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Valve Releases, Tries To License Steam 68

Posted by simoniker from the valve-good-steam-bad? dept.
Thanks to Blue's News for pointing out that the non-Beta version of Valve's Steam has been released, and a valid Half-Life-related CD key is required to install the online content delivery system and play Half-Life engine games online. Since launch this morning, Planet Half-Life are noting: "we said, 'the transition over to Steam is bound to be a little bumpy,' and hoo boy, did that turn out to be an understatement", as many are experiencing installation problems and slowness at the Steam servers. Elsewhere, a Wired News article discusses Valve's plans to make the Steam software base available to others: "Valve is also actively licensing the commerce software that manages the game's download and purchase process to other developers, publishers and Internet service providers in exchange for 5 percent of their gross sales."
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Valve Releases, Tries To License Steam More

Valve Releases, Tries To License Steam

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  • Server performance (Score:5, Funny)

    by glassesmonkey ( 684291 ) * on Friday September 12, 2003 @08:06PM (#6949018) Homepage Journal
    It really gets me steam-ed when it takes half-my-life to download the latest patches
    • Hehe, would really suck if you had a bandwidth cap, and you download the game with all your available cap. Doh! I could see some people get VERY mad. (Doesnt BT have a 2gig bandwidth cap?)
    • I am REALLY fucking pissed at Valve. A group of friends and I have been playing the beta of Counterstrike 1.6 for weeks now on Steam. We were sad when the beta of Steam shut down, but knew it wouldn't be long until the final.

      Well, firstly the final was a day late... BUT, the sneaky little shits sneaked into the September 9th changelog for CS TWO DAYS AFTER IT WAS POSTED that bots had been removed from CS 1.6.

      My friend and I used bots a lot since we never knew when we could ALL get on the server at the sam
      • Rabid fanboys will always be tools. Step back and look at all the fanboys CS has. Using the Half-Life source code, theres something like 200 different mods out used, unused and/or abandoned. (Day of Defeat (used), Gunman (unused), Team Fortress (abandoned))

        Do you really think the majority of CS players are going to suddenly stop playing/forsake Valve games (until Half-Life 2 comes out) just because they lost Steam?

        • Did you actually read what I said? I don't give a rats ass about Steam. It's the fact Valve VERY underhandedly removed a much welcome feature from CS 1.6. It's one thing to be up front and honest, but to insert the change into the changelog TWO DAYS LATER in the dead of night. That's just lame.

          My friends and I have already jumped ship to another FPS. Barring Valve doing the decent thing and putting the bot code WE tested back into CS, we won't be touching a Valve product ever again.
  • support nightmare. I don't think it's worth it, atleast not right now. You may only have to pay 5% of what you grossed(that's how much money you recieved not how much profit, which makes it less reasonable to use), but to pay the support people may make it not worth it when it comes down to the total cost.
    • Actually, automatic installation of game updates and new content without the need for user interaction or maintaining an expensive file server network will significantly reduce support costs. No need to employ an army of support personnel just to say "that issue was fixed in the latest patch."

  • Half-Life petition (Score:5, Informative)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @08:17PM (#6949082)
    Vaguely on-topic. This is the first petition I've ever signed...

    Protest of Half-Life 2's requirement of an internet connection for Single Player and Lan Party games. [petitiononline.com]

    I'm waaay out of the loop with the Half-Life scene nowadays so I hope I'm not spreading FUD by posting this link. But if Valve do seriously intend to require an Internet connection for single-player and LAN games (apparently NOT just one-time product activation) then I think it would be a very bad thing.

    Thanks to Blue's News for the link.
    • [my opinion]

      Software is pushed out the door way too early. I think everyone can realize that. Since internet connections are getting more and more plentiful, I'm at least pleased that publishers have taken this into account, and made sure they can patch/update software. This may not be the best solution, but at least they're trying to lower costs while increasing customer satisfaction.

      And more importantly, come on, an online petition? I can think of better ways to waste my time, as hardly anyone (especi

      • I've always had mixed feelings about petitions, especially online petitions. On the one hand I think they're 99% pointless because they won't have any effect. But on the other hand I think it's very important that we have them and that people use them because hey, they *might* work.

