Steam Users Steamed 881
KrunchTime writes "The Steam network seems to be having some problems tonight. This is not good new for fans of counter-strike, day of defeat and other half-life mods. Some people seem to be able to log on fine while others, like me :(, cannot connect at all. The steam forums were filling up with invective when I was last able to get on. The forums now seem to have imploded under the strain of complaints. The question that was being asked most is why there isn't more redundancy on the log-in side of steam. They say that if one of the master servers goes down that the accounts held there become unavailable immediately. The other big problem is that while the Steam network is down even the offline games are unplayable. There was no sign of responses from Valve staff or forum moderators."
OMFG!! (Score:5, Funny)
01000110 01010000
Re:OMFG!! (Score:3, Funny)
Not that they have anything to worry about.
Re:OMFG!! (Score:5, Funny)
Yup. Its a sign from g0d! Climb out of the basement or your sad little room and go out and do something. Who knows, maybe the stars will line up and you might actually get laid. If you meet the right person you might even get to try some "taunts" out in real life. Watch out though, chances are you'll going to here more than one h0ttie say "go frag yourself."
Re:OMFG!! (Score:5, Insightful)
No consumer should have to put up with this ridiculous treatment. The fact that gamers do is just one symptom of how strange the game industry is. Valve are definitely one of the best examples of this, still no one can exaplain to me the reason for the original false start september 2003 HL2 release date. Why is it that Gabe Newell, the team leader, didn't know that the game was no where near being finished when he annouced that date ?. Why did he go on to make a deal with ATI to include HL2 with their video cards when those cards would be a year out of date by the time of the games' eventual release ?.
Any other industry and people wouldn't put up with such asshatery, why us gamers do I don't know.
Re:OMFG!! (Score:3, Informative)
No, I don't know the guy, but that's what I know about the situation.
I will agree that the gaming industry is weird. But it's not any weirder th
Re:OMFG!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Many, many games today (Halo 2, anyone?) load levels dynamically, so that the player has very, very few loading screens to sit through. Yet HL2 makes you wait for at least a minute for every level, with nothing but a "loading" screen -- not even a progress bar.
Even an Xbox (a console!) does a better job of getting friends together to play a game than Steam. There's a running joke that several years ago, someone at Valve tripped over a cable to the Friends Network server, and it hasn't been working since. The few times I've ever seen it up, they've taken away most of the worthwile features, such as "join player" or whatever. What's the point of in-game IM if you can't even find the person? Is it any wonder that people use things like TeamSpeak instead? Why can't Valve, with its millions, beat TeamSpeak, with its $0?
I have never seen FY maps work in Counter-Strike: Source. FY maps were the reason that I used to keep playing Counter-Strike when I got bored and would have gone to play Quake 3, because an FY map is small and fast. But last I checked, it's impossible to make an FY map (you cannot create guns on the floor with Source SDK), and difficult to play one (the guns usually disappear before freeze time runs out). How hard can it be, people? Almost every single multiplayer game I've ever played can have guns resting on the ground at the beginning of a map, but not Counter-Strike: Source.
I have yet to find another game which can screw up map textures just by downloading custom maps from a poorly configured server. That is, if I connect to bad.server.ip, and I then connect to good.server.ip running the same map, my textures will still look wrong.
And what about the lagging technology? The Doom 3 engine has a Linux port, does most of the cool graphical things that the HL2 engine does, loads levels in half the time or less, has a progress bar, and came out months before HL2. And is it just me, or are they really still using BSP trees? BSP was obsolete in glQuake! And don't even get me started on Steam -- one auth server? Embedding Internet Explorer instead of BitTorrent?
If only we could have a company with id's technology and Valve's artists... But then, I may as well hope that Bungee developers leave Microsoft and finish the Linux Halo port they were planning.
Re:OMFG!! (Score:4, Interesting)
As for your commentary on my lifestyle, I'd like to point out that I have been married for 8 years, and have a son and a child on the way. My wife lets me have some time to play video games, and I let her go out to scrapbooking meetings with her friends. It's called a HOBBY. If the time I allocated to my hobby of choice was infringed upon by the poor technology of a third party, I'd say I have a right to be irritated. On the other hand, I'd find something else to do.
FWIW, Microsoft Internet Hearts has never been down when I have tried to get on...
ofline games are fun (Score:3, Funny)
ofline games are fun-Wrinkle free. (Score:2, Funny)
It's great for pressing wrinkles out of clothes though.
Re:ofline games are fun (Score:4, Informative)
Re:ofline games are fun (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ofline games are fun (Score:2, Informative)
I didn't know steam was combustible.
