apparently you need to use steam in order to play valves games, thats bullshit, but i have to deal with it. im just looking for a way to download these games faster on a dial up connection
September 1st, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Updating Steam Platform - 78% Complete
Fuck.
Im gonna cut my wrists…..
Whenever I wanna play I gotta wait for this shit and by the time its done I dont wanna fuckin play anymore.
Steam Is more corrupt than Mugabe.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Gorrila, copy steam folder from a friend that has all apps.
Then install steam.
rename steam folder to steambak
then replace with friends steam folder.
Then log in with your details .. change nick and settings …
Goodluck
Updating Steam Platform - 81% Complete
Fuck.
I hate this.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Oh this is so brilliant, hope it comes to light
http://www.guru3d.com/news/the-gamers-bill-of-rights-/
September 16th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Steam is too hard for me to figure out, I don’t have broadband, also I’m retarded and hate progress, give me my cds forever, screw your innovation
September 18th, 2008 at 1:53 am
How about a client that takes up less system recources then windows vista?
September 19th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
fucking steam and vac suck balls, their programs are fucking faulty and their programmers [not to mention the guys who do the messaging on the website] are a bunch of pussy ball lickers. they dont even reply to you when you have been wrongfully banned. fucking faggots. i even saves my last post to them. here have fun reading it and having a good laugh about how much steam sucks and are a bunch of pussy faggots
I am very disappointed with your company, i have been banned for cheating when i have never cheated on any steam game, or any other game. i am just naturally good at these games and people have reported me for pwning their faces in. i would very much like to be unbanned so i can actually play my games that i paid good money for, or i want my money back that i wasted on your program. i have been told a few times to go buy a new copy of the game, which i find offensive because unlike you money grubbing assholes, i am not rich… i have barely any money to my name and i can not buy a copy of a game that I ALREADY FUCKING OWN. i would rather buy new games that don’t have steam or anti vac programs that ban innocent players. now this time i would like a fucking response you spineless pussies, yes i went there the last few times i have tried to get a response from you, i never got one so grow some balls and respond to your messages about your faulty programing.
September 27th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I’ve had Steam for years with various games and have never had a problem. I find them to be a great, fair, and cheap company. I notice that there are many complaints linked to the slowness of the updates and remind people that many steam games require you to have a fast CPU and (in the cases of the online games like TF2) a good internet connection, which is sort of common sense. You know this, so if you have less-than-adequate stats on your computer and go ahead and buy the games anyway, don’t complain when they wind up being too slow. I’ve also never had my account suspended or banned and have a sneaking suspicion that some (though I understand, not all) of you complaining of these issues were most likely guilty of cheating, which it is Steam’s policy to ban you from certain VAC-protected servers and such, so again, no grounds for complaining (you know who you are).
September 28th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Maggie: I want you to go search “system resources” in google.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:27 am
To be honest I’ve noticed steam getting more and more unstable over time. They still have not fixed the Source Engine crash on exit, even though they said they released a patch for that… I just feel like Valve puts too much faith in their technology and the refusal to accept that there are maybe some flaws in the system or VAC is just plain arrogant. I’ve heard way too many people complain about steam to believe that its perfect… That’s putting my own negative experiences aside…
September 30th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
It’s time for me to add my 2 cents… FUCK YOU Steam. I bought Portal and have been trying to get the game to work for the last week and still the motherfucker won’t run eventhough it says 100% ready what the hell!!! The box never mentioned I would have to wait a week or more before I could play. To respond to Steam Administrator’s post well screw you dumb ass I own the damn game and I can’t play what the fucking hell. I payed hard earned cash for your shit product that is now a useless DVD on my desk. I can’t play because it won’t finish updating. Valve makes great games but as far as I am concerned they have lost all future business from me. Never will I ever spend another fucking penny on any Steam or Valve product. I feel for all you SA guys. I live in a rural community in Canada and I can’t get anything but damn dial-up so I’m fucked. Fuck you Steam for screwing me out of my money. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for my copy to take hours upon hours upon days to be functional oh yeah and did I mention it still doesn’t work after a week of frustration… I will be making it a point of shiting on Steam and convincing as many people as I can to avoid pruchasing any product from them for as long as they exist. Any illegal copy is better than a purchased copy because they have no respect for their customers and just don’t give a shit once you’ve forked over your cash on top of that the illegal copies work anywhere and at anytime. I know I said it already but I’m so pissed I have to say it again FUCK YOU VALVE AND STEAM. I will do my best to keep you from as many dollars of revenue as I can.In a lifetime I should be able to convince quite a few people too avoid your products. Everyone should do the same and I hope they do. You deserve to go bankrupt. You fucked me and I will do my best to fuck you.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
and also if u lose ur account steam wont give a shit i lost about 300-400$ cause i forgot my password all they give u is an automated message they dont give a shit if u lose ur account only wish for u to make a new one and buy all ur games again and now i cant even delete those games takeing up space on my comp cause u have to accses steam to deleted them fuck u valve u peice of shit
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 am
Simple enough, Steam/Valve sucks totally and will go the way of EA soon. Good riddance you bunch of hacks.
