Thoughts On Steam?

CrayonMuncher

CrayonMuncher

Active Member
I always thought steam was a good way to distribute games on line, until I used it.

Half of my Thoughts are hear: Steam is awful. I buy alot of second hand PC games and m y heart sunk when metro 2033 started steam and asked me to put in the code, luckily it worked, Seriously both the disc and the case say games for windows live so wth? But i have bought HL2 both the orange box and just hl2 on its own and no luck just because I have to use steam and the key is already registered.
Why is you have to use steam to install a game you bought on a disc?

The rant can go on for many more lines but I am mainly interested what other people think.
 
i had this problem when i first started gaming on a pc, i had a 360 previously and was happy buying second hand games, then when i switched it was quite a shock.

Saying that iv got over it quite a bit considering the price of pc games, especially newer ones, i mean recently i bought assasins creed bortherhood for £6 free shiupping from game brand new, and just cause 2 for £5. To me i cna live with out second hand games, even if it means waiting a while for price to go down.

Brink and red river are also other titles iv got for mad cheap, shortly after released, much cheaper than a second hand xbox game.

So all in all i dont mind steam although i think the whole cod eonly used once thing is a bit far. my understanding is its to stop pirates but from what iv heard it doesnt really
 
I understand that when it is an online game that a key should be activated only once, but when it is mainly offline it is ridiculous, I am still trying to work out why metro 2033 worked, See with games for windows live the CD key is linked to your account and the that link is revoked when uninstalling meaning that when I buy gfwl games I feel secure in doing so. Does this also happen with games on steam when they are not valve games?
Or can you unlink the code?
You can buy games online for cheap But i like to go the high street shops, like CEX to pick something Up straight away and not have to wait for it in the post, plus I may not always have the internet so what do I do then?
 
well steam is best when like right now they have a sale and currently you can get all cods for 50% off other than bo which 33% off.
 
Yeah steam is pretty stupid. The only point that I like about it is that sometimes they have some killer deals through it. BUT, overall it sucks because if you have a disc and you decide to sell it then you can't get rid of the game from your library. Plus, steam updates games to the most current version which is pretty stupid if you ask me.

i.e, GTA vice city is updated to like v3.0 or something and you can't get it back to v1.0. Same with CoD2.

And the last thing that makes me mad is that you cannot sell your account through Steam because of its EULA.
 
So why did metro 2033 work? Did i just get an unused copy? and why the hell does it say games for windows live everywhere?
 
Midnight_fox1 said:
Because Metro 2033 is a windows game. any windows game runs windows live just like gta 4.
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Unless i am missing something it says gfwl on the case and the disc but when inserted steam is automatically installed first and it the asks you to register the key with steam then it installs via steam, I have a good few gfwl games and none of them do this, they all have the windows live stuff.
They is also no way to install the game any other way.

And tbh if GFWL continues to expand and they keep using the same thing where you revoke the license when you uninstall the game I seriously hope it completely squashes any competition steam, lets face it they have the money.
 
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Yeah, probably gfwl decided to have steam through install also. If you by a copy of Modern Warfare 2 and any other CoD they came out after that, it all installs through Steam. I guess these companies are making deals with steam now and I think partly because steam has an anti-cheat system so hackers won't be allowed to play. Plus, like i said, steam updates the game automatically for you so they probably want things to run easier.
 
Yeah you could be right i was thinking that too, just seems real weird Microsoft would do this when the have their own GFWL client.
 
good news is ea is leaving steam, no more new games on there, only olds have to stay from contracts, and ea is so bad with their client, me and my fiend were logged into my account at the same time playing games semi-recently, and you don't even have to be logged in to launch games, i have gone to the launcher in the folder and done it, although they may have patched some of these, it's been a while so idk if it's still so open. and actually just found that apparently there are now l4d and l4d2, which are valve games, on eadm/origin, but i don't actually see them on there, read it in an article
 
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I know right, Steam is so stupid!! If I bought a game second hand like CoD or Battlefield which require a unique code to play online, you will never ever get it being used by somebody else so you can't use it, so it is essentially still linked to just one person. It is just so damn retarded!!! :rolleyes:

GFWL games have a limited number of uses of the key. I have Gears of War sat here, all of the key uses are up. That doesn't stop me from selling it, but nobody would be able to play online, or even sign into their GFWL account to track achievements or talk to friends.