Seriously, while going offtopic, steam itself is used for power generation, be it coal or nuclear. Nuclear subs and carriers? They use steam as an intermediary. Carriers used steam to drive the catapults for aircraft take off. I hear that they are being replaced with some sort of electrical system, that electrical system is powered using steam heated by the nuclear power plant. I hope it works b
The better have one HELL of an excuse! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The better have one HELL of an excuse! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The better have one HELL of an excuse! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The better have one HELL of an excuse! (Score:3, Insightful)
funny, i can install and play my copy of half life 2 whenever i want to, I guess that Valve fucked up by making the pirate copy inherently superior to the legit copy.
Re:The better have one HELL of an excuse! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is generally true for most games, and applications (think NoCD patch).
All that any form of copy protection has ever seemed to do is make it difficult for the legitimate user to use that which he has paid for. For those of us with less scruples... heh, we get to enjoy life without the hassles that companies force their clients to endure.
I'm hoping this will wake up the majority of consumers out there and put their foot down to restrictive technologies like this. If things don't "just work" then people might stop turning a blind eye to this.. but I seriously doubt it will happen.
Not that I'm a pirate.. hell I've never even fired a cannon.
Re:It's a GAME (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a GAME (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case you paid for the service, and you expect the service to be provided when you need it, not when the company feels to it. When businesses buy services the contracts clearly say what happens when the service provider fails to provide. For example, many small businesses outsource paycheck management; imagine what would you do if such a company fails to pay you your salary?
In this case we also talk about damaging someone's posessions, which are represented here with a Steam account. Many people said already that all you buy is the account, and once you lose it you have nothing. Well, a whole lot of accounts are lost - hopefully only temporarily, but nevertheless their property has been damaged already.
And finally with regard to being unable to use the product, that's literally true here - people paid for something and they can't use it.
Re:It's a GAME (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if the same happened with my Oracle DB, yes, heads should roll.
Re:It's a GAME (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that even though Steam is "free" at the moment, personally identifiable information is considered a value. And besides, forcing you too enter an additional contract to make your purchase work the way it was advertised to work out of the box is fraud (since the good was advertised to work without the contract but doesn't).
Re:It's a GAME (Score:5, Insightful)
Point of game: Entertainment.
Game not in operation: Not entertainment.
Cost of Game: $50
Parent poster: Clueless.
Re:It's a GAME (Score:3, Interesting)
I disliked the idea of Steam from the get-go. Hence I didn't buy HL2.
The problem with people like you is that you'll buy anything your told to, e.g. review posted on slashdot about upcoming HL2 engine, then IGN hosts a screenshot gallery, then you simply must own this game. It has l33t properties.
Even if you think "I'm deciding to buy this" if you actually do buy it, it's totally the marketing wheels spinning.
Not only that but as f
Re:It's a GAME (Score:3, Insightful)
Well protected (Score:5, Funny)
FYI (Score:5, Informative)
duh (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, such a great game, made by a bunch of idiots
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:duh (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus there's the added fear that installing a cd-crack with the properly bought half-life2 will disable all my other payed-for off-line games.
I can genuinely say that the paying, clueless-to-piracy customers drew the short straw while people with a pirated copy are getting the
Well (Score:5, Funny)
So the shit's finally hit the fan, has it? (Score:2)
Re:So the shit almost hit the fan (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe they could be sued over this (although I'd expect something in the EULA none of us read would take the wind out of any lawsuit) but I'll bet you a solid $10 that no law suit comes out of this.
Valves gamers are mostly, what? 15-25? Even if the kids and young-adults banded tog
You (don't) get what you (don't) pay for. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I hadn't gotten it for free with my CPU, I wouldn't have "bought" it at all; their license is simply idiotic.
Mind you, I respect their rights to have such an idiotic license...
Re:You (don't) get what you (don't) pay for. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what they'd like you to believe - that you don't really own a copy of a copyrighted work. Valve can sell copies of their game for $50 and then go and claim they didn't sell anything at all, but just because something is in a license
Re:You (don't) get what you (don't) pay for. (Score:5, Informative)
and of course... (Score:5, Funny)
Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope this shows more people why they need to resist DRM schemes.
Re:Ugh... (Score:3, Insightful)
I see two outcomes. Either the DRM systems either get even more invasive to a point were hopefully consumers stop bying the products. Or piracy goes down for whatever reason, and game developers stay with less intrusive mesures.
I love the why should i pay $50 for a game that might be crap excuse. The question is why should you be pirating it if its crap?
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a wrong argument in this debate because the cracked HL2 is better than the legitimate one.
