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Games Entertainment

Valve Announces "Steam" Content Delivery System 185

Posted by timothy from the puff-puff dept.
Greg Brown writes: "Valve just officially announced Steam, its new content delivery system that works automatically over the internet. While this has been in the works for a while, including a semi-public testing period, it has slowly been refined to the point that it is faster and more convenient than other methods. Valve is also planning on licensing it to other developers to use to distribute their games online. Looks like the game-publishing heavyweights (EA and Sierra) may be outdated. More info from Gamespy and ShackNews."
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Valve Announces "Steam" Content Delivery System More

Valve Announces "Steam" Content Delivery System

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  • What happens to Sierra? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zapfie ( 560589 )
    What does Sierra think of this, considering Sierra publishes Valve's stuff, last I checked? It seems like this is the kind of service that could be offered up easier by a larger company than a smaller one. Is Sierra going to be a part of Steam, or is Valve going to cut the middleman?
    • Consider the cost of bandwidth now. This makes some sense, in a theoretical way, for a new method of delivering content. How long does it take to go to the store, get a game, come back, and install it? I would estimate around an hour. Many people with broadband can fairly easily download about 280MB (averaging 80KB/sec) in an hour. Additional sections of the game could be downloaded while playing faster than the player is likely to achieve such advancement.

      Of course, broadband isn't available for everyone, and Sierra would still have a role publishing games on CD for those of us who do not have fast connections or who choose to have physical media in hand. What this does, though, is put some power back in Valve's hands, allowing them a much faster method of distributing patches and anti-cheats and cutting distribution costs. The only remaining issue is how much Sierra loses from this.
      • Who says you're paying for any of the bandwidth you're supposedly going to use to their servers to download the games.

        Because if I was implementing Steam, I'd make it peer-to-peer. IE, break it up into 256kb blocks, which individual users can download from each other.. Then the central server just says 'hey, download blocks 1,2,3,4 from foo and 5,6,7,8 from bar', then it passes out signed MD5's of the blocks (to detect corruption) and away things go.

        Then they merely seed a few dozen users with a game and/or updates, and then pay for no bandwidth after that. If they're not idiots, they'll do this.

        Anyone want to take a bet as to whether they're idiots or not?

        Anyways, I don't think that the bandwidth argument really flies. This is just pay-for-play...
        • It may well become pay-for-play. But the bandwidth costs out of decent datacenters is dropping rapidly. I work at a datacenter myself, and I see the difference between what a T1/DS1 costs from the phone company and what we charge for a T1-equivalent out of our own connections. I know of a couple of larger companies that are getting even sweeter deals than we are, and I expect the numbers to continue to drop. Bandwidth, assuming Valve gets a nice clean connection to a major backbone provider, will be a much smaller piece of the distribution costs than CDs now are.
  • All this is cool, and I admit longing for a system that keeps proper track of patches, updates and serials. But isn't this pretty similar to passport ? The dreaded Microsoft thingie that every ./ter goes bananas about ?

    • Re:Passport lookalike ? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Does anyone else find it sad that a 'typical slashdot user' is about the most hated creature on the face of the planet. They're mocked on every site. It's an easy target, almost too easy so (for me) it strips any pleasure from insulting them. It's like PETA. Or Scientology. There's no need for detail - it's a cliché and it stands up on it's own.

      I don't think that stereotype is real anymore, but I guess that doesn't matter. The site has bias, sure, but well reasoned arguments for Microsoft still get +5's.

      At least, that's what I've been seeing.

  • Perfect. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ender81b ( 520454 ) <wdinger.gmail@com> on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:02AM (#3206216) Homepage Journal
    This is how things are supposed to work. The RIAA and MPAA should take a lesson from these guys. Wow, pay for good content (program) get to use it as much/wherever you want and completely bypass the middleman = savings for the consumer.

    Absolutely ridiculous that the music/video industry is refusing change or developing a new distrubution system like these guys are. I mean, consider what this will mean for small-time game developers. They get to keep a large share of the profits, reach a broader audience, and not have to deal with the bullsh*t that is typical of most game publishers. As for the consumer, you get cheaper games plain and simple.

    Seriously, imagine this applied to the recording/music industry and I guess I realize why they are so afraid of the new digital medium.
    • ... completely bypass the middleman = savings for the consumer ...

      Doubtful. The consumer has demonstrated a willingness to pay $50 or so for a game. The business model used by the developers will probably be based on this fact and they will try to collect about the same amount of money in the end, it may not be all up front.

      The good news may really be that the developers get most of the money and this will probably result in a greater percentage of your $50 being reinvested in the game via more content, expansions, new versions, etc.
      • The good news may really be that the developers get most of the money and this will probably result in a greater percentage of your $50 being reinvested in the game via more content, expansions, new versions, etc.

        Which is savings.. =). Man, what I wouldn't give to pay for more linux ports on games - this way it might actually happen.
        • Which is savings.. =). Man, what I wouldn't give to pay for more linux ports on games - this way it might actually happen

          This does nothing for Linux, the fundamental problem with Linux is unchanged. Linux gamers primarily dual boot or emulate, you only need a Win32 version to sell to them.
      • Oh, I don't know.

        Look at it this way. Suppose that the actual game costs, $20, while the manual/box/cd-case/cd/etc costs another $10, so they tack on $10-$20 for profit.

        Now, Valve says "We'll charge you $25 bucks for Half-Life 2 through our streaming server, and you can download the manual in PDF format. If you want a print copy, we'll mail you a copy for $5, and if you want a CD with that, it's another $10.

        Now Valve is still making a good profit, and we have a choice in either printing a manual (in the case of most First Person Shooter games, the manual is basically "how to install, shoot what moves, in the case of a RPG, I might either spring $10 for the manual, or just buy the "help guide" for $20 (which would include the manual).

        It's an interesting idea, and I give Valve credit for experimenting. Maybe it won't pan out, like Stephen King's e-Book idea, maybe it will (yes, I know it made money, shut up). But Valve can try it out, and if it takes off, we could see a *very* interesting shift in the balance of power between developers and publishers. Publishers would still be necessary for financing, but wouldn't have the total power of distribution they have now.

        Just my opinion - I could be wrong.

    • Re:Perfect. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AstralSeeker ( 539892 )
      I'm not so sure about that (in the game industry)

      The publisher is often necessary, because he's the one fronting the cash so you can develop your game. Until you've published a game that was sucessful enough to pay entirely for the next one, you're dependant on your publisher for the money to pay the bills and salary (unless you have other funding). It's true that it could remove the cost of the middlemen, but you need somebody to start you up unless you already have the money. This would typically be a VC/Publisher since a bank probably won't loan it to you since it's too expensive and too risky. So you still end up with somebody taking a cut in the middle and wanting a big return since it's a high risk. Most game projects do not make any money.