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Lordy, we’re all a little heated in here…
PC’s/Software/Hardware/Broadband - No 2 people have exactly the same set-ups with exactly the same business going on under the hood. If you want that, console gaming (which is always behind PC gaming) is for you.
I feel for you guys with the slow broadband, it’s a pain in the ass downloading bigger games and there’s not much you can do about that, especially if you’re copper wire not fibre-optic. You’re never going to get great broadband speed on copper anyway; I live across the road from my British Telecom exchange and i have 8meg broadband…I get 690-710 kbps at night and 400-420 kbps during the day…8meg does not mean 8meg per second…and i’m literally 30 feet from the exchange. Broadband is a bitch…but your slow speeds from Steam servers are all to do with your broadband, not Steam.
Lost password? You’re a numpty…keep your original registration email on your hraddrive and print off a damn copy of it. Problem - AVOIDABLE.
PC Doesn’t run a game? Can it run the game? Hundreds of thousands of people have played Steam games without problems…individual rigs are, by and large, 99% responsible for game crashes. Problem - Check your rig before you crap yourself over “faulty” product when so many other people have no problems at all.
Illegal Copies being better than genuine copies: What absolute bullshit. Quote “In a lifetime I should be able to convince quite a few people too avoid your products. Everyone should do the same and I hope they do. You deserve to go bankrupt. You fucked me and I will do my best to fuck you.” Yet more bullshit. Ok, your games doesn’t work…you’re pissed about that…understandable…but your pointless vendetta means nothing if your PC is fucked from the outset. Re-seat your cards, re-seat your memory, check your connections, run CCleaner and clear your registry out…Run system restore to the last available point where everything was working…update your drivers…THIS IS ALL STANDARD STUFF THAT ALL PC OWNERS KNOW AND ACCEPT HAS TO HAPPEN TO KEEP YOUR MACHINE RUNNING SMOOTHLY. Problem - You.
STEAM has issues…so far only 1 game has refused to work for me first time round (Bioshock) and that’s my own damn fault for not letting DirectX update (figured as I havd DX10, why do i need DX9…my bad and once i re-installed, it worked fine). EVERY other problem i’ve had has been down to Nvidia drivers…nothing to do with STEAM.
Apart from your broadband issues…i don’t see you have anything to complain about. Sorry…
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
1. Little or no technical support (I dare you , try to get support for a problem from them).
2. Faulty offline mode system, doesnt allow you to play unless specific circumstances are met, I’m still not sure what those are exactly.
3. VAC seems to be banning people who did not actually cheat… And Valve completely refuse to hear their case (which is understandable but no one can claim a system is perfect).
