Tags for this video have been changed from 'valve, halflife 2, mac, apple, 1984, big brother, orwell' to 'valve, halflife 2, mac, apple, 1984, big brother, orwell, crowbar' - edited by youdiejoe

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

This deserves more votes. *promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 4:19pm PDT - promote requested by dag.

*parody

Obvious tag is obvious.

Also *commercial.

Adding video to channels (Commercial, Parody) - requested by RedSky.

"Game ownership is no longer dictated by platform"

Except if that platform is Steam.

>> ^harry:

"Game ownership is no longer dictated by platform"
Except if that platform is Steam.


Alright, then. What's your beef with Steam?

Steam Ownership:
- No physical possession of purchased product.
- No ability or rights to transfer, gift, or on-sell your product once you have 'taken ownership' of it.
- No ability to 'lend' your purchased product. (sharing your steam account is a breach of terms and conditions.

It is not legally ownership of anything. It's only a payment for perpetual renting of the product for one individual user only. It is at Steam's discretion to revoke that lease - and the lease on ALL other steam games at any time if they judge a breach of the account terms and conditions.

If they only charged half the price for 1 month use of the product i'd be fine with it. I don't NEED to own it - i just want to play it. I'd even pay a micro-payment for each time i loaded it and every hour i spent playing.

It pisses me off they charge the full store box price when you actually have no real rights of ownership. It's a scam.

>> ^harry:

"Game ownership is no longer dictated by platform"
Except if that platform is Steam.

I like steam.

>> ^raverman:

Steam Ownership:
- No physical possession of purchased product.
- No ability or rights to transfer, gift, or on-sell your product once you have 'taken ownership' of it.
- No ability to 'lend' your purchased product. (sharing your steam account is a breach of terms and conditions.

You mean like copying the CD and then selling it to someone else?

I think you'll find that "lending" your games to others is generally in violation of EULAs as well.

Well, that's all true. The worst one was RailWorks, which my dad also liked. There is no legal way to say "hey, let me install that on your pc as well".

But mostly, Steam games are very expensive in euros. It seems they still blindly equate 1 euro to 1 dollar.

All that being said, I don't really hate Steam or similar systems. They do make installing and buying games a lot easier. If only they would be a bit more lenient in family use.

SEEEEEEEEEE!!!! All you nay sayers that bitch and moan about Macs not being a platform for games have it all wrong.

Now that Macs have Half Life 2 after it being out on the PC for a mere six years, you wont have shit to say.

>> ^raverman:

Steam Ownership:
- No physical possession of purchased product.
- No ability or rights to transfer, gift, or on-sell your product once you have 'taken ownership' of it.
- No ability to 'lend' your purchased product. (sharing your steam account is a breach of terms and conditions.
It is not legally ownership of anything. It's only a payment for perpetual renting of the product for one individual user only. It is at Steam's discretion to revoke that lease - and the lease on ALL other steam games at any time if they judge a breach of the account terms and conditions.
If they only charged half the price for 1 month use of the product i'd be fine with it. I don't NEED to own it - i just want to play it. I'd even pay a micro-payment for each time i loaded it and every hour i spent playing.
It pisses me off they charge the full store box price when you actually have no real rights of ownership. It's a scam.

And..?

Have a look at DRM currently... Ubisoft's constant connection to their server required to play your game, for example. Their server goes offline, your physical product is useless (whereas you can set Steam to work in offline mode).

Steam obviously isn't for you, that's your option. But as far as digital content delivery goes, it is a reasonable and effective way of doing business.

I'm not seeing the anger against steam. I've bought many games on there for huge discounts over retail copies. Like buying the entire rockstar collection (like 15 games including all GTAs, etc) for $40. They have constant sales especially around the holidays that are huge discounts on a lot of games. I don't have to worry about where my game discs are when I upgrade to a new machine. Just log in and download. I know where they all are and I don't have to worry about keeping games current with patches, steam does that for me. I like it personally

I've played game for years and having them all in one spot that can't be lost is amazing. If you ever have computer problems or get a new computer or anything, you simply go onto steam and download it again, which at max is maybe 40 mins for a larger game. Not having a CD library to search through if I ever need something is beautiful. Also the patching, updates and DLC being available from one click I believe makes steam worth it.

As for sharing games, if you really want to share a steam game you can.

QUICK EVERYONE! Bash the one guy that said something intelligent in this thread!

>> ^raverman:

Steam Ownership:
- No physical possession of purchased product.
- No ability or rights to transfer, gift, or on-sell your product once you have 'taken ownership' of it.
- No ability to 'lend' your purchased product. (sharing your steam account is a breach of terms and conditions.
It is not legally ownership of anything. It's only a payment for perpetual renting of the product for one individual user only. It is at Steam's discretion to revoke that lease - and the lease on ALL other steam games at any time if they judge a breach of the account terms and conditions.
If they only charged half the price for 1 month use of the product i'd be fine with it. I don't NEED to own it - i just want to play it. I'd even pay a micro-payment for each time i loaded it and every hour i spent playing.
It pisses me off they charge the full store box price when you actually have no real rights of ownership. It's a scam.

Exactly why I'm going to stop buying games on Steam. That and the stuck updating client bug, which has been a perpetual problem for years, that they never fix or correctly explain. You can't play any Steam game if the bug happens. And how do you switch to "offline" mode? You have to log in first to activate offline mode. Which of course is impossible if it gets stuck updating. It's just baffling. Even if they can't ever figure out how to properly fix it, they could still easily mitigate it if they cared to.