      • Re:Perfect. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by The Cat ( 19816 )
        It's true that it could remove the cost of the middlemen, but you need somebody to start you up unless you already have the money. This would typically be a VC/Publisher since a bank probably won't loan it to you since it's too expensive and too risky.

        Take the VC out of the list too. They want 20% annual growth. Will NOT happen with game developer.

        So you still end up with somebody taking a cut in the middle and wanting a big return since it's a high risk.

        Oh, they get more than that. Publisher wants 85% of the take, PLUS they want the copyrights and trademarks to the whole project, including the characters, merchandising, sequels, etc. Better to just fill out an application and at least get some benefits.

        Most game projects do not make any money.

        That explains the record profits made by the game industry last year. Game projects don't make money. Game *publishers* make billions, all the time whining "ehhhhhhhhh, we can't make any moneyyyyyyy"

        • Most game projects do not make any money.

          That explains the record profits made by the game industry last year.

          Most game projects don't make money. The ones that do, make so much more money than the other ones lose, that the industry as a whole makes great profits.

        • "Most game projects do not make any money."

          This is true.

          "That explains the record profits made by the game industry last year."

          This is also true. Industry profit / amount of game projects = profit per project = ~0. The computer game industry is overflowing with supply and while demand can be said to be great too, paying customers are all the more rare. Especially if you take the VCs out of the loop. Most game companies work against the publishers as customers, not the gamers. Publishers have the experience and network/contacts to make a successful sale. Developers.. well, develop, and they are far too many to successfully make those big bucks you're talking about.

    • Yep, exactly what I thought. with all this crap with the SSSCA and that dork hollings, you would think that the entertainment industries would get a clue and start looking at it like valve is. Sure, there are some pretty sizeable differences and different hurdles, but its still possible, esp once/if they ever start getting serious about making broadband a widespread service.

  • Hype? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pilferer ( 311795 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:03AM (#3206217)
    During his presentation to GameSpy, Newell showed Half-Life running off a broadband connection. Mind you, no game files were installed on the client machine . After launching Half-Life from Steam, it downloaded the necessary files (which took hardly any time at all - actually it was faster than using a CD ), and before you knew it, the introductory cinematic for Half-Life was running.

    Wow! where can I get broadband that fast? ;)

    "There is 3% CPU utilization by Steam client," Newell said. "92% wire utilization, 4:1 compression and about 50% cache hits."

    And 100% buzzword utilization.
    • I get up to and past 500kb/sec on my broadband connection.. With 4:1 compression, a 650 mb cd becomes a 162mb download. That's about a 324 second download, or roughly 5 1/2 minutes. Faster than a lot of CD installs I've done.

      That's not really empty buzzwords.. if they were saying stuff like "The new digital deployment paradigm", that would be different. All the things they mentioned are important. Low CPU usage is good, since most games expect to be given most of the CPU's power. 92% wire utilization means that the network code is written well enough so it can be using 92% of your network capacity.. granted that one is a little vague. 4:1 compression.. well, the more compression, the less downloading. 50% cache hits means that servers supplying this data don't have to undergo as much burden packaging together stuff to send out, because half the time there is already a cached copy to send out. Not as important for the user, but for those who serve the data it is.

      • I get up to and past 500kb/sec on my broadband connection.. With 4:1 compression, a 650 mb cd becomes a 162mb download. That's about a 324 second download, or roughly 5 1/2 minutes. Faster than a lot of CD installs I've done.

        500Kb/sec = approximately 50 KB/second. Therefore 162MB = 162000 KB / 50 KB/s = 3240 seconds/60(m) = 54 minutes. If, on the other hand, you actually have a 500KB/second (or 5000Kb/second) cable modem, then you are a very lucky, and very rare, person : Most of us are capped at either 1.5Mbps or 2.0Mbps.

        I truthfully didn't read the article, however my presumption from the Slashdot post was the CPU and network utilization was during transferring, so it's basically saying "We easily maxed out the pipe with our proprietary compression technology, and could run many multiples faster if the net connection allowed it, given the low CPU utilization. Regarding CD installs, it is interesting to consider that a 1x CD is about 176KB/second, or just a bit faster than a T1.

    • Wow! where can I get broadband that fast? ;)

      I just got Transmission Speed = 1460 Kb/s from pcpitstop.com. I have a cable modem, and most people in Seattle are asleep because it's 1am.

      I think a 1x cd-rom is 150KB/sec, so I am getting a little better than that (1460Kb/s = 200 KB/s or so). Okay, I'm not exactly at 40x CD-ROM speeds but I am at about 2x speed.

      Mytiply that by the 4x enrcryption over the wire, then my virtual CD speed is at least an 8x CD-rom, which is actually pretty damn good. At 8x you can burn a full CD in about ten minutes.

      Depending on how much you need to DL, it could be faster than a CD, if you count the time for the drawer to close and the disc to spin up -- that's about a 10 or 15 second head start for the ethernet card. During those ten or fifteen seconds I can pull down about 15 MB of valve's compressed stream, and then I'll quickly lose the race. But depending on how big the DL is, it might actually be faster than CD.

      Ultimately I think faster than a CD might be a bit of an exaggeration but we all read that as "comparabe to a CD" anyway.

      Join the Great Slashdot Troll-a-thon April 21-27 and every night after midnight.
      • You and the other reply have both made the same mistake - you've assumed compression for the down-the-wire stuff but not for the CD based stuff. My baseline CDROM does 40x so with 4:1 compression it'd be 160x. Last game I bought - Diablo II - came on 3 CDs of which one is movies that definitely won't get 4:1 compression anyway. And of course everyone will want to get the game the second it's released so good luck in getting that 200KB/s.

        So I'm dubious about both the 4:1 ratio and the viability of transmitting that amount of data to large numbers of people when they want it.

    • Re:Hype? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by kuiken ( 115647 )
      ok please explain this to me,
      my cdrom is 40x150KB/s= 6000KB/s (granted it does not actualy achieve those speeds but hdpram -t gives me 2867 KBS/s )
      my cable modem gets 4Mbs max thats 512KB/s ( fast mirror would get me about 300KB/s)
      so even if you take in acount the 4:1 compresion that would only effectively get me 2048KB/s
      (thats using the maximum modem speed vs effective CDROM speed)

      So what are they only installing a minimal version of the game and downloading stuff as needed ?

      • Yeah, obviously. That's what it's all about. No need to download the entire CD at one time. Just download what you need when (or just before) you need it. This can be accomplished quite easily, and the software can download stuff in the background while you're doing less network-intensive tasks (like playing in singleplayer mode or designing maps).
    • I dont know.