4. Takes 5 mins or more to login, yes I have a slow connection but what is it sending, is it downloading my hardrive first!? It takes me 20 secs or less to download my e-mail on a bad day. (This may not be a connection issue so to speak but enough people have experienced the same problem)
5. Utilizes an incredibly large amount of system resources, which seems unnecessary compared to what steam actually does…
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:58 pm
1)Tech Support - I refer you again to my remarks about individual systems…it’s IMPOSSIBLE for any company to cater to the needs of all individual users, especially where problems are exclusive to a handful of users; do you check the forums? I do, regularly and there’s plenty in there to help. I appreciate that you pay your money and expect a service…but do you really think a company has the time or even inclination to build a test system identical to yours (or anyone else with an issue experienced by a handful of people) to see if they can replicate your problem? No! However, when i did send them a query I did get a reasonable answer and was directed to appropriate info in the forums, which solved my problem. That said, the problem in question was “S.T.A.L.K.E.R” which was released in almost beta form and was buggy from the outset..5 patches in 6 months tell you that it’s the game manufacturer that was the cause of the problem, not Steam.
2) Offline system - is an afterthought…STEAM is built for online gaming; long in while you’re online, switch to offline and play away forever…easy
3 VAC - Not had any problems myself so can only empathise.
4 Login Time - So, you’d rather the software was never update and bugs remained for good? Can’t have it both ways…
5 System Resources - I know at least a dozen people who run Steam with systems inferior to mine…never see anything above 1% when running idle…once your game kicks in you’d expect “some” cpu activity wouldn’t you? If Steam is hogging your CPU time i’d suggest the problem is more to do with your connection and maybe firewall…is vsmon running high? Check your firewall…ZoneAlarm, AVG and Panda can really hog your system…
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Games have been updating and bugs have fixed long before game steam, Special K Breakfast. That isnt an apt justification for long login time.
If Steam was simple a client that downloaded games,
And updated them it would be not an issue. Steam doesnt need to be a “Comunity”.
also .exe has
worked great for launching games, we dont need a client to do that. What is wrong
with a launch program that I can use without loging into steam?
You cant make a cow do a horses work, that is really what steam is trying to do,
October 24th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I actually just got ripped of by steam because I didn’t realize the Canadian dollar fell so low. I was thinking we were still somewhat on par. Turns out its 78cents to their dollar. So I paid more in exchange rate then I would have in taxes if i bought the box at a retail store. Which is the same base price at Futureshop. (49.99) I want my money back, but I got fucked instead. I was too excited in getting the game instead of doing my homework.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
To Latefromsurgery - Yes, games have been updating before STEAM…but the STEAM client covers more than one game…it covers whatever you have installed, so that’s game updates, client updates, server updates, news, info, support…so yes, sometimes there’s a lot to check.
As for bypassing Steam…well, you can’t, but then if you don’t want STEAM…buy the game from a store…and stop moaning…STEAM is an option, but not the only one…again, an avoidable problem.
Some Dude - you got ripped by STEAM because of an EXCHANGE RATE!!! LOL, since when did Steam control global exchange rates, you muppet! Get back to your homework, little boy…come back once you’ve grown a brain.
You people….
October 26th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
” #131 Special K Breakfast Says:
As for bypassing Steam…well, you can’t, but then if you don’t want STEAM…buy the game from a store…and stop moaning…STEAM is an option, but not the only one…again, an avoidable problem. ”
Dude… When you buy the retail version of the orange box, YOU HAVE TO INSTALL STEAM TO PLAY!!! There is a workaround, I know of a lot of people who have hacked the steam client and allowed the games to be played without it (multiplayer games excluded). But, as far as a legal consumer such as myself is concerned, I am doomed to play with this shitty slow client harvesting my system information, eating resources and delaying my playtime considerably so that I can play my favourite Valve games…
Also, it is generally a disgusting sign that a company cannot provide technical support for the entire community that uses its product. I’m very disappointed in Valve when it comes to this, its like a cellphone company providing cellphone coverage but absolutely no technical support to their customers, that company would get knocked out by any single rival that showed an interest in their customers well being and provided coverage that was faster, more reliable and stable…
Do your homework dude… If your gonna talk to people like their children then your gonna be treated like one… Dont forget to brush your teeth too..
To LateFromSurgery, loved the metaphor!
October 26th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Thanks Cyanide.
I agree about you tech support bit. Its a pity, Value makes some great games.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Yeah, Steam sucks ass man, fuck! I put some things to download and then go play MP. I get disconnected from great ping even tough I told Steam to not dl anything while I was playing!!! This sux! And I don’t wanna fucking program every time i want to play SP or MP.