And what do you do if Steam ever goes out of business? Since none of the games have offline installers, you're simply screwed.

^ Valve Going Out of Business: I think this is seen as a bigger issue than it really is. You can make backup copies of your steam games, and Valve could always turn off the required authentication system if needed. This leaves me with two concerns, but I don't think they're specific to Valve:

-What about online games that use Steam's server browser (this would also affect non-steam games that use their company's servers to search for active games).

-What happens if the Steam servers go down and you haven't backed up your games? Well, you're probably out of luck at that point(same if you lost your game CD on a non-steam game). Of course, chances are that you would have advance warning for something like that so you could download them before the cutoff.


Stuck Updating Client: I looked around and most of the people reporting this issue ended up figuring out that it was their firewall software that was causing the issue. Apparently it let them download the content but wouldn't allow the .msi to run. I also found the instructions below, but I didn't spend a lot of time researching it. Hope that helps.


Windows 7 / Vista solution

1: Load up Steam, wait till it's stuck on 99%.
2: Press "Start" button, type "msconfig" into the search bar and press enter.
3: Under the "Boot" tab where the "Boot options" are, tick "Safe boot" then tick "Network".
4: Restart your computer and allow it to load up in safe mode.
5: Everything will most likely look big and ugly.
6: Load up Steam, once it completes the update, log in.
7: Press "Start" button, type "msconfig" into the search bar and press enter.
8: Under the "Boot" tab where the "Boot options" are, un-tick "Safe boot".
9: Restart in to normal Windows.
10: Run Steam successfully.

Psychologic, thanks, I didn't know about the ability to backup games, that's great.

And for me, ultimately I just had to switch firewalls and anti-virus programs to get around the stuck updating bug (I was using Avira and Zone Alarm). It was just frustrating since no other program seemed to have trouble, and disabling the firewall and anti-virus or starting in Safe Mode didn't fix it. Nor do they have updated installers on their website, you always have to update in order to finish the install. Believe me I went through the help steps suggest by users on half a dozen threads to no avail. The problem does stretch back years. And it seems crazy they don't just provide a simple command line switch to enable offline mode.

The backup copies are irrelevant to this argument since you have to log into steam to restore them. All the backups do is save you from having to download over the wire again.>> ^Psychologic:
Valve Going Out of Business: I think this is seen as a bigger issue than it really is. You can make backup copies of your steam games, and Valve could always turn off the required authentication system if needed.

Steam is only reasonable when compared to most other forms of DRM out there. It still treats you like a potential criminal instead of a customer. I'm philosophically opposed to that.

Impulse is friendlier than Steam, and I did actually use it to buy Sins of a Solar Empire, but I won't make a habit of it. It's still DRM but at least I can play SOASE without Impulse in the future.

Generally, I refuse to buy games with DRM that requires any sort of installation on my computer or refuses to run if I have certain other software on my computer (SecuROM, SafeDisc, TAGES, StarForce, Steam). I won't accept anything more intrusive than CD keys or disc checks. Luckily for me, there aren't a lot of games that interest me anymore. I'm not above pirating a game that has no legal DRM-free acquisition option, though. After all, if they think I'm a potential criminal, I don't want to let them down.

>> ^harry:


But mostly, Steam games are very expensive in euros. It seems they still blindly equate 1 euro to 1 dollar.


Don't worry, the Greeks are working on making that no longer be a problem, in Steam-terms...

>> ^xxovercastxx:
Generally, I refuse to buy games with DRM that requires any sort of installation on my computer or refuses to run if I have certain other software on my computer (SecuROM, SafeDisc, TAGES, StarForce, Steam). I won't accept anything more intrusive than CD keys or disc checks. Luckily for me, there aren't a lot of games that interest me anymore. I'm not above pirating a game that has no legal DRM-free acquisition option, though. After all, if they think I'm a potential criminal, I don't want to let them down.



When Steam came out I had that opinion.

But you build up a sufficiently large collection of CDs... and start losing them... and Steam ends up being more attractive than a CD check, IMHO.

I've never had that problem and I've probably got well over 100 purchased games. I know the exact location of my Master of Orion 2 CD. That came out almost 14 years ago and I've moved 4 times since I got it.

Also, I've always gotten no-CD cracks for all my games, even if I do have a legal copy, so the disc check isn't a hassle either.

>> ^Krupo:
When Steam came out I had that opinion.
But you build up a sufficiently large collection of CDs... and start losing them... and Steam ends up being more attractive than a CD check, IMHO.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

The backup copies are irrelevant to this argument since you have to log into steam to restore them. All the backups do is save you from having to download over the wire again.>> ^Psychologic:
Valve Going Out of Business: I think this is seen as a bigger issue than it really is. You can make backup copies of your steam games, and Valve could always turn off the required authentication system if needed.


That's a decision, not a technical limitation. If they went into bankruptcy for some reason then changing the requirement to be online to restore backups would be trivial. It can be annoying if you currently want to restore a game without internet (can still play offline after that), but that doesn't mean you lose all of your games if they go out of business.

The best option is to buy games at a store and then add them to your steam games list. The online store is mainly for people who don't have easy access to game stores or for games that aren't widely available in hard-copy.

I realize that, I'm just not willing to bet on it happening.>> ^Psychologic:

That's a decision, not a technical limitation. If they went into bankruptcy for some reason then changing the requirement to be online to restore backups would be trivial. It can be annoying if you currently want to restore a game without internet (can still play offline after that), but that doesn't mean you lose all of your games if they go out of business.