Re:Ugh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet the game companies, music companies, and movie companies still make very large proffits.
Reality strongly argues against your claims.
The simple factors are convience and quality.
Which is better: paying $6-$12 bucks to see a movie on the big screen, or searching for and downloading copy to watch on your 19" monitor, a copy that may be crappy quality?
Which is better: Paying $16 for a proffesional cd you pop into almost device the right shape and hear music, or searching for a copy of lower quality that you then have to expend resources (admitted only about &.50-&.75 and a few minutes with nero et al) and time and effort on to make a simularly playable disc that lacks the cool art, liner notes, etc.
See the pattern here?
Games are still making lots of money even though they add drm schemes that reduce the convience factor, which in turn makes the 'pirated' versions MORE desirable simply from a convience standpoint even without the cost in dollars factor. FUD* is a factor against game 'piracy', without it DRM would likely drive a much larger segment towards the cracks than it already does. And as drm schemes get worse (and this is a LOT worse than most) it counters the fud even more.
Sorry but as I see it DRM is counter to the best intrests of the game companies as it only adds costs and costs them in paying users.
*=Not all fud is bogus, fear of being cought, uncertainty as whether or not the crack has built in malware,doubt as to whether it'll accidently screw up your system, etc. All have varying degrees of truth to them.
Mycroft
Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. This is the most insane thing about Steam: When I can't reach Steam - either because it's down, or because I happen to be in a location with no network access (which, in fact, is a common scenario) - I can't play the offline games I purchased. Like Half-Life 2. And Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Even Codename Gordon - a dinky freeware platformer, reminiscent of id software's classic game Abuse - is unplayable.
So I paid $80 for package including many excellent single-player games, but I can't play any of them without getting express consent from Valve every time. When that consent is unavailable, I can't play the games I bought. This is bogus. This is outrageous.
I cannot imagine how this possibly benefits Valve in any way. Surely the p1r@t3s who don't wanna pay (na na why don't you get a job?) are merrily playing their hacked-installer versions. All this mechanism accomplishes is giving the pointy-headed marketroids at Valve some academic (useless) data on who plays which games. Meanwhile, actual customers get surveilled, and sometimes denied access to their paid-for games.
In sum, this scheme presents spurious value to Valve, and no value to customers, while also pissing customers off. Valve is too smart a company not to realize this. Why they persist is a fucking mystery.
- David Stein
Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot imagine how this possibly benefits Valve in any way. Surely the p1r@t3s who don't wanna pay (na na why don't you get a job?) are merrily playing their hacked-installer versions.
I hope you're not telling us pirates who don't want to pay that we should pay? Please look at what you've said and tell me, was the game worth giving $80 to a company that doesn't trust you enough to let your run the game without having it phone home? The only person that loses with their scheme is paying customers, the pirates are better off so I'm going to stick with being a pirate of Valve games till they start treating their customers better.
I was a long time Valve/Half-Life fan. I bought Half-Life on pre-order years ago, and every single player expansion pack that came out for it. There were times where I questioned Valve's judgement, mostly after patches but I lived thru it. I kind of lost faith around the time CS hit store shelves. After using steam (with my friends login and password because apparently I already registered for steam with my CD key) I gave up completely and decided to never buy another thing from Valve ever again.
ID software on the other hand... they released a game with amazing graphics, created a linux port and doesn't require you to go online and authenticate to play. I bought a copy of Doom 3 the day it came out and will be buying a copy of Quake 4 the day it comes out. The day Half-Life 3 comes out I'll be searching for it online just so I can play and see how the story goes. Unless Valve decides to do a complete turn around and trash the worthless pile of trash that is Steam, I don't think I'd ever give them another dime.
Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a spurious argument. "So if you don't like DRM, then stop..."? What will that accomplish? Nothing. They aren't making life difficult for paying customers. If every 'pirate' stopped infringing copyright today, it wouldn't matter. The DRM genie is already out of the bottle. Media companies (Valve included) will never go back. For these companies, the doctrines of Fair Use and First Sale are "quaint and obsolete" (to turn Gonzales' phrase).
Regardless of the copyright protections outlined for us, the paying customers, the difficulty is not being caused by 'piracy' [copyright infringement], it's being caused by investors. Media wants to bleed a stone when it comes to music, movies, games, etc. because they are driven by one goal only to increase return on investment. Unfortunately, the real solution would be to turn back the coporate influence in Washington, reduce the reliance on capital markets, and trend back towards Constitutional government. You're a bright reader though, and know this will never come to pass.
Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh my! This is one of the most silly things I've read here all day.
