Valve Unveils Steam Cloud

Erik J tips us to news of Valve's announcement that their content distribution system, Steam, will receive an update "in the near future" called Steam Cloud. The new service will allow users to save games and configuration settings online. According to MaximumPC: "This system will be completely transparent to the user. The files cache locally, and will upload when Steam detects an internet connection. There will be no restrictions on users - no save quotas or file management - the system will 'just work.' Any Steamwork game will be able to support these features, and it'll be free for customers and developers."

Re:Saves....

[SCPRedMage]

Nope, sorry, not happening...

The files cache locally, and will upload when Steam detects an internet connection.

You keep a copy of all your settings on your local system. So long as you're playing on the system you made the save game, you'll always have access to it...

JUST LIKE NOW!

Re:Steam rocks

[Phydeaux314]

First, I think Valve is primarily owned by the founders, so unless they decide to sell it, I don't think it's likely that it will get sold.

Secondly, Valve has publicly stated that if the company does go out of business, they already have DRM removal patches ready to go for all the content on Steam. So if Valve does go belly-up, you won't lose access to your games.

Re:Saves....

[theprophetofmephisto]

the point of this is so you can save a game and your settings at one computer and continue it at a different one exactly if you were on your main, man. read the article.

Re:Steam rocks

[Splab]

Back when it launched it wasn't without hitches, but it sure has come a long way since then.

However, a major issue I got with steam is its not possible to control the amount of information they publish about your activities if you use the friends system. A coworker persuaded me to activate friends so we could play together, thats fine - but suddenly the amount of time I play, when I play and what games was available to anyone who knew my login/alias.

To me privacy is very important and I sure as heck don't like any information about me available unless I specifically put it there - now activating fiends does tell you this, however like any other windows monkey I just hit next till it was active, didn't seriously expect a company to retain and publish private information without the possibility of getting it removed (officially). Steam to their credit did remove it immediately when I wrote them and told them that their practice was illegal in Denmark.

Re:Saves....

[gencha]

You're not supposed to play CSS while you visit your parents!

Re:A great adea

[kalirion]

Hasn't work for CS:S in the last few updates. I've had to ALT-TAB out of the game to "pause-update" to keep TF2 from updating, because simply pausing the update before launching CS:S was not enough for some reason.

On the other hand, the updates were always auto-paused when I've started a single-player game like HL2. I wonder if some boolean is reversed or something.

And there is no way to pause steam client updates.

Re:Steam rocks

[Phydeaux314]

Ok, after some searching I found that there's a note about it in the Steam license agreeement - section 12-C part 2. I know I read a more, ah, verbose version in an interview, but I can't find the link at the moment.