Since the WoW servers have been down all day, I decided I'd pop in to Counter-Strike to try to alleviate some boredom.
Oh wait... WRONG!
Of course Steam isn't going to let me play games! That would be far too useful.

My history with Steam:

- CS 1.6 requires Steam now? Um... ok. Hey cool, it deleted my Half-Life folder and won't let me play most of my mods, but at least I can download the newest CS patch! Surely I am riding the wave of the future!
- Pre-order Half-Life 2! They'll download HL2 right to my computer the day it comes out! Oh so happy! (I've never been angrier at myself for falling for this ****)
- HL2 comes out- everyone in the world downloads HL2. I can't connect to the server for a week.
- I finally connect to the server: Pre-loading HL2 game files from Steam!
- Wait 2 hours... nothing happens
- Leave download running overnight... nothing happens
- Wait 2 days... nothing happens
- Ok, obviously the download is not working, I'll try tech support.
- Register on the steampowered.com forums, attempt to post a thread. Get message saying I'm not allowed to post.
- Attempt to create a new account. Forum informs me I already have an account.
- E-mail tech support.
- Wait 2 weeks
- Tech support tells me to post my problem on the forums. (wow)
- Search fruitlessly for a way to contact a real person, first with the intention of getting HL2 to work, then with the intention of getting my money back. No luck.
- Reinstall Steam 1,000 times trying to get the download to work. No luck.
- Give up and forget about HL2 for a month.
- Log on to Steam one day just for the hell of it and HL2 actually starts to download!
- Play through and beat the best game ever! Oh so happy!
- Buy WoW, never heard from again.

Which brings me up to date:

- Log on to Steam, open Play Games menu. Instead of games, it gives me a message saying "Searching for game updates..." that stays there forever.
- Uninstall Steam. It deletes HL2, CS, and all my other Valve games from my hard drive. Woo.
- Reinstall Steam. Double-click Counter-Strike: Source.
- Pre-loading Counter-Strike: Source game files from Steam.
- Wait 3 hours... GOD ****ING DAMN IT

Now I'm once again having the problem I had the first time I tried to install HL2. And I STILL can't post on the forums.

I JUST WANT TO PLAY COUNTER-STRIKE!

I want my ****ing money back you ****suckers.

Yeah...well I laugh at your plight.

I just borrowed the HL2 DVD from a friend, bought Silver package online, and installed via DVD. Then it's just update city.

Hah.

Are we going into another Steam pro/cons thread?

There are no pros to Steam, there is no use for it and it sucks ****ing balls.

Sounds more like your internet sucks than Steam. I've never had that kind of trouble.

And the whole reason to preorder was to download the game BEFORE it came out. As to why you decided to wait till it came out blows my mind...

CS:S took me like 30 minutes to download, HL2, about 2 hours. And I never, ever had any issues with it.

Never had a single problem. I can only laugh at your misfortune.

HL2 went live on steam something like 3am EST back in october/november whatever it was, i was playing HL2 by 4am that morning...

I haven't had problems either, except that I just don't like any of the games that I get on it.

I've essentially given up on Valve products because of Steam. It's not worth the effort and the pain for me.

*sighs*

Here we go again...

-First, if you're having problems downloading...

Shut down Steam, delete the file called clientregistry.blob in your steam folder, reconnect. This will fix 80% of your download problems with Steam...

It sounds like that could be the fix to your problems and will let you download everything else.


Calm down with Steam, it's quite easy to insult it if it messes up for you. It's never messed up for me.

Plus, all your mods you had for Half-Life, once you get Steam - WILL BE CONVERTED TO WORK UNDER STEAM. It transfer all the files to Steam\Steamapp\(youraccount)\half-life\xxx

xxx being the folder. So like PVK (great mod) would be under \half-life\pvk

If you want to add a mod to Steam...

Just put it in Half-Life folder in its own folder

Next time you start Steam it will be under third party games.


Wow - Steam sucks totally!

I've never had any troubles with Steam. I know what I'd like to see improved, but it's nothing major.

