Recently I attended a LAN party where CS:S was going to be played pretty heavily. I gave in and purchased the game and installed STEAM, something up to that point I was quite opposed to.

Since, I've been pretty addicted to the Gun Game mod, and have been playing fairly regularly. However, it started getting a little boring, so I began to explore the other things that my purchase gave me. Namely, a demo called "Half Life 2: The Lost Coast".

The demo was good. I was never particularly fond of Half Life, but this intrigued me, so I decided that I would purchase the full game and have a go at it.

When I got to Best Buy, there wasn't a DVD copy of just Half Life 2, and I refused to buy the CD copy that would take forever to install. As such, I purchased the Holiday 2006 Collection which included Episode 1 (and CS:S ).

I bring it home and promptly try to install. "INVALID CD KEY", said the installer. OK, so I try a variant thinking maybe a B, 8, V, Y, 1, L, or I might be printed illegibly. No dice.

No problem. I figure I'll just call up Valve support and get somebody to give me a new key. Nope. No phone support. Only email. OK. I figure I'll get a response in a few hours. Nope. None. Nobody at Valve works over the weekend apparently. At least nobody who handles support claims.

On a whim about 15 minutes ago, I went to the store within Steam and clicked the "Activate a product with STEAM" link. I type in the same product code that the installer said was invalid and it accepts it. Now the stupid games are downloading rather than using the local media I have available. x2.

Valve and STEAM suck.

Bah get over it. You will be loving steam when you lose the cd key and only know your accound password.

[Edit] And if valva sucks so much why the hell are you buying games they make?[/edit]

No. No I really won't. Running netmon on STEAM makes me cry a little inside. I have to remember constantly to kill it and any executable associated with it until about an hour or so before I want to play a game. Especially because it totally donks my Vonage.

And Valve can suck as a company and still produce a product worth owning. I just don't think it's right for companies not to offer real-time phone support, particularly a company that provides software. I was all too willing to wait on hold to get the issue resolved.

Steam sucks.

Maybe in your 12 year old world where your parents buy stuff for you, this won't affect you.

But to the rest of us that have to pay for our own crap, this kind of stuff tends to really piss us off.

Precisely. And I won't lose the product key. I still have the damned original box that my first revision Dark Forces came in with the CD in it's case and the book.

Well the one time i click the "View Post" button i figure i might as well try to argue my case.

It's this simple: Yes i did pay for it with my own money. Yes it was from shoveling snow, Mowing the lawn.etc and not a real job. But it was my own money. Just figured i'd clear that up.

I'm so sure.


You're an idiot.

i got the cd version of HL2... but I allready had the demo, so win!

yay for preloading

Haha I read the title as "Vader and Steam suck" for some reason

I couldn't disagree more.

I bought the DVD copy, came with DOD:S, CS:S, all that.

When I got up to college, I installed windows on the macbook, and realized I forgot the HL2 DVD back at home. Loaded up steam, put in my info, lo and behold, I could just download the stuff. Made my day, let me play DOD:S here at school, made me a happy fish.

I have no complaints with Steam!

The only problem I've had with Steam is that more and more games are being offered which tempt me to spend my money. I've downloaded all my games.

Hammer and the Valve SDK on the other hand, are a major pain in the arse. Not Steam's fault though.

Neither do I. It was easy to setup and has been easy to use from day one. About nine months ago, my old computer fried. When I got my new one, I downloaded Steam, entered my info and I got everything I needed back.

You shouldn't use Steam as a backup mechanism. When Valve goes out of business, you won't be able to do that any longer.

I bought Episode 1 in a store and had no problems installing it into my existing Steam account.

By the time Valve goes out of business, I'd expect to be on to bigger and better things, so I'm not really worried about it.

I also have had no problems with Steam. It's a shame that it wouldn't recognize your key, but if it weren't for Steam you would have had to wait until Monday to call and get help, instead of having the option to download it. The automatic updates are especially cool, I think.

I have no issues with Steam so far. And don't give me that BS about if I don't have problems because "Im 12 and my parents do everything for me." I bought it myself and live in my own house, so there Rob. Stop attempting to belittle people for no reason.
I think we can agree Steam > Gamespy Arcade

Technically Vader does suck. He has to suck air through his breathing tubes right?


Anywho, back on topic. Physical media installs faster then having to download several GB of data for most people.



If it weren't for Steam he wouldn't have a useless DVD lying around

You can backup the game content at any time you want. If Valve were going out of business, all they'd have to do is release the authentication and such that is currently needed to play Steam games. In the event that Valve would go down the crapper, they'd release all authentication and verification so that Valve servers would no longer be necessary to play Steam games. Apparently they have already tested this, and it works. Worst case scenario, you'll just have to get a cracked copy of Steam. Not that hard considering they've been around for years.