Pirates are the only ones NOT affected by this DRM. And pirates don't care.
The only people affected are the poor paying customers. The pirates have a far better playing experience than the legitmate customers.
Do you think that if banks started charging people $5 every time they saw a teller to cover losses from robberies, that all bank robbers would think "Hmm... that $5 charge is too much....since I'm part of the problem, I'll become a Java programmer instead." ?
Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS (Score:5, Informative)
What I'd like to add is an explanation for why Valve created Steam at all. It wasn't just to get more "control" and defeat hackers and pirates. Steam could allow Valve to do without a publisher, as they could do all their distribution through Steam and skip the boxes on the shelves entirely. Think of not being beholden to Sierra or EA. IMHO, Valve chickened out and released HL2 both through stores and through Steam (which maybe makes sense IF enough customers are only on dial-up) which meant that people who bought the box have to have the disc AND all the Steam stuff, and it feels like a big hassle to them. If Valve had only distributed through Steam, the authentication would be transparent and everyone would think they were part of this great new paradigm and they were sticking it to "the man" at the evil publishing house and the crappy retail outfits. People would say: "Isn't it great how I don't have to keep track of a CD and I can go re-download all the old games I paid for 5 years ago to as many computers as I want to without any hassle. And they give me free content later as it becomes available without paying for an expansion pack."
Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet, you still purchased the game? Did you not know this was going to happen when every gaming site on the planet was screaming about Steam? Were you not warned countless times before you plunked down $80 for a worthless pile of Valve shit?
Obviously, they are not, or they would have seen this coming a mile away like every other person on the planet did. The truth is that they simply don't give a damn. They have your $80 and really aren't concerned with you anymore until Half-Life 3 comes out, at which point they will hype it so much that everyone that was burned by Half-Life 2 will still line up waiting for the release. Even if they lose a few customers over this, they know that their marketing and hype will more than make up for it. These ex-Microsoft employees have learned very well from their old masters. You can sell anyone a pile of shit, so much as you hype the hell out of it, and smile while you're bending them over.
I hope they aren't based out of Atlanta, GA... (Score:2, Informative)
Snow is manageable, but 36 hours of sleet/ice isn't. Everything in this town as been sealed in a 2 inch block of ice.
In fact, ** CRACK **
Re:I hope they aren't based out of Atlanta, GA... (Score:2)
I spent many a night in ice storms, keep safe up there.
Just download the offline patch (Score:2, Informative)
Enter the offline patch. A hacked
Sorry, but if I purchase a game for my personal machine and the game that I choose to play has no need for the Internet then that is the way it should be.
Re:Just download the offline patch (Score:2)
Sorry, but if I purchase a game for my personal machine and the game that I choose to play has no need for the Internet then that is the way it should be.
While I agree with you, the sad part is you are probably risking your Steam account being deactivated if you happen to connect and it notices the hacked .exe. That just makes the whole thing even more stupid though.
Offline can still work (Score:5, Informative)
This is only half-true.
Once Half-Life 2 is decrypted and fully running, it is possible to set it to be playable offline, hence not needing an internet connection to run it, and the original single player games can be played from their original applications, not through steam.
Re:Offline can still work (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fuck should anyone have to jump through hoops to play a fucking single-player game offline? That should be the default setting. How many people even know about this? I'm sure valve wouldn't publicize it, lest they have everyone going around using the software that they paid for without asking "oh please sir, may I have some more" and denying them valuable usage statistics!
Re:Offline can still work (Score:5, Interesting)
They could tell you about the command line switch -steam, but they don't. They expect you to sit on your hands while you wait for them to get back to you with a new key, that may already have been genned by the time you get it. But get this
THAT'S RIGHT VALVE, I'VE BEEN WAITING TO PLAY YOUR GAME FOR OVER TWO MONTHS. The sad thing is
The moral of this story: Key checking schemes only hurt the customer. There is some asshole out there that genned my key and has been happily playing online ever since, because VALVE WON'T HANDLE IT. If you bought a hard-copy they refer it to the publisher. That's fucking gay.
Re:Offline can still work (Score:3, Informative)
IMO the Steam client sucks. It quadrupled the size of my natd command line for all the ports it wants forwarding and the Friends network *still* barely works, it has no conception for storing its GB's of data on another drive, or for u
Disable NIC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Offline can still work-Righteous Steam. (Score:3, Informative)
>
>SHHHHSH! People around here are just building up a full head of steam, and you're going to ruin it.