      After messing around on the software trying to get it working and posing some questions about it i finally got it up and running.

      I run a P111 900 with 512mb ram and GeForce 2 MX 64mb over a cable modem linl. Install of the game took about 1 minute and then i was in and it runs as smooth at 1024x768 as it ever did off my pc (but i wish they could get rid of that fscking opening movie - ive seen it enough)

      The interesting thin is file size. I run a firewall on my xp box (only zone alarm but it works) and it shows i donwloaded 80.1 mb. The size of the Cache directory is 565 mb. Thats some very interesting compression.

      As it stands it works and i would pay a MINIMAL fee for the service is the speed would be the same. Bearing in mind im in australia and im guessing the server is not local to me its not bad and the game runs solid with about the same level change slowdown as it does off cd.
      • The interesting thin is file size. I run a firewall on my xp box (only zone alarm but it works) and it shows i donwloaded 80.1 mb. The size of the Cache directory is 565 mb. Thats some very interesting compression.

        If you read the forums/FAQ's on the Valve STEAM beta support site, you'll see that the cache file is much larger than it needs to be, during beta... the cache file is created locally and up-front by the STEAM client, and doesn't have much to do with how much you actually transfer. I'm assuming they'll lower the cache file size before they do a commercial release...

        As for the payment options, Valve has said they'll continue to offer updates to existing customers free via STEAM... but as a distribution system it supports much more variable payment methods, such as a flat rate subscription fee (game-of-the-month club, or an EverQuest/UO/AC/DAoC type game), one-time fee (buy online, no shipping fees), possibly even a pay-per-play system (online video arcades!)

        Add to this the fact that it will address some of the update distribution systems... no more waiting for five hours on FilePlanet because Popular Game X released 80MB patch Y! I'll be interested in seeing if it works as promised, but this is fairly a fairly progressive system... I'll be interested to see what results from this.

    • Well, maybe he's only using a 2x CDROM

  • Not used for what you think (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CmdrTaco (editor) ( 564483 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:05AM (#3206222)
    This "Steam" content delivery system raises my eyebrows, and it should raise yours as well. We live in a world driven by advertising, especially through media such as the web and TV. I wouldn't hesitate to think that some bright executive would get the idea in his head to use this for marketing purposes.

    From the article:
    With it, we can market and have direct communication with customers, sales and distribution

    This doesn't sound like directly downloading games. This sounds like the company taking over your computer and forcing you to watch an advertisement for their product, then "allowing" you to purchase it with a single click of the mouse.

    At present, the amount of advertising on the web is becoming increasingly intrusive, but we still have one advantage- we can choose (for the most part) when we want to be abused. I have pity for people whose employment requires them to surf the web as they have no choice when they are forced to endure such pop-up banner misery. With "Stream", the Internet may very well turn into what the modern day telephone has become, a boon for telemarketers and con artists alike. They can choose when they wish to interrupt us, whether it be from a family meal or our favorite TV shows, to allow them the high likelyhood that we can be reached, as the demographics have clearly been researched on such common behavioral patterns.

    I, for one, will take this new technology with a grain of salt. It may just step over the fine line between spyware and trojans, and while on paper it may look like a great idea, I would caution those who think being early adopters would be a rewarding experience.

    • My ideas fascinate me. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I wish to subscribe to myself.

    • Re:Not used for what you think (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tribbles ( 218927 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:48AM (#3206308) Homepage
      ...
      then "allowing" you to purchase it with a single click of the mouse.


      Wouldn't Amazon complain about this?

    • Perhaps by noting your ad viewing patterns the game content downloaded to you will be textures containing cusomized ads that will apear on wall in the game universe, posters, billboards, decals on players backs, etc. Player 1: Rally at the Toyota billboard. Player 2: What Toyota billboard? Player 1: Above the tunnel entrace we found a few minutes ago. Player 2: That was a Sony billboard. Player 3: Uh, I'm pretty sure it was "Girls Gone Wild". Yeah I'm pretty sure, I uh got distracted and got fragged.
      • Ouch.. no, no no.. I can already see it happening. Then you'll have the radio communications contain ads ("Our PlayStation 2 Command Center is under attack!").. then next thing you know, you'll be wielding the McHamburger Blaster 2000, and using it to feed hungry McDonalds customers in a non-violent, family-friendly game...

        Maybe I shouldn't post at 5 in the morning..
    • I would agree 100% if it weren't for the fact that Valve was introducing it. I still share your concerns, but I was part of the half-life community from the start, and I know more about Valve than any business I've ever been a customer to. Here's to hoping that they'll actively combat abuses while they're out licensing it to third parties.
      • I would agree 100% if it weren't for the fact that Valve was introducing it.

        ya, i feel much better about a company that has only released one game about 5 years ago and has repackaged and resold it in about 5 different packages. is there any more milk in halflife to milk?
        • ya, i feel much better about a company that has only released one game about 5 years ago and has repackaged and resold it in about 5 different packages. is there any more milk in halflife to milk?

          <sarcasm>Yes! Yes! Who cares about gameplay anyways? It's old, so it must be crap... give me my new buzzword-laden engine! I don't care if it's space invaders, as long as it's got pixel-shaded, alpha-channel-blended, motion-captured spherically rendered space invaders! </sarcasm>

    • Most of the objections raised by Taco and others posting here can be applied equally to EverQuest and all of the other pay2play MMORPGs, or gaming in general.

      -Mod support: This requires an active contribution from the developers in any case. Modifying a game that hasn't had mod support written in and documented by the developers would be ridiculously difficult. If developers don't want people to modify the game, they can QUITE easily make it prohibitively difficult to do so. If the developers don't want people modifying the game, it doesn't matter if it's on Steam or not.

      -"They can choose when they wish to interrupt us, whether it be from a family meal or our favorite TV shows, to allow them the high likelyhood that we can be reached, as the demographics have clearly been researched on such common behavioral patterns": This is a problem with *any* application you run with priveliges to access the internet. If you don't like what an application does, don't run it. The distribution method is irrelevant.

      To bounce around some other threads in this discussion:

      -Account Security concerns: Once again, this is a problem with *anything* dealing with identity, authentication, and money on the internet.

      -"i still want to know WHY the credit card information": Why does EQ want your credit card #? So they can charge you money to gain access to their servers, obviously.

      As for concerns about advertising... *why*? This is obviously being modeled as a continuous revenue stream-- monthly fees. Ads that annoy and alienate players are a net LOSE for their bottom line.

      Quite simply, Steam is a response to the realization that online multiplayer is *the* market segment to be in for gaming.