Yecti, I'm not sure why Steam is giving you bandwidth problems. I run it all day long, plus browse, plus download torrents (at limited speeds of course) and it never gives my Vonage any problems. Are you sure there weren't any game files downloading at the time? It does use the BT protocol for distribution. But I think most traffic comes from Valve's servers unless they are unable to accommodate the load (such as the traffic rush when a new game is released). That is, you shouldn't be uploading much to peers through Steam unless Valve's servers are loaded.

In fact, I'm downloading the Dark Messiah demo right now at some 400 KB without any interruptions...sucks that you're having trouble. In the future I would recommend buying games from Steam directly and downloading them. It seems the problems most people have had are with the offline retail installations. As I noted above, you can backup the content so you have a hard copy.

I never said one couldn't backup game content. I said one shouldn't rely on Valve's servers to do so.

Steam wont take the Opposing Force CD key for the copy of Op4 that I bought in 1999. No idea why.

I love steam. It let me buy Half Life 2 online and allowed me to play it within the minute it was released.
That was awesome.

lol, any key from the older games that was not attempted to be registered until now was almost certainly taken by a keygen program, like my old pre-steam copy of the original half-life was.

Why not? Their servers aren't going anywhere any time soon. And once it's downloaded, you don't need to redownload it to back it up.

When I used to play the HL series I had to use the Blue Shift key because my HL key was already claimed. I formatted at one point and was able to redownload the games I was registered for, but after a while I got tired of requiring a seperate application and internet service to play my games (yes, I realize there's an offline mode). There's no excuse for requiring Steam for store-bought copies of games.
And screw auto-update, I only use that for programs I don't care about breaking. I have had more than one application brick itself because of some ****ed up auto-update.

I have problems with Steam.

I bought HL2 in a store because I knew that my computer has all sorts of issues and wouldn't be able to use Steam well. Turns out that I can't play HL2 at all now because Steam won't work on the gaming computer. I've tried to figure out why it doesn't work to no avail. The diagnostics on the Steam website certainly didn't help. My brother was able to create an account, but we can't log on to the account at all. I can't get to the offline mode because I can't log in the first time. So now I can't play a game that I bought in a store because I can't log on to an online service that isn't going to do anything for me.

**** Steam.

Valve's technical support is the worst. You submit a ticket, they send you an auto-response. Then, a week later, you receive an e-mail saying, "Since you haven't contacted us about this issue, we assume that it's fixed." :downs:

The only company I've had to use that's just as bad is Linksys', but that's because they use the exact same ticket system as Valve.

I preordered HL2 in-store. I went in, picked it up, and started installing. The game installed fine, the CD key was accepted,....


I COULDN'T PLAY THE GAME I BOUGHT ON RELEASE DAY BECAUSE STEAM'S SERVERS WERE TOO BUSY TO DECRYPT MY GAME FILES. MY GAME FILES ON THE DVD I OWN.

I hate Valve. I hate Steam. I hate both of them for other reasons but I think this is the important one: They don't care about their customers whatsoever and, just like the MPAA and RIAA, they'd rather give the pirates and the dishonest a fun problem to solve than keep their honest and paying customers. I have not bought a single Valve game since, nor have I installed Steam on my computer since I beat HL2.

Don't worry, they hate you too. And are in coalition with the klu klux klan and al qaeda

It's not that bad. I've gotten nothing but good from it, really, and it's brought me tons of happiness. CS:S ftw

I'll say it for the third time. One shouldn't rely on Valve's servers as one's backup strategy because Valve could go out of business.

Seems like (1) people either have used Steam without fail or (2) Steam has been a nightmare, wasting their money with unresolvable issues. Luckily, I fall into the first boat. It has been a simple, easy experience with CS:S and HL2 through Steam.

I've never found anything wrong with steam. It kinds of makes me wonder why all these other people seem to encounter such problems.

If you're insinuating that I brought my problems with Steam upon myself I'm going to tell you to go **** yourself.

Freelancer, you pretty much disregarded this:

I'm saying that one's sole backup should not be Valve's servers. Why? Because they could go out of business and I doubt they'd leave up a free download for their damn games. What's so hard to understand? I'm saying back up your damn games to local media, DON'T SOLELY RELY ON VALVE'S SERVERS AS YOUR PERSONAL BACKUP. WHY? BECAUSE THEY COULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS.

Whats so hard to understand about them turning off the need to play with steam? If they did go out of business, they can allow people to play without steam authentication and retrieve their copy of the game. Its not like theyd be putting it up for free for everyone.

If they made it so I could decrypt my legally-purchased Half-Life 2 DVD without connecting to their yo-yo uptime servers I wouldn't have a real complaint.

I just wish more game publishers would realize that ridiculous amounts of copy protection doesn't do a damn thing. Something to keep Joe Rugby from burning a copy for all of his school chums without downloading a crack is all you need.