...Anyone else having trouble downloading any updates to their games like Half-Life 2 and Portal? I'm trying to update those games for the past few days but I keep getting the "Steam servers are currently busy" crap. Really annoying when you want to play a game you bought but are denied access because Valve's steam service is crap. They should at least allow customers access to their off-line games without the need to update them.

at least you have the games installed. a couple months ago, steam randomly uninstalled itself and subsequently the games i had downloaded and installed.

2 Questions:
Why can't you just start Steam in offline mode?
Don't the games update themselves automatically?

You can but it makes no difference if the game is already set to update. When that happens, you're denied access until the update is complete. Even in offline mode, you still need to connect to the steam server in order to log into your account.



Yes they do by default but the steam servers are apparently too busy so the update won't complete. You can't run the game until the update is complete.

Did you try deleteing your clientblob thing?

Steam's given me no troubles

Ok, steam finally allowed me to download the update just a while ago. The purpose of this thread was for me to just vent not to seek help. I had no real problems with steam so far other than the fact the service is rather slow, making it seem like Microsoft was behind the coding of the program.

I hate steam with a passion. Sometime in the last couple months it uninstalled all my games. I went to play HL2 and I suddenly didn't have it.

Just a heads up, they have a new beta up that you can use by going to File > Settings > Beta Participation and selecting the client beta. It supposedly has a few improvements that might help. It supposedly fixes downloads from being paused, improves game launch time, improved download speeds, and one or two other smaller things.

Are you guys sure that it actually uninstalled your games? Because from time to time steam decides I don't own my games and says 'ready to download' instead of ready to play. Restarting steam fixes it.