My BF2 key can only be used by 1 person at a time (through Steam), and my BFBC2 key is linked to my EA account (on disc). Similar thing right there.

I ahve CoD2 sat next to me on disc, that key can only be used by 1 person at a time, same as Steam.

It isn't some big problem with Steam, it is PC gaming as a whole. I wouldn't buy used PC games except for single player only games, or ones which don't require a key to play online. For instance I bought ArmA2 used, and that too is sat next to me.

I later bought the full pack on Steam for less than I got just ArmA 2 on disc, and that updates everything, and links ArmA 2, OA and all of the DLC for me, but that is still bad, because it is Steam yes...


I tend to buy games on sale. The only games I didn't were CoD4 and Portal 2. The first I got, and have since played ~1100 hours to date, so have got my money's worth, and wouldn't sell it or buy it used anyway. Portal 2, well there is no justification needed for buying it on day of release, it is a near perfect game, only trumped by Portal.

So, on my list I have ~80 games I have got over the last 3 years or so, with a total spend of about £200, so less than £3 per game.

Are you seriously trying to say that you can justify having a little rant when you are spending ~£3 on a game, and even less when you consider that £60 of that total is from 2 games on their own, and it doesn't factor in packs that I bought, like The Orange Box, like the CoD collection, or Brothers in Arms, or ArmA 2?

You would spend more on shipping the disc to the buyer and on listing fees if you sold it online than it cost you to buy in the first place, so where is the issue here?
 
Its not really a matter of the price I guess its more of the fact that whatever transaction and action you complete on Steam, its pretty much stuck with you forever.
 
Midnight_fox1 said:
Its not really a matter of the price I guess its more of the fact that whatever transaction and action you complete on Steam, its pretty much stuck with you forever.
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So, it is 3 quid and would cost more to sell than the cost of the game, so even though you may be able to sell it on, why would you want to?

You are talking about a cheap game, not paying for some massive investment that may affect your life for years to come, so what is the big deal?
 
Well ok, maybe not so much as cheap games are the problem but say you buy a game that can only be installed through steam and that game does not go down in price in the future. Say you want to sell it because you need the money for some reason. So now you run into a problem because you can't sell it because of the steam eula and you could only use the cd key with one account. That's where the problem is.
 
Name one game whose price hasn't gone down, with the exception of CoD.

And there are plenty of others things you can sell in that time, and even so, you still ahve the issue of games which are either bound to other accounts as well, or only allow for 1 person to be using each key at a time, which would allow someone to sell the same key to many people without them knowing until they have it.

The "problems" you are explaining through Steam aren't anything new that only Steam has.

Do you also have some major issue with MMO games too because they follow a similar vein of 1 person per account, you can't sell said account and you can't share said account? That is an entire genre of gaming gone because of that mindset.

And I think you will find if you read the EULA of nearly any game you can't resell it, as you do not own the game, the game isn't even sold to you in the first place, it is licensed to you, that is physical or digital, so if you want to adhere to the EULA, physical copies of any game have the same restrictions as Steam
 
Midnight_fox1 said:
Well ok, maybe not so much as cheap games are the problem but say you buy a game that can only be installed through steam and that game does not go down in price in the future. Say you want to sell it because you need the money for some reason. So now you run into a problem because you can't sell it because of the steam eula and you could only use the cd key with one account. That's where the problem is.
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Even if it isn't installed through steam, the key can only be used once, unless you are strickly talking offline gaming. Like aastii said its not a steam thing, its a gaming company thing. See, console games can be sold off just fine cause you have to have the disk to play. So, 2 people can't play from the same disk at the same time. The same isn't true about pc games, so companies take measures to not allow that. Even if they weren't installed through steam, they would put their own function forward that would do the same thing. Steam just already offers it so it saves the company money.
 
I don't really like it, but I have nothing big against it. I like that it has a friend's system, but then again, I don't like that I have to use it to play certain games. And I never download games. Kind of like MP3s. I would never buy MP3s. I wouldn't feel like I own the music. I want a nice CD or vinyl with the awesome cover art.
 
Aastii said:
Name one game whose price hasn't gone down, with the exception of CoD.
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I beg to differ... :P
ha-1.png
 
And there is BLOPs, nearly a year old, no price drop. Any other game and you have yourself a price drop after 6 months at the absolute most. It was the same with MW2, and it is only recently that CoD4 has dropped below £30 over here
 
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