Incorrect. Once HL2 is up and running, and in offline mode, it only remains in offline mode so long as the "ti
DRMed games (Score:2, Insightful)
forums down (Score:2, Funny)
Playing offline games. (Score:2)
Nothing Better to Do... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Working just fine for me (Score:2)
I haven't played this, but what I'm hearing is odd (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do they have to do EVERYTHING in one place? I mean, I can certainly imagine, Steam goes down, some features of the network become unavailable. But why does the AUTHENTICATION server need to ever go down, at all? You'd think that would be the least difficult thing Steam does, and the thing most easily separable into its own always-available server.
But no, it appears when steam goes down, "Steam" goes down, all of it. You'd think that even if they couldn't fix their scaling problems, they'd be able to fix the availability of the authentication service.
Meanwhile, why does it have to authenticate EVERY time you try to play singleplayer? There's the cheating aspect when you're doing mutliplayer, I get that, but for singleplayer it isn't like you're going to change from a nonpirated to a pirated copy in between plays. Why not just make it automatically switch to offline mode, thus obviating the authentication checks, when you're playing offline? Maybe loosening the online-mode authentication restrictions would make the game easier to pirate-- but, hey, the game's ALREADY BEING PIRATED DESPITE THE EXISTENCE OF STEAM, so that's not such a big deal.
There's some interesting things to be said for the digital distribution concept but you'd think Valve would have realized by now that Steam is the showcase app for digital distribution. If they don't convince us they can successfully sell Half Life 2 online I don't expect many people will buy Half Life 3 online.
Re:I haven't played this, but what I'm hearing is (Score:5, Informative)
I have been exiting and closing Steam completely when I finish for the night. Requiring me to re-authenticate each day when I want to play CS:S or HL2 again. This obviously has bit me in the butt.
Regardless, authentication is so lightweight and featureless that as a software engineer I find the fact the service isn't working unimaginable. I know we've all (those who've played MMOG) have experiecned this in the past, but come on. Surely by now the fault tolerent designs of corporate banking/trading software has finally seeped into game server authentication. Multiple masters, distributed, clustered, geographically dispersed, big-ip'd or hell even round-robin with 1s TTLs. Anything to provide some redundancy.
This smells more like a data glitch then a software/hardware glitch. I heard they were going to be doing some account maint to disable some accounts that were being sold on e-bay and passed around pirate IRC channels.
I'd bet heavily that this is the result of a very poorly formulated UPDATE sql statement. And piss-poor backup/recovery strategy.
Fun at a lan party (Score:5, Insightful)
And now I see the slashdot article. (Browsing the net using my cell phone as a modem trying to find a solution to this steam problem).
Really, I'm pissed. Not only do they force this crap down our throat, but they cant keep it working right. I'm fine with authenticating for internet play, but making people authenticate for offline play is a plain old stupid idea.
Check gamefix.com and theres cracks for all portions of Steam anyways, so people ARE pirating half-life 2 & all mods.
So good job Valve. You've succeeded at pissing off your customers and failed at stopping people who are stealing your games.
They definately arent getting my money again. Ever. I'll be one of the smart consumers who pirate their games from now on.
Re:Fun at a lan party (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you rather Valve spend tens of millions on developing Half-Life 2 and 3, sell it without DRM and barely sell a maybe a quarter of what they sold now due to rampant piracy? Let's see, estimates of cost on HL2 production range around... what, 30 million plus? They've sold 1.7 million units so far, so cut that back, say 250,000 units to be generous. That means they'd have made $12,500,000 -gross-. With an ungodly amount of that - more than half - going to the distribution channel.
Sounds like a great way to lose money hand over fist... Oops, I think I just came up with the XBox Next marketing plan for Microsoft. Again.
Re:Fun at a lan party (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you rather Valve spend tens of millions on developing Half-Life 2 and 3, sell it without DRM and barely sell a maybe a quarter of what they sold now due to rampant piracy? Let's see, estimates of cost on HL2 production range around... what, 30 million plus? They've sold 1.7 million units so far, so cut that back, say 250,000 units to be generous. That
Re:Fun at a lan party (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who PAID for Half-Life 2 CANNOT PLAY. As the original parent said he's just going to be a smart consumer. What, are you asking him to go buy another copy of the game to try and get it working? Maybe buy Half-Life 3 and pray it works?
100% of the time people who pirate the software weren't going to buy it anyway. For the consumer who realizes it's easier to pirate than to buy
Re:Fun at a lan party (Score:4, Interesting)
The argument that people pirate shit just because it's easy to do is fallacious. Period. If the law was important to them, they wouldn't do it in the first place. Right? Law-abiding citizens live by the rules even when it's not convenient. That's the way I live it, anyhow; That's what honesty is. Just because honesty is in short supply -- again -- has nothing to do with how short a download is.
