Valve and VU Settle

[Ravendust]

The only gripe I have with it is that I think the interface is really ugly.

You can change the skins, or download and replace them

My skin:

 

[Devion]

I hope they continue to self publish, so the money goes back to the people who make the game and not the greedy suits who push them out with bugs all over the code. I hope other publishers follow suit.

Then they prolly wont make it retail and only availible through steam, which isnt smart.(For people with no credit cards and people who dislike owning only a digital version of the game(No CD or DVD to hold :'())

 

[itr]

Then they prolly wont make it retail and only availible through steam, which isnt smart.(For people with no credit cards and people who dislike owning only a digital version of the game(No CD or DVD to hold :'())

No, they will still have retail sku's available.

 

[SaiyanPrideXIX]

How can you complain about intrusiveness and like Norton? CTRL+ALT+DEL and check task manager, the last time I checked Norton punishes your system when it's idle and really invades the works as far as Windows is concerned.

Actually, while there are three programs running, it's nothing compared to AVG's occasional 6 or 7. And usually Norton's pretty good about being disabled too--a right click and a click on Disable and it's out of sight/out of mind. Also I can get away with doing plenty while Norton's on. I have seen Steam crash and burn constantly over the two years I've had it (I got it four separate times). It's a lot better than it was but I still feel like Gabe Newell's crew is sitting at my computer watching my every move for ****s and giggles, heh.

I miss Mplayer. Steam is...wel it's basically Skynet, if you ask me--some big awful silent all-encompassing machine of doom. Steam caused my four hour installation of Half-Life 2; Steam is the reason why a ****load of my mods stopped working and had to be all shuffled around; Steam is also just irritating to me because it cuts the publishers out of the system, and I just plain know that Valve's intentions behind this are greed-motivated. Think about it: no costs for boxes, instruction manual printing, packaging or shipping, or even pressing of the discs. You know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars that saves them? NORMALLY the publishers handle such costs and generally a cut of the sales go to dealing with the incurred expenses over time. Now, we're basically handing a pretty much free 50 bucks to these guys every time we buy something. Some people think that's great, and normally I'd agree that the developers deserve a bigger cut, but I'm pretty sure that Valve is looking to bolster their income and not looking to do the right thing. Think about it: HL1 is still selling. But how much of that money goes to Vivendi, whos' repackaged and re-released the sum-***** ten thousand times? Valve probably stands to gain a huge addition to their profit margin with this steam thing and I'm pretty sure the bottom line behind it was that it was a dirty way to nullify their contractual obligations while making themselves assloads of money for minimal cost.

Which I guess is what business is all about. But I just plain don't like their work ethic--as anyone who read the boards during the first two weeks of HL2 is certainly aware.

By the way it's been noted that Steam crashes very often with custom skins. They may have fixed that but at the time HL2 came out, it was still F'ed in the A (at least that one gray one it came with. I had no idea there were more, since I thought it was still broken). Also, for the record, those settings disable the commercials for new ****; I'm talking about the update notes that pop up every time Steam updates--which is, you know, twice a day. The frigging thing needs to update almost every time I use it.

It should also be of note that, till this very day, Steam crashes completely and erratically on me when playing ANYTHING but Counterstrike Source (and it's worst with ESF, but I think I isolated that issue).

My bottom line why I don't like Steam is simple: enough things can go wrong with a game in the first place, and I don't see any reason to add this absurd partially-completed authentication server network to the mix.

Personally I don't think Steam is the wave of the future at all, I think it's an intrusive pile of useless unnecessary junk. But it paved the way; in computers it's always the guy who finishes the idea that gets famous, not the guy who starts it. Some company with high planning and readily available people on duty is going to come up with a content distribution/authentication system that is fast, non-intrusive, convenient, and nominally functional, and they will learn from Valve's mistakes. And whatever setup THAT is, will go down in history as the wave of the future in distribution that Steam was supposed to be, and Steam will probably just become a die-hard relic of the past (which seems to me to be on par with the rest of Valve's products--all two of them).

To put it simply, I will NEVER buy something through Steam. It ate CD keys, it devours RAM--my credit card number is probably considered a delectible desert to the thing. Bottom line I think a lot of people like me, who used it when it was at it's worst, will probably stay away from it for a long time coming. I just plain don't feel secure using it. And I'm inclined to think a lot of people might agree, if they'd had similar experiences.

As long as there's still a retail version I'll buy the games (not like they're going to put out anything for 5 years minimum anyway), though I think we'll see a lot of what happened with HL2: no jewel cases, no instructions, etc. Was anyone else annoyed by that or was it just me?

 

[|Overlord|]

out of all the resource hogging with steam , i think it is safeto say that it really is a steaming pile of ****aki mushrooms

as for vivendi , i couldn't care less if they existed or not , i think they should go back to sierra personally , or some other company (excluding atari and ea)

 

[itr]

as for vivendi , i couldn't care less if they existed or not , i think they should go back to sierra personally , or some other company (excluding atari and ea)

Yeah....Vivendi owns Sierra. Which inturn Vivendi fired if not all Sierra employees.