        As I said, this is the first time I've ever signed a petition. It's not because this is a hugely important issue in the grand scheme of things, but I do think it's something that is clearly wrong and I would like to think (and I

        • Re:Half-Life petition (Score:3, Informative)

          by Drakin ( 415182 )
          CD checks don't stop anything but the most casual of game copying.

          Some games have -removed- copy protections from them in patches simply becuase they cause more problems than then CD piracy.

          Hell, why do you think that Mircrosoft doesn't copy protect their CD's? Because it'll cause even more problems between the hardware and software if they do.

          I will admit that CD keys, checked via an internet connetion is a good thing. For a multiplayer game. Playing it locally, not a good thing...

          Maybe that'll be the
          • **Maybe that'll be the next advance. Play the single player for free/cheap, but pay to unlock multiplayer Keycodes.**

            well that's pretty much has been a succesful course of action for counter-strike, albeit hidden behind different names(replace free/cheap with just plain warez).

            however i seriously doubt that they would need some sort of p2p thingy going on for the downloads if they really intent the servers to stay up without having unbeliviable(for them) amounts of cash sticked into servers and bandwith.
        • Well, according to CSNation (the only site recomended by Valve) there is a "solution" for LAN's, i.e., probably some downloadable patch of sorts for 100% offline play.

          I wish I had the link, but I'm sure you will be able to find it (as I know you arent the only one with this opinion - this is something Valve will need to address).

          So I guess what I'm saying (heh) is that Valve isn't stupid, and if that's your only beef with Steam (a perfectly valid one, tho) I don't think you need to be too worried.

        • First time I buy a game, and I cant play without an activation code, is the day I reverse the charges on my Creditcard, and and tell the store politely that defrauded me.

          As for CD checks, I use no-cd hacks. I paid for the game, I have the right to alter the code (for now...) NO-CD hacks make the games load faster, and I dont have to swap or bring all my games to the lan parties. All I need is my legal serial that I paid for.

          I act the Internet, I just route around the problem.
    • If (assuming that it's true) they make people connect to the internet then it would be serious misstep at an otherwise brilliant company.

      Valve has got lots of great people and is one of the few companies that can seriously challenge id in the FPS market. Making people connect to the internet to play, though? Weak.

      What if your LAN party's using some type of weird proxying system? What about other configurations? What if the inet trunk goes down and people have to say "Oh shit. No inet. Let's just play Doom
    • Untrue [halflife2.net]. For fuck's sake, give them a little credit.
      • Well until recently the www.steampowered.com FAQ (which is now offline) said that it would require connection to Steam for LAN party play, and while you could play SP w/o Steam, the first time you did anything that connected to Steam would make it require a Steam connection in the future.

        That's where this information comes from... if Valve didn't want people getting pissed about this then they shouldn't have had that in their FAQ. I'm guessing the FAQ is now offline so they can change that and other info.
        • The LAN thing makes sense because players can tunnel a virtual LAN over the internet - I still think it's unacceptable though (along with the rest of steam) to make their priority stoping illegal copying, instead of making sure it works for everyone who payed for it.

  • Mods/Skinz, valve is screwing them over... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @09:06PM (#6949318) Journal
    One of the things that kept Counterstrike fun was replacing the skin models with higher resolution skins. Real nice deagle, and CT/T skins. With valve enforcing the butt ugly generic, 7 year old skins, i really will just start playing HL2 mods, or even work on a CS clone for HL2. (CS2 is using an 4 year old engine, ick...)

    I wonder whats going to happen to sites with valve killing special addons, and replacement skins. Favorite places like CSNation [counter-strike.net], CSCentral [cscentral.com], Games Fusion [games-fusion.net], Skinshack [counter-strike.net]...

    I've had to burn all add'ons/modifications to cds, as sites go up and down. Now theres no reason to keep them up with Valve killing over half of the modification market. Wondering what the people over at Fusion [games-fusion.net] are going to do, as they make money off selling complete conversion kits, rather nice ones too.