Now to address specifics: "How many people were doing this ? compare with how many people were buying games..." in the heady days of C64's and the like? Well I don't know how old you are, but back then, in the 'hobbiest' days I like to call them, EVERYONE was copying some games and software. When you spent 2000 1980-dollars on a computer and floppy drives, data casette readers, modems, and maybe the branded monitor too, you were really hurting to spend hunrdreds of dollars on software. You were more apt to copy it wholesale at the local user's group meeting, and maybe ocassionally get some 'free' software by typing out a listing from BYTE. If you were willing to wait 20 MINUTES for a program to load off TAPE you better believe you were willing to wait longer than that for a download. I mean we are talking 300 or 1200 bps here.
Time progressed, modems and cpu's got faster, software got better, sizes increased, but until the mainstreaming of the software market, computer users groups and BBS's were a major source of infringing 'content'. Anyhow. We're talking around 1990 or so before people (average Joe) really started buying computer games. We're talking like Myst and Duke Nukem (pardon the loose dates). Then the Web came along, and once people starting finding out they could "Find anything on the Internet", porn, free software, free games
The point of this history lesson is to illustrate this: Downloading/Copying used to be the norm (whether it was infringement or legal) -- and has been DECREASING as the market has evolved, matured and grown. The proof of this is your opinion that mainstream users don't download games, that they all treat their computers like Atari 2600s: Buy a disc, stick it in, and tada it works.
Unfortunately for Sony, and fortunately for Valve, console gaming and computer gaming started at opposite ends of the distribution spectrum and have converged. Computing moved from tiny sales, mostly copying and downloading to a wholesale industry with tight product controls and MUCH LESS copying and downloading; While console gaming moved from this tight control, hardly any casual infringement straight to dreamcastisos.com and modded xboxes. The major cause for this, again, is not the time involved in infringement, or really the ease of infringement per se, it's the changing attitudes of the [mostly] young people taking part in the 'warez scene' for both computers and consoles (are they different anymore?). How would I know? I terminated accounts for infringement while I worked in CAT at AOL. Maybe you know from personal experience, but have a lower tolerance than some of your more freebie oriented peers. The syndrome is even more pronounced with movie/dvd 'traders': four, eight, or more, gigabytes via DSL or Cable for a movie or a season of TV. It can't be as isolated at you think.
Sorry for the long winded response. In conclusion "thats[sic] absurd eveyone[sic] has their limit," may be true but 'free' will push that limit way beyond what you claim. If the average high schooler is willing to download Playstation ISOs with an AOL dial-up connection that limit is way beyond just 'a few hours'.
The Lesser of Many Evils (Score:5, Insightful)
Lock to the physical CD? Easily cracked by many different groups out there. Major hassle to the game player, has the most potential for incompatibility issues.
Serial key lock without serverside verification, or one-time verification? Again, not easily cracked, and will either have the same problem Steam will long down the road (no server to unlock) or will probably be backed up by a physical disc lock.
License terms on all these options? One machine, occasionally one machine + laptop (though that's rare for games)
And then there's Steam. Yes, Steam has flaws ranging from major to minor so let's look at those:
Major flaws:
Must authenticate to server or declare offline after authentication. Reliability of the server system is questionable. Will it be up tonight, next week, next year, a year after Steam 2 comes out? Twenty years down the road for retro-gaming?
Minor flaws:
Still can be cracked with some effort. Requires you to wait a few moments to launch the Steam.exe and load that before the game loads. However, in some cases this actually takes LESS time than some games that force you to watch six screens of technology trademark videos first.
Now what does Steam give you after all this hassle? The ability to keep your game up to date without worrying about it. The ability to log onto and play your game from any computer with Steam installed. Any computer, just one at a time. This is great for people with multiple computers, or the ability to game after-hours at work or school. You no longer need to worry about the old hassle of installing your game at your college terminal and removing your CD-key before leaving so people don't sniff it out of the registry.
(Okay, the last probably just describes my school)
Honestly, until Valve fucks it up seriously, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. They put enough time, energy and improvement into the first game that they earned a shot at changing the status quo. Publishers would NEVER let them distribute without some form of DRM, and I'd much rather have Steam and the benefits it does bring than anything like SecuROM and its ilk.
A DRM-less world would be fucking incredible, yes. But guess what? Even if every person on Slashdot never bought another DRM-enabled program again, DRM will still be here. Idealism is fine, and breaking the rules is just fine too - but when people lash out like I see here it's just annoying. If you don't like it, fine. But acting like spoiled kids and calling the people at Valve all sorts of names is just pathetic.