      I also think that this is a great idea. I'd *love* to be able to download games for a nominal fee ($10) or so, and not renew the service after the first month if it wasn't worth it.

      Bottom line: The scary parts of Steam aren't anything new, and the good stuff might mean a revolution in content distribution for gaming. From a distribution and support perspective, this is brilliant! Imagine clients being patched without user effort and bugs being reported with the system specs instantly available to the support systems. Imagine being able to get a refund for games that simply refuse to run on your system. Imagine raising the bar for the difficulty of cheating so high that it ceases to become an issue. Imagine the mod-distribution possibilities! It's *difficult* to pay attention to all of the half-life mods that are available, let alone download them and get them working.

      All-around, this is hardcore win-win for gamers and developers.
    • The thought of having my computer taken over by something that controls the keyboard and screen through DRI/DirectX and that has an Internet-based marketing company at the other hand isn't exactly pleasant.

      At least with a web browser, I still have some control...

    • Namely, the push into subscription-based models for ALL games. If we could imagine a scenario where all game publishers are using Steam to deliver games, sooner or later (probably sooner), one of the suits is going to suggest that they could make a heck of a lot more revenue selling subscriptions to games rather than selling the actual game.

      Yes, they are saving money by not selling shrink-wrapped CD's. But those savings are going to be short-lived as everyone starts competing in online distribution. And once they realize that they have cut game prices as low as they can to compete, the next logical step is subscriptions for everything (single-player games included).

      You won't be able to "relive the good old days" without whipping out the credit card first. :-(
  • It hasn't been received very well.
  • "In the latest survey by Speakeasy, over 75% of players use broadband..."

    Aren't the majority of Speakeasy's [speakeasy.com] business built primarily at targetting "power users", such as gamers who seek broadband? That makes their statistics not exactly a snapshot for who's actually the majority of their players.

    One of the main reasons CounterStrike (and therefore Half Life) seem to be still selling well is the number of low end systems, such as those found in "internet cafes", that can comfortably run it, which doesn't point to the majority of the players being broadband enabled.

    Regardless, isn't Valve pretty much only about CounterStrike and other Half Life (ie Half Life, but this time you play as one of the Black Mesa janitors) knockoffs these days? At least, Team Fortress II seems to have fallen off all our radars.

    • Re:A little skewed, perhaps? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The statistic's actually aren't necessarily Speakeasy's. The statistics come from a survey application that was included in the last patch for Half-Life and executed upon installation of the patch. Speakeasy just provided the bandwidth and the servers for collecting the data:

      http://valve.speakeasy.net/survey/
    • I know a suprising amount of people with low end machines hooked up to really fat pipes - broadband is generally considered a smaller cost than a new, high end computer (~$200 setup/modem/etc for broadband, ~$800-1000 for a new machine). Alot of these people, while not "power gamers", do play alot of counterstrike, half-life, quake 2, etc.

  • Security Issues? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cybergibbons ( 554352 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:08AM (#3206229) Homepage

    With Steam, all of your authentication information is stored server side.

    Surely this is not a good thing? It is in reference to a re-install - initially I thought each copy of Steam would contain some form of authentication with the servers, but if you have just done a complete re-install, Steam will be gone as well as your half-life CD key.

    It could be something as simple as a password, but game developers aren't noted for their skills in the security world - simply gaining access to someones "account" could gain you access to every game they own

    Of course, that is what Kazaa et. al are for

  • I thought they were dead or something?
    • wtf?? can someone please explain to me the concept of trolling? for instance, why is wanting to know why Sierra is still considered to be a heavyweight even though I haven't seen a game from them in years, considered to be such?
      • Because Sierra is one of the biggest game publishers on the planet. Consider:

        Half-Life
        Aliens vs. Predator 2
        Tribes 2
        Die Hard
        No One Lives Forever
        Arcanum
        King's Quest 8
        NASCAR Racing series
        Empire Earth
        Homeworld

        Those are only a few selected games out of their much larger total list of software published. They're nowhere near gone.
  • "Vapour" software delivery system jokes.

    Come to think of it, I guess I just did.

    • Re:Ok, let's start with the... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And it might actually be funny, if not for the fact that 60K+ people have already been testing Steam, and YOU CAN TOO:

      http://steampowered.com/html/betasignup.html

      Currently you can get Counter-Strike 1.4 beta, TFC, even the original Half-Life single player game, all via Steam and all free (no need to have purchased anything).

      • Re:Ok, let's start with the... Yes BUT (Score:4, Interesting)

        by q-soe ( 466472 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @05:08AM (#3206340) Homepage
        Its free but it asks for credit card details and there is no indication on the site or information about why they want it.

        Plus they ask for special offer code which you dont have of course.

        Why do they need my credit card? why wont they tell me why they need it ? I dont give my card number out to anyone for any verification process, its bullshit and a company the size of valve should not need it.

        I wanted to try this out but i wont be doing so as i wont give them my credit card - this is a BETA test. At this point it reminds me of the famous Lindows pay $99 to beta test our software but you cant tell anyone about it or show it to anyone.

        Something smells fishy here.
        • Apologies i missed the bit about key generator in the setup BUT i still want to know WHY the credit card
          • A further Update.

            I apologise - in a conversation with tech support on the forum i have discovered that their keygen had an issue and didnt work properly thats why it asked me for the CC number.

            It does that without the secret code as its a full working version of the client they will be using.

            I have now downloaded the software and played half life, i have a post in the same story about it an i can say that it appears to work as advertised.

            I was wrong.

            I apologise.
            • THIS, my friends, is one of my biggest complaints about the Internet. The uninformed can start bashing anything to their hearts content. Here is a case where someone started baching a product he hadn't yet used. Then he used it, and bashed various parts of it without fully reading the notes on what he was using. Then, he finally figures it all out, and posts a "retraction" ... that few people will ever read.

              People are so quick to "have their say", they don't stop to think whether or not what they are saying is factually based or not.

              In this particular case, Valve has done more for PC gaming (and Internet gaming) than most companies ever dream of. Half-Life is indeed an incredible value, as is just about everything of Valve's I've touched.

              I have no reason to beleive that Steam doesn't work as they claim (people are using it and says that it does indeed work just as Gabe claims), or that there is some huge ulterior motive here. Just more Slashdot conspiracy theorists, needing something besides Microsoft to bitch about.

              Hell, there's a post above where someone managed to take a shot at MS (something about needing to reinstall Windows and losing your cd-key for Half-Life) in addition to Valve. That takes talent of a sort.

              The Internet has given everyone a voice. And everyone uses that voice to BITCH.
              • I apologised for my error and i didnt bash the product - i have bought every one of valves releases and until i contacted them i had no idea what the issue was, the documentation on the site wasn' good enough.