    The steam interface is better, just evil about the way they kill off so many sites that supported valve/sierra. Use to be one of the most mod friendly bunch around...
  • I'm not sure if this is more than rumor or not (but surprised others haven't noted this yet... was hoping for more info on /.)

    check out this hex edit of the gcache [home.no]

    and this guy might need a tin foil hat [forumplanet.com] but has some points... *Shrug*

    interesting at least... eh?

    E.
    • Intereting, but, the thread in the forum kinda explains it... or possibly does so.

    • Re:Steam Might have spyware... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Apparently the 'personal data' appearing in an older version of Steam's cache file was due to how the system worked. Steam creates a large, empty file which effectively acts as a virtual disk with a filesystem on.

      I read that Windows' FAT32 didn't actually bother clearing the hard disk space occupied by this cache file before Steam used it, so as-yet unused sections of the cache file would end up containing data that had originally resided in that location on the hard disk.

      I think that's supposed to have b
    • Steam includes an MP3 playback program, and indexing your MP3 files to make them available is probably one of its functions. The rest of the data can probably be explained by the file initialization issue mentioned in that forum thread.
  • This sure ain't the beta...I put in my CD key from this shit Blue-Shift I have and it tells me I'm entitled to a 1 month subscription...to a game I PAID FOR (Opposing Force comes with BS) just to use their meta-server! I doubt anybody will pay to play a 5 year old game online...at least, I hope not.
  • Can someone post a torrent for the newly posted traditional installer for 1.6? (approx 400MB, currently available from fileplanet)

  • petitions (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sirvulcan ( 700310 ) *
    what i find amusing is that theres all these petitions about wanting to drop steam and go back to the 1.5 cs and below install style, do they seriously think valve will drop a product after beta testing it since jan

  • What Steam could have been and won't be: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by __aailob1448 ( 541069 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @01:55AM (#6950393) Journal
    When I first learned about Steam a month ago, I was impressed by what Valve had done. Free Counter-Strike, Half-Life and a few other mods. Wow. What a smart move! nobody's buying those old games anymore. Making them free not only is a nice thing to do for fans but also bolstered people's sympathy towards Valve and increased the number of people who are going to buy their new products (namely Half-Life 2). But that was just the tip of the iceberg as I saw it.

    Steam had the potential to be the next revolution in pc game distribution. Here was my recipe for success:

    Attract people with free games and increase Steam userbase. Make anyone who uses Steam agree to occasionally contribute some upload bandwidth as a compensation. Say you have to contribute 1Gb/month worth of upload, with the choice of when to enable it and full throttle abilities. A user in control is a happy user.

    This will of course, be used by steam (which would a p2p system a la bittorrent for content distribution.)

    Now comes the really cool part:

    Say Half-Life 2 is ready. Valve can offer the game through Steam. Since all the costs involved in distributing a physical item have beel cut, they can afford to sell it for maybe $20 a piece. No monthtly subscriptions or anything like that. It's not like you are paying for servers! Other people are hosting them. One time fees. Always. (How much money does valve get off the sale of one HL2 box? I'm assuming it's $20 or less)Use a 100Mbit line to get things rolling (and maybe get some videogame sites (the same ones that host demos, servers and such) to share some of the "seeding" burden with you in exchange for some advertising.

    Soon enough, People will be contributing most of the bandwidth needed by their fellow leechers). And these are freaking happy people. These are people who got the game for 40% of it's retail price.

    Now that users have got the game (and the corresponding cd-keys that have been emailed to them). Keep being nice to them. Those who want to play online will have to pay for the cd-key. Those who want offline game and are not willing to pay can leech a pirate version anyways. So make the game protection free for your beloved customers. Hell, include a button for them that convert the game to format so they can burn it if they wish to (not like isoz of the cracked game aren't going to surface a week before it's released in stores anyways...).

    A little later, you and others are going to start releasing mods. Team Fortress 2, DoD 2 and eventually, the much expected counter-strike 2.