I don't see people bitching about the DRM built into the latest MMORPG, but they still shell forty or fifty bucks up front, then twelve bucks a month to keep on playing, but everyone complains about Steam as if they're stealing your soul. Many MMORPG's haven't given you the extra content Valve pulled into Half-Life since 1998. Team Fotress Classic, HL Deathmatch, acquiring DOD and Counter-Strike, that weird Ricochet thing, patch after patch after patch. Yet when HL2 comes out with something new, everyone goes off the deep end like they cloned Hitler.
Valve Server Down Until Further Notice (Score:3, Funny)
Responding to 10,000 gamers complaining of non-access to game servers, the Maricopa County Sheriff Department investigated a break-in at the Valve DataCentre near Phoenix, AZ. The grisly finding by the deputies prompted them to call in the FBI Anti-terrorist Strike Force.
FBI ATSF raided the remaining part of SteamPowered computer control room and its server room. All the big fat system administrators were found passed out and lying about with excessive amount of twinkie wrappers strewed about.
FBI ASF spokesman, J. Edgar Hoover, III, reported that 5 kiddie terrorists, claded in black bulletproof body armor, were videotaped as storming the Valve lobby. FBI Counter-Strike Computer Task Force (CSCT) sergeant reported that the DRM were disabled so that only hacked CS can play.
It is not known how the SAs were force-fed the trademarked sugar snack or how they passed out in a "Half-Life" state without incurring any mortal injuries.
No groups has step forward to claim responsibility.
I hate to say it but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, this company comes up with a digital restrictions management scheme that if Microsoft tried you'd all be screaming bloody murder, but just because it's from a game company, and you really want to play, you are willing to overlook the truly draconian measures they came up with to control distribution of their software.
The way I see it, you all gave up your freedom to live in a fascist state because the government promised you something you valued more than freedom. Now you have to live with it. Good luck.
Just remember, if we reward the companies who do this sort of thing by buying their games, they have no reason to stop. Just stop buying the game. It's a freedom thing. If we keep mindlessly buying stuff, sooner or later everything will be like this. I know you want to play, but sometimes standing up for your freedoms is hard.
Re:Leave the Jingoism to Bush, okay? (Score:3, Insightful)
However I think this is a battle worth fighting over. I am not too familair with secureROM, or why the current Steam system is supposed to be better. But for what it's worth here is why I don't like it.
It appears to be a proprietary system. I don't see anyone opening their own steam server
Copy protection/Auth = Shit (Score:4, Funny)
I had the priviledge of participating in live chat, e-mail and phone support with several different reps working from scripts in India. None really knew what was going on, but their flow charts did point in the right direction: there was some problem with the DVD or the drive that was keeping the game from running.
Upon launch the HL2.exe process would run, ramp up it's memory and processor usage and then quietly quit. no error, no feedback. After several reinstalls of both game and OS I exchanged my dvd for a new one, only to have the same problem. Rather than swap out my drive I pulled disc check crack off the internet and sure enough the game loaded without any issues.
Not only is there issues with their remote auth for the game, but there are issues with the SecuROM protection they use on the actual discs, forcing me to crack my legit copy of HL2 just to get the damn thing to *run*.
Fuck You Valve, If you release any more worthwhile games I'm just going to steal them to begin with... It's easier in the long run.
Two things (Score:3, Insightful)
Dollars speak louder than complaints (Score:3, Insightful)
Speak with your dollars and stop buying this crap. Find another game or make one of your own.
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night (Score:3, Informative)
I've played HL2 many times without a working internet connection.
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night (Score:5, Interesting)
0.) Valve (or anyone else) should not be allowed to sell you something and then claim that you don't actually have any rights to use it. In other words, this copy protection bullshit should be illegal!
The fact that the cracked versions working perfectly fine encourages copyright infringement is just poetic justice.
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night (Score:3, Interesting)
Didn't buy it. Don't even have a cracked copy, I don't like that game. It cracked nicely for a couple friends, though. The cracked copies are working perfectly, even right now, unlike the legitimate copies, which both of them bought. The legit copies, on the other hand, only worked intermittently, even in "offline" mode.
People -will- crack games. No matter what any software company does. The only question the software company needs to ask themselves is-how appealing do you want to make the cracks? The mor
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night (Score:3, Insightful)
One doesn't go buy a boxed copy of a single player game expecting to find themselves unable to play it because some dodgy auth server down.
Re:Online authentication unavailable for one night (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, thats because mmorpg stans for Massave Multi ONLINE role playing game.
last I herd, playing half life 2 a SINGLE PLAYER GAME sholdn't have the added problem of not being able to play the non online game because they can't maintain their servers.
