what if you have other games in your account that you don't want to sell?

If tyou sell the account password then the buyer has access to everything.

This is why I hate steam. It makes things like this much more complicated than it needs to be.

If a fire suddenly engulfs my house, saving my copy of HL2 is going to be the LEAST of my worries. Getting my *** out the door to safety is a primary concern. To hell with saving a damned game, it won't matter, because if it gets burned, so does the computer.

It's illegal to specify that an "internet connection is required" when in fact a subscription to some "service" is actually what is required. As everyone else has mentioned, the only reason you guys put up with this is because you love HL2 so much. If it had been Railroad Tycoon part 57 you would never put up with this gross injustice.

EULA's in general are not legal.

As far as I'm concerned, they don't mean jack s*** to me.

If it had been Railroad Tycoon part 57, no one would have cared.

I'm not seeing it as really a subscription to a service. If it were, they would probably be charging people for access. Yes, you may be registering for the service, but that's slightly different in that it's free and you don't have to allow it to automatically update your games if you don't want it to. But, honestly, it's probably one of the best solutions they could think of at the time for updating at least the multiplayer games. Considering the amount of patches and updates that they've released and may release still, it's a lot simpler to allow the system to download and update them for you automatically then to have to continuously visit a main site and manually download and install patch after patch just for small fixes.

As far as legality is concerned, I don't think it's really spyware since they aren't continually receiving information about what you do on your computer and sending that information to third parties or anything. To me, it's not really all that intrusive. Also, don't you have to sign up and subscribe to MMOs and other games? Do they all specify that a subscription is required in big letters on the box? No, really, I want to know, because I've never owned an MMO.

I, for one, am not saying what I do just because I enjoy the games; it's because I literally haven't had any issues with the system. The option to turn off the automatic updating works for me and I have yet to encounter any issues at all with Steam. Maybe I'm just one of the luckier people with regards to this. As far as the whole "Offline Mode" issue goes, I don't know because I'm always connected, so it isn't an issue for me. I'll have to check it out and see if it actually does what you guys say.

while that is a good idea in and of itself, did they really have to impose a nazi-esque activation system on users too? Steam does next to nothing to stop warezers, I even hear about people writing programs to let them download stuff from steam for free.

Once again, Brian comes up with the perfect analogy. And oSiRiS is right - many EULAs are illegal.

This assumed I'd WANT to sell it.

I never have sold games I've bought and I don' t know why I'd want to in the near future...

Of course I see your point. I think the $10 charge for a CD key replacement isn't going to work, and needs to be worked out differently. Getting rid of ALL hard copies would be one way (and I can see it happening in the future with more people getting broadband... just think, no needing to go out for new games anymore, just buy 'em online!). Of course that shouldn't happen NOW. Perhaps the CD keys could be hard coded into the CDs themselves somehow, and a warning issued to buyers to keep track of their CDs. If they sell the CD to someone else, that person installs HL2 and it automatically unregisters the old person's account access (and logs the change in full detail in case a theft just occured). That's my idea at least.

EULAs have already been struck down in US courts as illegal, at least in one specific case, and likely more in the future. After a transaction takes place (you buy a game) the user cannot be asked to agree to any additional terms, the deal is sealed! So the judge ruled.

Also as a note to whoever suggested you sell the Steam account, you are not supposed to buy Steam accounts online, as there is a good chance they were purchased with stolen credit cards. In particular, eBay cannot help you if you buy such an account (which will soon be deactivated by Valve) because no goods physically changed hands (it's their policy).

See, that bothers me, but I can't nail down why specifically it does.

When I buy a game, I want it in some form of physical media. Be it floppies, CDs, or DVDs. I want something I can pickup and KNOW I own because it's sitting right in front of me. I'm not comfortable at ALL with the idea of me purchasing a 50 to 60 dollar game, and having virtually nothing to show for it.

exactly. I hope it NEVER EVER EVER goes to an all online media... That would suck so hard. I prefer buying software in a box because I get a disc.

sounds like a good deal to me!



seriously though, i cant pick a side. i agree with most of what either side says. one thing that hasnt ben mentioned is that STEAM is a resource hog. i never leave it running if i'm not going to play.