I think you people are all suffering from the EXACT same thing our parents suffered from when technology came out and they became ignorant to it's pros. Any advancement will have faults, but you people blow them all out of preportion. Tell me you've never wrestled with your OS like that? Tell me you know everything there is to know about steam? Tell me steam is the predicessor to millions of other programs that do the same thing. Steam is the first of it's kind. The model-T sucked horribly, and even those who could afford it saw it's negatives. That doesn't mean we stopped making cars. Stop being old geasers and try something new, for god's sake.

JediKirby

I'm relatively indifferent to Steam. However, it pains me how much RAM Steam uses (26 MB while idle). I really don't need another layer of software for stuff to run on top of kthx.

I've never had a problem with Steam. Bought HL2 Silver about a month after it came out, downloaded over the weekend, and I've been trouble-free ever since.

BTW, any word on when DOD:S is coming out?

Is it THAT hard to believe that some people will have immeasureable amounts of trouble with Steam, and some won't?

It happens with other software all the time, and it ISN'T always the user's fault.

Of all the problems people have with steam, 75% of the ones I've heard are the user's fault. The other 25% have genuine problems, and for them I'm sorry. But the other 75% get none of my pity.

So therefore, you should be expectant of, or even lineant to the fact that this new, and revolutionary software is going to have kinks in it. I'm not blaming the user for the program messing up, I'm blaming the user for being ignorant to all the quick fixes, and knowledge-databases on the subject. If linux doesn't install, pissing and moaning about it on a linux forum will only get you told to read the manuals. Steam requires some user-input when it doesn't work; just like every other freaking program alive. Stop blaming a new product on your laziness. Yes, a product should work out of the box, but it's not even a product as much as it is a new technology that is used to send you a product: Give it time.

JediKirby

Fine, but it's user input that was always very very vague to me.

I point you in the direction of my issue with Steam deciding my HL2 demo needed to be updated everytime I ran it, even though I had auto-updating turned OFF. The problem eventually sorted itself out, but I'll be damned if I know what I did. Ditto with it not wanting to ever run in offline mode. Every issue I had with it never seemed to have a clear solution.

Now, for me, having another program (that may, or may not work) to deal with everytime I want to play a game isn't worth it. Even if in the future this technology becomes a standard and ends up working better, I still dislike having to have another program running just so I can play a game.

I haven't spent alot of time using Steam, but what I have spent with it, I've disliked. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but when I try something several times over, and it rarely works the way it's expected to, reguardless of what I may do to it, I become disinterested with it and no longer want to bother with it.

That's where I am now.

I've never had a problem with steam, but I really dislike the concept.

Setting up can be a bit a of a hassle as it can take some time to download everything. It's also going to blow if you have a slow internet connection. Hpwever, once you figure it out, it should take care of itself.

Yeah, and 95% of the people posting problems on Steam's forums can be found in the Troubleshooting section. Instead people come on the forums like "Steam sucks! It doesn't work" and it's a never ending cycle.

But no, everyone blames Valve and horrible Steam.

There is some faults with Steam...but most of the problems and bugs are User-error or User-neglect in trying to find the solution.

Yeah, I'm with Mikus on this one.

First of all, I know all about clientregistry.blob. That fix does not work. I've pored over the forums for hours, trying various fixes, which don't work. I have a T3. My connection works just fine.
Plus none of you have addressed the fact that there forums don't work correctly, and they won't respond to my emails with a useful answer. This is not acceptable.
And yes, I've had to tinker with OSes, but that's ok, because I need an OS to operate my computer. I don't NEED Steam to run my games! I was able to play CS and HL just fine without it, before they integrated it with the games.

Just because you haven't encountered a bug doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. NOTHING I've done approaching this problem has been lazy, and I don't appreciate being insulted like that. This technology is not revolutionary, or even new anymore. They should have at least patched the software by now so this problem doesn't occur.

The bottom line is that if they're going to charge money for a product, and then integrate the product with an UNNECESSARY piece of software, they should ensure that the user is able to use the product.

No flaming, please. -DSettahr

Posted on behalf of tofu... I think.

... I'm not whining about the concept of Steam. That's just the icing on the cake. I'm venting because I can't get the games to work no matter how hard I try, and Valve hasn't met their obligation to help me solve my problem.

Meh, steam bites ***. Too bad the only way to stop this crap is for people to stop buying steam games or playing steam games. So by wasting all your time on this you are just encouraging them to put out more crap just like steam: "oh, the dumb users will put up with this, let's see what else we can shove down their sheep throats!"