    Sell those mods! Charge very little for them. Say $5 to $10 bucks depending on the mod. If the mod is not yours, charge $5 or $10 on each mod sale. You'll have millions of people willing to spend $10 for CS2 right? many of the people who pirated HL2 buy it and spend $10 for CS2 because they want to play online. The number of quality mods will increase exponentially because of the money incentive. You get money, happy customers AND more users as time goes by. THe more users, the more appealing it is for other modders to jump on the bandwagon. and the cycle continues.

    The constantly increasing userbase will start to full fledged game developpers (small and big alike) who will start releasing their games on Steam. And you're getting a small slice of the pie for every single copy sold! More profit for you at very little expense. Remember the bandwidth is provided by the users (who will be more than happy to do so in exchange for those low prices I mentionned).

    So there we have it, Everybody is happy. Valve is making tons of money, gamers are getting awesome price/value, modders and small time game developpers have an easy entry to the industry.

    Am I crazy? Is all this stuff I mentionned so hard to implement? Isn't this a valid business plan?

    But nope. Steam is not going to do this.

    1-After the beta ended, free HL and counter-strike was over. Say bye to to 50-75% of steam users.

    2-Valve is going the monthly subs
    • Sounds like a great plan in theory, IMHO.

      I would have to say that there is one problem with the distribution system. The way Steam works is more along the lines of the way MMORPGs update their games. You connect to master servers everytime you logon, it checks for updates, and then downloads anything you need. This way it is much easier for Valve to control what content gets sent out to users. While a BitTorrent type system is great for bandwidth, its really only useful for distributing single files and Va
    • You, my friend, are a true idealist.

      However, basic economics of distribution system will tell you that this will not happen. At least not any time soon. or ever. It is almost a Catch-22 problem.

      Game publishers dont want to undercut their distributors who sell a substantial amount of their games (ie, BestBuy, Fry's, CircuitCity, etc). If they undercut them by 60%, you can bet that Fry's is going to take the item off the shelves due to lousy sales and low-price guarantees.

      Now, game publishers just lost a l
    • This indeed sounds like a good idea. If you are serious about this, back it up with some hard numbers like expected adoption rate, expected expenses, and expected profit. Include some market data on the types of users targeted, their economic patterns, etc. Then, get in contact with someone at Valve that is willing to discuss your ideas and set up a meeting with them. That will really get them thinking about going done a path more like yours. They will be more willing to take the plunge if you can show
  • licensing the commerce software that manages the game's download and purchase process to other developers, publishers and Internet service providers in exchange for 5 percent of their gross sales

    HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    Good luck selling a glorified web shopping cart and FTP client for 5% of gross; especially one that has been demonstrated to not be able to stand up under load.

  • An animation that show my feelings (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hackie_Chan ( 678203 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:30AM (#6950938)
    Here [clourd2.com] is an animation that describe of what I think of the Steam service so far...
  • I will not give Valve a dime as long as they are pushing this crap along with the game. Hopefully lots of other people feel the same way and ol' Gabe gets the message... If not, there's always Doom 3!

  • F*cking 3rd party registrations! (Score:3, Informative)

    by ManxStef ( 469602 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @11:21AM (#6951655) Homepage

    Greaaat. The official Steam website [steampowered.com] give you a huge two locations to download the client, and *both* require signing up to these 3rd party services before you can download the software.

    How long is it going to be before Valve get it through their skulls that this pisses people off massively? Fine, you want my personal details before I download your client, and you want a serial of a Valve game I purchased. No problem. But I'll be f*cked if I have to sign up to a 3rd party content distro site just to be able to download a different content distro system!

    Sort it out Valve. Either suck it up and provide the download directly from your site, or if you don't want the bandwidth bill then provide a torrent (which, while a content distro system in itself, requires no registration). Grrr!

    • Wow, the Steam installer is now 300+ MB, including Counter Strike 1.6 -- well, I don't *want* to play CS 1.6!

      On my 56k modem, or on our LAN here, running Half Life 2 looks like it's going to be *so* much fun!

      The game looks like it's going to rule; the extraneous crap looks like it's going to cancel out any ruling that could possibly be... uh... possible. What a bunch of fkucwits!

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