God, you sound just like an old person who prefers a typewriter over a word processor or an abacus over a handheld calculator. Honestly, that's who you remind me of.

And you sound like an angsty close minded uber liberal.

A REALLY bad cliche' if you ask me.



I mean, EVERYONE should think like you. And if they don't? Well they need to stop breathing.











This is a disturbing trend I notice.

Diversity is the beauty of the world, not making everything how you want it. That would be boring.

And there again, in this country as I recall, the power is with the people. Don't like something, get off your nerd rump and start doing something about it.

And you consistenly sound like a whiny brat. So much for what we sound like.

Rob, how you can extract politics from what I said I will never know. You must be the next Einstein.

phoenix: Nice try, but I've made it a policy to stop replying to flamebait.

Really? Then how about not being a total *** when I voice my opinion? Ok?

I didn't extract politics.

I pegged you with a cliche'.

I officially hate Steam as well. It turned what should've been a quick, simple task (installing HL2) into an exercise in frustration that lasted several hours.

First, my connection was down, so I said okay, whatever. Well, when my connection came back up, I started the process of registering HL2. Well, about 1/4 of the way through the whole process of Steam verifying my Cd-Key and whatnot, it decides to stop responding. Wonderful. I start over. This time I make it through the registration process. Yay, I finally get to play HL2. Oh, wait, no I don't. Now effing Steam has to unlock all the game data (at this point I was becoming thoroughly pissed). It finishes that, and I try to start HL. I still can't play, because that god damned piece of **** Steam now says I have to download a ****load of 'game content'. Now I was ready to shove my fist through my monitor I was so pissed. So, after about 2 and a half hours of frustration, I was finally able to play HL2.

That is, until my connection goes down. At which point I try to start Steam in offline mode. Which then gives me the brilliant message of "Steam is unable to connect the Steam servers. Please make sure you are connected to the Internet." Friggin brilliant.

My thoughts exactly on Offline mode. It's especially annoying to me because I'm on dial-up. Which means that any time I want to play the game, I have to dial in, wait for Steam to log me in, and then disconnect and launch the game, all the while praying it doesn't want to download anything more. My praying has yet to successfully work.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DOWNLOAD UPDATES.


In the game settings, choose to NOT KEEP THE GAME UP TO DATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Jeez...



I mean, I friggin HATE steam, and that just irks me when people can't figure that one out...

I would suggest reading the documentation. That's what it's there for. I hate when people blame things on software that could have been prevented if they had takena few minutes to learn how to use it before jumping in.

I bought HL2 about 2 weeks after it came out, and I've never, ever had a problem. I don't understand why everyone is complaining about offline mode. During winter break, my desktop was disconnected from the internet completely(no modem, just 10/100 ethernet, which I don't have at home). Steam started up and told me it couldn't connect to the server. Fine, I pushed the little button that said, "Start Steam in offline mode" and played HL2 without any problems.

I haven't yet had to deal with the CD-Key issue, but since I bought my game online, I probably won't have to. The only annoyance was that I had to wait a day or two to download everything off of Steam, so I couldn't play as soon as I bought it. But I KNEW that was going to happen, so it didn't bother me at all.

As for the case if Valve goes out of business, I'm confident that they will release a patch before they do that frees the user from Steam. It's not such a bad system.

Apparently you've missed where I've said SEVERAL times now that it DOESN'T ****ING WORK. Should I take screenshots for you? Update downloading is OFF yet Steam doesn't seem to give a ****.



I do that. When I go to launch my demo, it comes up with a tiny ****ing window claiming that it cannot connect to the Steam Servers. Should I take screenshots of that too?

We seem to keep covering the same ground, is it REALLY that damned hard to read and figure out what has already been said?

Yeah, the whole demo requiring Steam deal is just cause to get pissed off about. When you download a demo, you shouldn't be arsed with Steam or any such clients. I completely agree with you there.

And BTW, I did read the thread. Every last post. I just added my own $0.02, which happened to mirror the experiences by several other people, which have been mostly positive.

This is going nowhere

I'm dissapointed in the direction this thread took, especially since things have been so much better lately. Rob, Pheonix, and Freelancer, you guys should all consider yourselves warned.