I'm not a big fan of Steam myself, but it works well enough for me that I cant really complain.

BTW, at least when I installed it, it asked you if you wanted to delete your original HL install, rather than just going ahead and doing it on its own.

Also, please try to keep the flames and insults to a minimum on this thread.

Why would they waste money on development and maintenance for the sole purpose of "shoving more crap down their sheep throats"? To me, it seems like the only reason they would expend those resources on the development and maintenance of Steam is because it will make them money in the long run.

The prospect of bypassing publishers and retailers entirely is pretty exciting, and might even drive prices down a little in the future.

I like Steam. I haven't had any (and I stress any) problems with it so far.

I have had 0 (zero) trouble with Steam. I still severely dislike the concept. I hate that to play the physical copy of HL2 I own (from a store, in DVD form) Steam has to log in. Also that it wants to consolidate all of my Valve products into a folder of its choosing is BS. I will never buy a game from them (HL2 was a gift).

QM

I agree with you on the concept part, but I should mention that you can play HL2 in offline mode, without an internet connection. You just need to be online to install steam (which does suck).

user error. steam asks you if you want to delete your old folders or not, so if steam deleted them, it's because you told it to.


user ignorance. you should have preloaded hl2, just like everyone else, so that you would have everything already downloaded before playing. If you had done that, it would have taken maybe an hour. it took me ten minutes, but some people had trouble activating it during prime hours (as in, 4-10 PM, while everyone was trying to do it at once). regardless of how long it took, though, you should have been prepared for it. obviously the servers are going to be clogged the day of release (just like any other game), so if you weren't willing to deal with that, you shouldn't have bought it online.



this is the problem with practically EVERY SINGLE tech support service I've ever heard of, so you can't pin this solely on valve.



this could have been one of three things. the first being the servers were simply clogged (in which case this would also fall under "user ignorance"), the second being it wasn't able to authenticate the game (bug, but the fix was as easy as entering a steam url in your web browser, said url being posted on practically every single hl2 forum on the day of release. i had this same problem and the fix took me all of five minutes), or the third being, if you're connecting from a college campus, a few different campuses were reporting problems using steam (since a lot of campuses have various ports blocked and firewalls up and things like that, steam was probably being blocked too. it happens with a lot of games. valve fixed the problem about a week later). that would barely be classified as a bug, though, seeing as it would have most likely been the college's fault, and not valves, but ALL games are bound to have hiccups like this the first week of their release.



Again, that sounds like either a problem with your connection (either the ports are blocked, you have a firewall up that's blocking it, or your isp is blocking it).

As for having to redownload CSS... Uh... Duh. User error. You deleted it, and if you didn't want to have to redownload it, you should have backed up your CSS .gfc's.

And as for the problems with the forums, try registering using a different e-mail address or something. to me it sounds like you borked up when registering your first account (or maybe the forums messed it up, but i use a lot of different forums and havn't ever had a problem like that unless I messed something up myself) Either way, though, registering under a different e-mail address should fix the problem.

Like I said, it sounds to me like the majority of your problems are due to you either messing up, or complaining about something obvious (such as the steam servers being clogged the day of release). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but as I said, I've heard of very few people who have genuine, non-user-error problems with steam.

You sure told him, bud.

*applauds*

Very well said...

Why does no one believe that I have a genuine bug? I monitored my network and hard drive activity during the supposed (pre-loading) stage and NOTHING happens. Steam isn't even ATTEMPTING to connect to the internet, or install anything on my HD. The fact that it started to work spontaneously one day tells me that the port isn't blocked on my campus, and if Valve fixed this, why is it still not working today?

This is exactly what I fail to comprehend as well.

Oh, and CoW, I've backed up game files before from Steam and then tried to load them back up. It didn't work. I seem to recall Steam saying the backups it'd made not but 2 hours earlier were corrupted. As a result, I had to redownload everything again.

Restart Steam. Failing that, restart your computer. Do you still have the same problem?

WTF is steam inyway?

A programme that everyone else seems to hate that is some kinda security thing that updates all your valve games and you play all of them through steam. Personally i like the programme.

Anyways, I just bought a copy in game, never had any problems so nyah nyah!

OMFG!!! This programe PWNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!