Re:I warned you! (Score:2)
Steam is a stupid idea. I'm not buying HL2 because of it.
LK
Re:I warned you! (Score:4, Informative)
If the Steam Auth servers are down, or you're not connected to a LAN with internet access you can't log in to steam to create a LAN server.
When WON's auth servers went down, it didn't make any difference for LAN servers.
LK
Re:This is crap! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is crap! (Score:2)
Re:Never been perfect anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's what you get! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's what you get! (Score:5, Insightful)
-
A 'logon once a week' scheme would probably ease these troubles, but otherwise I don't see how any of my rights are being squished.
Simple, if Valve goes out of business tomorrow and the login servers go down, all your games you paid for stop working permanently. With discs and CD Keys, you can hunt them down and reinstall, even if the company's gone out of business and your CDs are in storage.Re:That's what you get! (Score:5, Interesting)
''If in the unlikely event that you were unable to continue providing authentication services within a reasonable amount of time, would you make certain people could activate the game?''
Re:That's what you get! (Score:3, Interesting)
That's essentially what the problem is with Steam and those affected by this now. We're talking about offline play though, while you may think online play is the only reason to buy games, there's a lot of people who prefer to never play online at a
Re:That's what you get! (Score:3, Informative)
The two UT2004 Master Servers are usually fairly reliable. I know the same can't be said for the U2XMP one (but I don't believe thats under Epic's control). UT2003 one is still up as well I think.
Re:Curse Steam (Score:3, Informative)
"Then if you have to buy a new PC to handle the bloatware, you have to pay $10 to transfer your CD key"
This isn't even REMOTELY true. all you need to do is remember your steam username and password, and reinstall the steam client. There is nothing. NOTHING! about a new pc that will force you to pay to release the cd key from the account.
Whoever told you this is wrong, and clearly needs to reread the part about needing $10 to transfer cd keys to another account (which is what it sounds lik
Re:Since When...? (Score:4, Informative)
Heavily bugged: That's a bit of an overstatement. The friends list doesn't work, but that's pretty much the only bug I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure someone will point me to some 3 page buglist somewhere, but I haven't noticed anything but the friend's list, so the other "bugs" seem pretty irrelevant to me.
Easily overcome: What does this even mean? Steam is easy to hack? It's much harder than any previous system (WON, for instance)... I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.
Irritating: This may be true, but you can always just stick it in offline mode and forget about it.
As for why Valve continues to use it. Just look at the content updates of the last week or two for that answer. Official maps released, bugs fixed, SDK updated, community informed (through the new weekly updates), and users tracked. These are all things that Valve wants to do, and Steam does those things quite well.
I have no idea how you're post was modded +4 insightful (especially with your second to last sentence being anything but on topic).
Steam isn't perfect for all users, but it serves its purpose. If you don't like it go into offline mode and never come back, otherwise boycott Valve games...
Re:Since When...? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Since When...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Story in short: When a company requires that you connect ONLINE for an OFFLINE game, something is INHEIRENTLY wrong. Either they should advertise the fact that you have to have an internet connection to use the game, or they should not require users to connect to the internet to download a new key so that they can continue to play the game. It's rediculous in so many ways, and the fact that I may not even have internet and might have to get the internet just to play the game alone should be grounds for a lawsuit. Especially since stores will NOT allow you to return a game once it's been opened. I don't think those guys at Best Buy would listen to me whine, "But I didn't know you had to connect to the internet to play this OFFLINE game, honestly!! "
Re:Since When...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, maybe my ideal is a little anti-capitalist. But anti-American? Certainly NOT! The Constitution's idea of copyright is not for the benefit of authors or publishers; it's for the benefit of the public. I'm tired of restating this argument myself; instead, please read about it here [gnu.org] and here [kuro5hin.org].
Third, DRM systems are by NO means "inevitable." For one thing, is iD going out of business because Doom 3 doesn't have DRM? Also, "selling games" is not the only possible business model -- there are several MMORPGs where the game itself is free, or even Free, but the developers make money by selling subscriptions to the server. And I'm sure there's plenty of other possibilities out there too.
And finally, if ensuring the public's rights results in fewer games, then so be it. If the US has to choose between freedom and economics, the choice must be freedom!
Re:We have to nip this thing now (Score:3, Insightful)
Moreover, I want a world where I can port old games that I've bought to run on new hardware (e.g., make my DOS games run on my iBook), and modify them at will, and do everything else that I could do with a normal cop
Re:Nice going, Valve! (Score:3, Insightful)