                If you do some investigating on this subject you will find another post by me in which i support and proclaim valve for the quality of the product.

                I apologised and used my logged in name for it thus risking losing karma. I have never karma whored and worked damn hard to build it up BUT the right thing to do is apolgise if you make an error.

                As for the conspiracy theory stuff, read some of my other posts - im not a linux zealot, i often post supporting MS.

                But i love the last line about bitching

                Pot meet kettle
        • The beta never asks for a credit card number. How do I know? I'm in the beta. I don't have a credit card number. End of story. Regards. Guspaz.
        • 'cuz I don't even have a credit card, and Steam runs just fine without me entering one.

          At any rate, I'm guessing that the credit card number is there because they'll be offering "subscriptions" to other 'software content' at a price. Give away counterstrike to get people looking, and then make a half-assed attempt at selling people on other games.
  • Sega use to do this way back when. They used to have the Sega Channel, an adapter that hooked up to a Genesis and would let you play games. I wonder what's so revolutionary about this time around. Doesn't sound to different based on the info provided on the links, well except that it installs in less time than a cd.
    • The new thing with this system is it streams game content as needed. So you can be playing level 1 while its downloading level 2 (simple example). The Sega channel would just download the full Genesis ROM image, put it in RAM, and then play it.
  • Publishers (and the retailers) are the bane of the
    games industry.

    No one is willing to pick up innovative products.
    I've hard too many horror stories of imbecilic external producers meddling with projects (I.e. I have random whim X and I want you to retarget your entire game to accommodate it. No wait I now want you to do Y instead etc...)
  • This is obviously a ploy aimed squarely at turning the online Half-life community into a pay-for-play revenue stream, at least over the long haul. The 'shack article [shacknews.com] alludes slightly to this, although Gabe Newell makes it sound a little more palatable, and wants to be our friend. He promises not to charge us twice for the same product. All who believe him, raise your hand.

    While the features mentioned (automatic patches, etc.) are very cool, they're also merely the bullet points needed to sell the software to developers and clients.

    Gamers are likely eager to jump on the technology if they can get the latest patches and maps without having to take an active role in the proces by going out and downloading them proactively.

    Developers are likely to use it because then they don't have to worry about producing media, documentation, or those other annoying things that soften the pain of paying $50 a pop to most gamers.

    Valve wins 2 ways: First, they can move all of the userbase over to a subscription model and start making little hats out of money. Second, they can get a piece of each sale from other developers' work that hits their content distribution system, and make little money shirts to match the hats.

    Think about it. Half-Life came out 5 years ago. A lot of us have plunked down our $50 and have been playing away happily ever since at Counterstrike, DOD, Existence, and many other wonderful mods without giving Valve a penny.

    Now, the case can easily be made that Valve DESERVES more cash. They've continued to pump money into the Half-life community, making Counterstrike into a commercial product, releasing the classic quake and team fortress classic mods, releasing patches and feature upgrades these many years, and constantly improving the product.

    This works fine while your game is in the top seller lists through constant re-release. It breaks down when you hit market saturation. Who does Valve turn to when Half-Life isn't in the top 20 anymore, and Team Fortress II is no longer even a twinkle in Gabe Newell's eye?

    It turns to you, the purchaser of the original product, who is brazenly continuing to enjoy the it long after anyone thought you would still pay attention to it. Your brazen audacity shown by not becoming a consistent revenue stream will be corrected once and for all!

    In fact, if you buy a game over Steam, who's to say that the content provider can't just turn it off a few years down the road when the sequel's released? With constant enforcement of new patch downloads, what happens to purists who might enjoy the gameplay of an earlier revision? What if I want to install a custom hack such as a Tribes 2 HUD or build my own decal in Half-Life, only to have these changes constantly overwritten by the autoupdater?

    Control over how I can execute my software should be left in my hands, not in the hands of a subscription service or remote authentication server. The current system isn't broken, and steam doesn't really address any significant problems except Valve's diminishing bottom line.
    • I dunno. Blizzard has maintained the bnet servers for years (yes, complaints about slow service not withstanding) without charging existing users lame-ass subscription fees. I think Valve could get away with it if they could use the opportunity to cut out all the overhead expenses associated with feeding the deadwood between them and the consumer.

      Now, if only we could get rid of those MPAA and RIAA middlemen and their hired guns using Steam as well...
    • What we may have is the virtual coin-operated game. Want to play a game, drop that virtual coin into the virtual slot.

      Pay for play will be a necessity to some degree, those bits being sent to you cost the developer money. Not just the development of those bits but physically sending them to you, bandwidth costs. Those who choose to pay for the game up front are prepaying for their bits.

    • Re:Coming up next: Pay for play (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How?

      No one forced Valve to make HL so mod-friendly. And if they didn't, developers would simply go to a different game. Indeed, Valve already is getting more money than they theoretically should, all because of third party mods.

      What's more, third party mod developers (Well, the good ones) are often drafted into gaming houses because of the fact that they've displayed they know what they're doing, unlike most people being churned out of universities.

      Oh, I agree with the rest, but there's no real case for Valve being owed more money for what they've done - they're reaping benefits already from being mod-friendly.

    • Now, the case can easily be made that Valve DESERVES more cash. They've continued to pump money into the Half-life community, making Counterstrike into a commercial product, releasing the classic quake and team fortress classic mods, releasing patches and feature upgrades these many years, and constantly improving the product.

      Hell yeah. Over the years, I've probably gotten more gameplay from single-player Half-Life, deathmatch, Team Fortress Classic, and Counterstrike alone than any other recent game in memory. We're talking solid *months* of engrossing, well-produced, *fun* gameplay. Also, over the years, I've gladly bought two or three replacement Half-Life CDs for those that were lost or lent because, well, they damn well deserve it.

      On the other hand, you have something like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Bland single-player, unimaginative and buggy multiplayer, not really worth playing for more than a few hours, if that. (IMHO) Borrowed a friends copy for "evaluation purposes", and was immediately disappointed, and very glad that I didn't drop $65 at a local retailer for it. I will gladly spend that $65 on a game from someone like Valve.

    • While I don't doubt that Steam gives Valve a mechanism for eventually offering pay-per-play games, they've so far shown that they're far more interested in mining the obscenely huge video game market in a less insidious way. After all, they saw what a huge success Counter-Strike was and decided on their own to pour money and resources into making it a high-quality mod because they knew even if CS was free, it'd drive sales of Half-Life. Sure, they created a multiplayer-only version of HL based on CS and sold it separately, but everybody who'd bought HL when it first came out could get a commercial-quality multiplayer game based on HL for free.

      It seems that Steam's development explains why Valve has been utterly silent on TF2 for the last year, though. They've clearly decided not to roll out TF2 until Steam is completed.

