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."

A great adea

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, it's about time. I've loved the fact that I can access my Steam games anywhere (like from work ;), but hated that I couldn't continue my saved games...

Re:Saves....

[FrostDust]

I really doubt such a system would stop players from loading saved games. While, yeah, obviously you would need an active internet connection to download the data from Steam, the article indicates that the data would still be stored player-side, so there's nothing preventing him or her from saving to/loading from their hard drive. Concerned players could even backup their saves, configs, etc. to a flash drive, if they were planning on playing their games on systems without a guaranteed connection to Valve's servers.

Re:No file management?

[Brian Gordon]

What? That's a terrible idea. A Steam game is just a huge tree of files that's parsed by the Steam loader. Those files, including cached sound data and map node resources, are being updated continuously as you play through the game. What difference does it make if one more file is altered to store configuration data? Would you really rather have to re-set your audio/video settings every time you want to play, as well as rebind your keys, as well as re-tweak your Voice volumes, as well as reconfigure your steam community overlay options? Have you even seen how powerful the console is? It would take me 10 minutes to manually execute everything in my autoexec.cfg.

Sounds great

[88NoSoup4U88]

Such a coincidence; This week I've been backing up most of my config-files for all of my Steam games (and sent them off to my email to be stored there), as I became quite fed up with having to re-bind my keys on each install (and since I'm preferring ESDF-config over WASD, it's quite some work to get everything bound for each game).

So for me, this is one of the better improvements coming from Steam the last few months.

One thing I'm very curious about is how much of the config files are saved though: For example, my TeamFortress 2 configs are very much deviating from the default: I have seperate class-configs, voice-commands configs and some other .cfg-files which are referred to from the default-config file: If this would only store the default-config file, it has no use for me.

Also, it would be quite cool if the configs would be saved for the several mods for HL/HL2.

Re:Steam rocks

[MrHanky]

While I agree it's a likely scenario, it's not really any different from how many other games stop working after a few OS revisions. As an example, System Shock 2 was released on 11 August, 1999, and has never worked reliably on Windows 2000 and XP (it also refuses to install unless you feed the installer a command line option). So if you bought a new Windows XP based computer little more than two years after SS2 was released, you would likely be unable to play it. And that's for a true classic, one of the best games ever, etc.

Copy protection sucks. Steam makes the shortcomings more obvious, but not bigger. It's cheaper than less reliable physical media, and it is reliable. Now. Perhaps not in the future, but seriously, those old games are rarely as much fun as you remember them to be.

Hypothetical

[Kamineko]

What would happen if I had a different set of HL2 saves on two different computers? Would it just merge the two seamlessly like cards in a deck, or would one take precedence?

Fun with Statistics

[Clovis42]

Valve really loves statistics, and if you've ever listened to a commentary track they are very intent on players making it through their games. I wonder if they will be scanning these save game files to create statistics on how far players get in the games they play, or how long they spent in various areas, etc.

Even the save game habits of players would be interesting. I always create a new save game file for every save. I can't remember the last time this was actually helpful. In the past some games would actually make it impossible to continue if you forget to pick up a certain item. If you kept replacing your save game file you were forced to start from the beginning. In FPSs I'm always afraid that I'll start chewing through ammo and get stuck in an area with sparse ammo and be screwed. So I'll make saves with titles like "GoodAmmoGoodHealth5", and "nearlyDead7".

They already have a lot of this information anyway, like how long you play a game, and what achievements you've completed. I'd like to see some of their statistics if they do datamine the files.

ESDF?!?!?

[mefdahl]

I was really starting to believe that my son and I where the only people left on earth that use that left hand layout. Way way back when binding your movement to home row was l33t, this was the way everyone I knew who played FPSs bound there keys for the LAN parties. Always kind of wondered where wasd came from, and how they strafe left and run at the same time.

Good to know there is someone else out there that is constantly remapping there keys to esdf.

Re:Steam rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's fine to say that, but have they done anything to make sure that it actually happens? I'd imagine that if Valve goes belly up, nobody there is going to be worrying about making sure those patches go out. After all, where are they going to put them when the bailiffs are taking the servers out the door.
They need to put those patches in the hands of a third party that will make sure they are released. I'd suggest that the games industry should set up their own organization to handle these issues.

Re:ESDF?!?!?

[alisoul]

i started playing on the very unorthodox a/z/ctrl/alt - did that for years before switching to wasd. no, i didn't hit the windows key (much) - the bigger problem was having to use my index finger to hit the space bar to jump while strafing right. i haven't pc gamed in quite a while, but if i do go back, i think i'll give esdf a shot - with so many binds now, seems like a good idea.

Re:ESDF?!?!?

[Splab]

Same here, always wondered why the heck anyone would want wasd over esdf for fps - there are quite a lot more buttons to be used from esdf - and you got the added benefit of being able to find the damned keys in the dark (the little thing on f).

But I guess we just don't subscribe to the right 31337 letters, I also missed the one about VIP and hostage maps in CS were teh suxors.