  • is it (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Push Technology, 5 years too late? *grin*
  • Watch out! It's SYNAPSE !

  • Nothing new at all (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CathedralRulz ( 566696 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:42AM (#3206303)
    Kind of funny to read about this on Gamespy - as they have a product, the Gamespy arcade, that does EVERYTHING that this "steam" product does.

    It uses broadband? Well so does Gamespy.

    Besides, haven't they learned that it's the GAMES that drive the platform, not the other way around.

  • downloading patches from servers full of banner ads and click me's and X-10 camera ads. It's annoying as hell these things, they make me want to reach through the computer screen and get very angry with someone. Lets hope they take an approach similiar to this article.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/20/0143 24 8&mode=thread

  • More Important is What They're Not Telling You (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:55AM (#3206319) Homepage Journal

    This is, of course, the Holy Grail of the "content" industries: Never even pretend to sell anything again, just rent access to it. Steam looks like it's the first cohesive attempt to do exactly this.

    First, the scenario they describe to make Steam seem appealing ("You need to re-install Windows from scratch, but you can't find your Half-Life CD key! What will you do!?") fails on two major points:

    • The need to re-install Windows at all. This is due to perennially shoddy Microsoft engineering, and it's a damn shame Valve is spending precious R&D dollars trying to compensate for it.
    • The illusory need for a CD key.
    Cut out either of those issues, and Steam's appeal to users is diminished.

    Second, I challenge the claim that, with nothing stored on the local disk, Half-Life starts up quickly. Half-Life is fscking enormous. Single maps are at least 1M in size, with 3M being entirely common. Do the math yourself. Even at 1.5Mb/sec saturated, that's still 20 seconds just to download the map. Then you get to download the player models, sound effects, music tracks, etc. etc. Unless they've done some massive engineering to achieve "just-in-time" downloading (this is still a major area of ongoing research), I don't see how they could have made this an acceptable alternative over storing the files locally.

    Third, if they're saturating the link to download the content, what's left for actually playing the game over the network? Many people get broadband for the lower ping and higher rate, resulting in smoother, more responsive game play. What happens to that experience when some other process is consuming the lion's share of the link?

    Fourth, not having a complete copy of all the bits needed to run the software makes me extremely queasy. What happens when the master index server craps out? What happens when my Steam client gets toasted by the latest Outlook virus?

    Having all the bits stored locally is also what's helped bootstrap and maintain the Mod community. There, on your disk, are numerous examples of maps/models/art/music that can be taken apart by users, studied, and used by creative people to come up with new maps and Mods. But what happens to all that when Steam enters the picture? The bits aren't on your disk. Will Steam hand you a copy of the bits, or will it refuse, claiming you're not a, "trusted application?"

    Fifth, I don't see the "daily update to thwart cheaters" as a feature at all, much less a realistic goal. The two primary things standing in the way of this are:

    • Proxies on separate machines can still be written, nullifying local attempts to thwart hacks;
    • Release testing for Windoze takes at least a month. Regression tests against Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME Harder, Windows NT4, Windows NT5 (2K), Windows XP, and all the various forms of hell that is DirectX practically guarantees that the notion of quick-tweak-and-post-to-server just ain't gonna happen.

    Finally, I'm concerned about all the stuff they're not telling you. There are obvious privacy/security concerns here:

    • How is billing performed? Can I pay in advance by cash or check? Who will have access to my credit card number?
    • How does Steam know it's "me"? Are login sessions encrypted so no one can obtain my password without my permission?
    • Once I'm logged in, how much data is Steam gathering about me in the background? Are they sniffing around in my machine? Are they tracking which games I'm playing, when, and for how long? What will Steam do with that information once they obtain it? (Any why do they imagine this would be any of their damn business?)

    Personally, I'm all for developing new facilities that help cut out the middleman and get more dollars directly to the creators of digital works. Perhaps it's my aging, cynical brain but, as a software consumer, I just don't see any advantage Steam provides for me.

    Schwab

    • Good points. Also:

      What happens when my cable modem is down and I wanna play, or I go to a LAN party with no outside connection? I get into the game and all of a sudden "could not connect to Steam server for texture x."

      I have a cable modem so I have extra bandwidth. If I want to download some big file while playing and streaming an mp3, I can do it. Forget it if this is using 90% of my bandwidth!

  • Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

    by The_Shadows ( 255371 )
    Content delivery system? From Valve?

    This is what has been staving off the release off Team Fortress 2 (and Half-Life 2, for that matter)?!?!?

    Valve: I want TF2! Make with the gaming!
  • ... bpjs! The german Bundesprüfstelle für jungendgefährdende Schriften reviews games upon request if they endanger people younger than 18 years. They do (in their opinion) if they contain too much gore or glorify cruelty. They than are "indiziert". Which means you cant put up ads for it anymore, put it in your store shelfs or sell it to people younger than 18 (id required). But with steam there are no store shelfs, no german retails, whose store shelfes one could search or anything. What will they do against this? ;-)

  • Half-Life in 45 seconds (Score:4, Informative)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @05:21AM (#3206370)
    I just installed their beta; took less than 10 seconds of download to get the steam code. I installed Half-Life and it took 45 seconds to install, and I was in the game.

    The process is beautifully seamless.
    • Sorry, could you expand on this?

      Did you have Half Life installed at all before starting Steam up? If not, what sort of connection are you on?

      45 seconds of "normal" broadband (around 50 kbytes/sec) comes out to about 2.25 Mb of content - Doom was larger than that, so forgive me if I'm a little sceptical that Half Life can be retrieved that rapidly.

      If not, what exactly was being retrieved here - the CS 1.4 upgrade? If so, did you have CS 1.3 installed already, or was this a full download? In either case, 45 seconds would be impressive - the CS 1.3 full installer was around 100 Mb, and the CS 1.1 to 1.3 updater was about 35 Mb.

      Cheers.

      Tim.
      • I have AT&T broadband. Also, just because Gabe says 4x compression, some types of data, like 3d map data, can compress up to 50:1.
  • (Hm. I suppose since they made a public announcement NDAs don't apply...)

    I thought the Steam delivery system was just for the beta testers. I hate the bloody thing. Runs in the background, downloads maps as you need them, requires you to log on to play, etc. I figured it was a necessary evil as a beta tester; I'm not going to put up with it as a gamer. Is there some way to boycott this? First PowerPlay and now this shit. Valve isn't a game company - game companies make games.
  • I am not going to dwell on the fact that Gabe and the boys didn't actually make a game that was not HL in a new box for a long, long time (and NEVER so far produced a good online game) - yet are currently integrating the most annoying features of all online shenanigans into a client which we will have to use (transparently, mind you) once they DO publish a game. That would be low.

    But the steam driven ploy is going to fail.

    Even though the past is a long string of successes for schemes allowing users to communicate directly with people who use their brain as a symbolic battlefield in which corporations win cash and the people win the ticking pounding urge to get a shotgun and kill, kill, kill - the result is not to be generalized onto this case.
    As the world's premiere gaming psychologist, I can tell that:
    1. gamers LOVE colorful boxes
    2. downloads are for free stuff

    Now, if they would only throw one of those Comet-cursor thingies in their Steam engine, it would be so cool.

    ~zecg.

  • What IS their reason for doing this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cca93014 ( 466820 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @05:37AM (#3206390) Homepage
    Although I am a little suspicious of Valves long term strategy for Steam, I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

    The main concern of a pay-to-play model seems unfounded; Valve are doing very well at the moment as it is. Steam is going to give them even higher profit margins through the removal of the majority of the supply chain.

    The argument that the current system isn't broken is completely flawed. The CS community is almost at breaking point with regard to cheating. IMHO this is the killer app of Steam. I dont mind waiting an hour to download the latest CS update, and I certainly wouldn't pay for the removal of this inconvenience, but I WOULD pay 5 pounds a month for a guaranteed cheat free counter strike. Most people I know who play CS would do the same. Cheating is endemic and hopefully this will be the silver bullet.

    Valve seem to understand the gamer pretty well. They have heavily backed the modding community (a risky business decision as they net no revenue from existing HL customers) and have come out winners. Just because they are a capitalist business doesn't mean they are stupid. They know how fickle gamers can be and they know that their position could easily become tenuous if they start installing spyware all over the place.

    Sometimes you need to have faith in a company and give them your support (read $$$ or £££ or whatever) for them to create a revolutionary product.

    I'm going to support it. And I applaud Valve for setting this thing up. Sure, if they start spamming me to hell or intruding on my game I'll reconsider, but I think we have to give this sort of project a break and wait and see what happens...
    • While cheat prevention may be a nice benefit of Steam, it's simply part of selling their product, not a product in itself. Remember Punkbuster? From what I recall, Tony Ray stopped development of Punkbuster because Valve wouldn't give him the support he needed. While I've heard it's not omnipotent, it certainly did a lot for the TFC community with respect to cheating. If someone could do that as a part time job (though it was a lot of work), you'd think that Valve could pick up some of the slack and incorporate a similar system into HL. In retrospect, perhaps Steam is why Valve didn't support Tony and Punkbuster. There might be a lot more to the story then I remember though, since I was offline at the time it happened, but the point remains the same - anticheating is not sufficient justification for Steam.

      Now I'm just wondering if anyone will read this. =)

      slowdive

  • Yes STEAM is gonna be excellent for gamers to recive the updates. but really ive noticed it downloads in a pritty much uncompressed format, which makes life hell for us old 56kers. Imagine downloading a good 100-150mb of files to run the new version of counterstrike on a 2 hour limited dialup...nasty.

    I just hope they still release Counterstrike in the old package versions, or i'll be quickly leaving...

  • Does anybody else remember valve's last effort called PowerPlay? It promised to make gaming over dialup as good as gaming over broadband... As far as I know, only one ISP ever came out with "support" for PowerPlay and it was generally a big flop (because it didn't DO anything?). Run a search at Bluesnews.com news for "PowerPlay" and you'll read about all the hype... but nothing ever came of it.

    As for steam, I'm always wary of this server-side stuff, especially in gaming (where there's really no point). What does this do? Well, when your internet connection goes down (and it happens a lot around here), you don't get to play? What a sham.
  • I'm not sure how Valve hopes to turn in profit with their Steam engine. I was under the impression that the bandwidth was costly enough for a 'simple' game server. But they are proposing that you download the whole game (runtime file at least) every time you want to play? Or simply every time there is a new version available? Which would be the same as patching to me...

    Where is the revenue coming from anyway? Monthly fee per game or pay once and play anytime?

    I, for one, would not trust too much such a service if you don't get the game CD-ROM shipped at some point. It suspiciously looks like it could fold anytime and you'd be left without the games you used to play, definitly.

    Also, if you think you are going to get 200kb/sec donwload time, I'd like to point you to the Anarchy Online release. You could dnload the CD from the net and then burn it. Even under those condition, it was quite tough to get the files under 5-6 hours. (By those conditions I mean the necessity of having a burner to do it).

    • I was under the impression that the bandwidth was costly enough for a 'simple' game server. But they are proposing that you download the whole game (runtime file at least) every time you want to play? Or simply every time there is a new version available?

      One idea (although there's a slimy aspect to it) would be to take the Napster approach and shift the bandwidth cost back to their users. Instead of serving multimegabyte files, just be a directory that refers requests to other people who have already downloaded it. When you connect, you would become a server for whatever you've already downloaded.

  • I beta tested Steam for awhile. It's a great idea and all, but sometimes waiting for it to download isn't all that much fun. There were also some problems where the cache got corrupted (I'd assume that's fixed). I think the best part, thought, was that I got to play Counterstrike 1.4 before a lot of people. Oh, I didn't, on the flip side, mention how cool it is to be able to play without downloading patches. I guess storing the game in the cache is a small price to pay for that. For inventiveness and a great idea, I give Valve 4/5 stars. Give it a shot once you can.
  • ...I'm not sold on "Steam" yet.

    I have a "broadband" internet connection by Valve's definition, which is to have at least 256KB/s.

    I have 768KB/s DSL. Using Steam is not exactly fast.

    Downloading the newest Counter-Strike Beta (1.4) via Steam took about 30 minutes, on a weekday, outside of any peak internet usage as far as I can tell.

    This would be bearable, since you only have to do it once and occassionally upgrade to newer versions.

    What really bugs me though is that it takes five times (I clocked it) longer to get into the game than connecting to a Counter-Strike 1.3 server. Now why the hell does that have to be?

    On a tangent, I'd care less if it would take 10 times as long to connect if the touted anti-cheat features actually work.
  • People who use PC's are, by neccessity, aware of how the guts of their machines work to a degree, especially on-line gamers. THIS means that 90% of Steam users will worry about the two following items:

    1) Invasion of privacy. What else is Steam doing in my system?

    2) Pay-per-use Data. "You mean I don't own what I just paid for? Games are not movies. You want to access them many many more times than once or twice.

    People who use PC's are not quite as sheepish as game platform users. --That is, platform users are less likely to understand why something like Steam is invasive and ecconomically corrupt.

    This is just another 'softener' for the eventual establishment of virtual money, bio-metrics and similar attempts at massive population control.

    Has anybody else noticed that this so-called, 'Beta Testing' phase is in fact a mass distribution effort? "2000 more users a day???" This is not a beta test. The program is already in the bag. This is wide scale marketing, and people are falling for it.


    -Fantastic Lad

  • I had the good fortune to be allowed to be a beta tester of Steam. It works quite well. What happens is you download a small (Was ~1MB) installer program. This installed the Steam client software onto your computer. You then chose which games you were going to "subscribe" to (Yes, you have to pay timed fees by the game, but it was free during the beta). My largest complaints are probably space and time :p Each game gets a cache folder which is by default 500MB. So, your Half-Life folder is 500MB, your TFC folder is 500MB, your CS folder is 500MB... It adds up. The other is time... There is no way that anything short of ethernet-based internet access would be able to rivel the speed of a CD. First of all, I really doubt they are getting 4:1 compression on that data. If they were, they'd make more money licensing THAT then they would selling the games! Anyhow, when you first play the game, it takes a while on my 1mbit DSL connection to download everything (Luckily they have good servers, so I get full speed). Maybe 3-5 minutes for the initial data. Then, the other annoying fact is that you have to download the maps before you play them if you've not before. So games usually have a bunch of people spectating in the beginning while everyone downloads and connects (It takes longer even when you do have the map, and it still says "Downloading and initializing" for some reason...) Nevertheless, I was impressed. While the delays were annoying, it was nothing like having to download an entire 500MB game to play... I myself only had to worry about downloading 1MB. I'd also like to comment on single-player; I was very impressed by the experience. Unlike multiplayer, single player loads ahead while you're playing. So once you download the initial footprint, and you're playing, you can just keep playing. The only way you'd know that you're not playing it off a CD is that your modem lights are blinking madly... The experience was completely seamless with no pauses for downloading, ever. Even the original CD music was included in MP3 format. Regards, Adam.
  • I just want to say something here about Valve's new content delivery system. This comes from the guys that can't even get a Half-Life or CounterStrike update to you, without using 20 non-working mirrors in Japan at 4k/s. Who here has downloaded the latest 38 files to upgrade CounterStrike to be playable? How many sites did you have to click on, and how many banners did you have to click through after you tried all 20 non-working mirrors?

    I'm a cable user, and trying to get updates are a joke. The updater software that ships with their products doesn't even work, out of the box even. Jesus, these guys can't even get patches out for their own games. I wouldn't trust them to do game distribution.

    -Pat

  • Vaporware? (Score:2, Funny)

    by jcc ( 55702 )
    (Score:5, Funny)
    Steam? Sounds like vaporware to me!
  • Ah, good thing they've been holding off on Team Fortress 2 for YEARS in order to create this masterpiece.

    Back to work, Valve!

  • Steam has been great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chuckaluphagus ( 111487 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @10:47AM (#3207348)
    I've been a beta tester for Steam since mid-January, and I've been immensely pleased with the software and the gameplay. In order to play any game, you have to go through an initial download of compressed files, and it all takes up about half a gigabyte on your hard drive. This can take a while, but it's a one-shot deal, so I'd pick up a book or make myself dinner for twenty minutes. After this first delay, all updates are handled automatically at login, and they're transparent- unless you bother to check, you're never going to notice that some small patch has been installed to the software.

    Login is a simple name(e-mail address, really) and password. This may certainly change, but that's how it stands now. There are no ads beyond a mention of Speakeasy.net, the company hosting the Steam servers, I gather.

    The interface for game selection is excellent, as is the "Tracker" software, a combination IM/Gamespy Arcade applet that helps you find servers. The software does seem to improve on a near-daily basis, with fixes to minor bugs, improving ping times, etc. The staff has been great about communication on both the forums and through e-mail.

    And one of the best things about Steam was watching all those people who have based their entire game of Counterstrike around bunny-hopping fall flat on their faces. CS 1.4 was first demoed over Steam, and it removed bunny hopping. Bloody crack rabbits getting capped left and right, swearing about how horrible the game is now. Brings tears of laughter to my eyes...

  • all hype (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mshurpik ( 198339 )
    So you play online games, right? You play Counter-Strike? Team Fortress Classic?

    No, not really, just Starcraft.

    You hate cheaters? How about downloading patches?

    Starcraft downloads patches automatically.

    It uses a high-performance distributed file system for fast, scalable content delivery.

    I think the bottleneck is probably still the Internet.

    This is only a small glimpse of what Steam will be able to do.

    So, as usual, you haven't written any code yet.

    Here is a familiar scenario: You reinstall Windows on your PC. You then start to reinstall your favorite games, only to discover you can't find your Half-Life CD-Key! Doh! What are you going to do?

    I'll put my CD key in a textfile called cd-keys.txt (and maybe I'll even print it out!)

    With Steam, all of your authentication information is stored server side.

    "With Hitler's Third Reich, all your racial/ethnic information is stored in Berlin!"

    After launching Half-Life from Steam, it downloaded the necessary files (which took hardly any time at all - actually it was faster than using a CD)

    broadband = T5 in this scenario?

    92% wire utilization

    Wow, you saturated my connection. Doesn't *every* packet-switched application do this?

    GameSpy will have more updates about Steam as it becomes available.

    Go, code monkeys, go! Work that emacs buffer!!

  • ummm (Score:2)

    by asv108 ( 141455 )
    Shouldn't they be spending more time on TF2? I preordered it from ebworld.com in September of 98, it was suppose to arrive on my doorstep in late November of 1998 and I have been waiting diligently on my doorstep every day since for my TF2 add-on pack.

  • Half Life is five years old. That's an eternity in terms of software. Since that time they have developed a grand total of zero games. none. Since that time they have re-released half-life countless times, paid OTHER DEVELOPERS for add-on packs for half-life, and purchased the rights to half-life mods and commercially released them.
    And don't get me started on Team Fortress 2 which has been in development hell for roughly four years.

    I mean, good god... five years and no game? This makes John Romero look like a fucking workaholic.

    It seems all they do now is figure out ways to pimp out the half-life engine. Personally, I've had it with the hero worship of Valve software. Half Life was great, but what have they done for us lately??
  • Steam does sound a lot like it is a tool that could be turned to the side of evil (i.e. you don't own anything, you pay by the hour to play, la la la) but it is being released by Valve, who's shown that they do understand what the people who play their games want out of them, and what they won't stand for.

    I am actually very happy that they've spent the last few years pimping the HL engine rather than making new games- the HL engine is actually still Pretty Damn Good. It's showing its age and has a few large, nagging problems (especially numerous audio bugs) but all in all it works for mod designers.

    So, Valve has worked up the credibility to experiment a little. Let's see what comes out.

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