Comments on: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

By: Chris C.

Chris C. — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:29:32 +0000

I really wanted to play Half Life 2. I never have. And I probably never will. Why? Because of the horror stories I have heard about Steam.

I _hate_ face-hugger ware. I also fear it — my (possibly irrational) paranoia tells me that a program this invasive probably compromises the security of my computer. The last thing I want to do is to explain to the security team at work how a video game hurt the business…

This fear is unfounded, I am sure. But it keeps me from buying this game.

By the way, the comparison to iTunes is a bad one. Sure, both iTunes and Steam sell you media online with built in DRM. But iTunes is not face-hugger ware — when you close it, it goes away.

By: Andy P

Andy P — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 08:56:13 +0000

> I hope that we can all agree that in the near-future, direct distribution will be preferred medium of game transport

Absolutely. But not if (a) I need thirty different download clients from thirty different companies, because they’re all too selfish to settle on a standard; (b) any of the download clients takes over my PC – it does not need to run on startup, show me ads or run in the background while I’m running other games; or (c) the actual process of downloading the game becomes less convenient than just ordering the DVD from game.com.

> I like knowing that whatever games Iâ€™ve purchased will just be there when I want them as long as I have my account login and internet access.

I kinda like knowing that whatever games I’ve purchased are on a DVD I have on my shelf. I’m willing to sacrifice that for the convenience of a download; but the moment I get told I can’t play the game I have purchased because the authentication servers are down, or that I can’t reinstall it because my hard drive has changed and it thinks I’m trying to install on two computers at once, or that (heaven forbid) I forget the login-name/password combination (“your password must be between seventeen and nineteen characters long, contain at least four non-alpha-numeric characters, must not contain more than two digits in a row and may not contain any natural language words or anagrams thereof”)…. that’s when the hate and bile begins.

By: Brant

Brant — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:03:25 +0000

I purchased both HL2 and HL2: Episode One through Steam when they were released, and didn’t have any problems. I suppose I could have been one of the lucky ones.

If you know and expect what you’re getting into, Steam is great. I like knowing that whatever games I’ve purchased will just be there when I want them as long as I have my account login and internet access.

There’s a lot of general anger directed at Steam, and while some of it is justified, I think most is just the result of lingering frustration from the early days when the service truly did suck.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 21:09:58 +0000

I don’t like porcelain. I like shiny round plastic & foil discs! They will be worth something someday, really! And they make neat zapping action in microwaves (not recommended for anyone other than me to do of course).

By: Lorien

Lorien — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:50:14 +0000

I recently purchased Sid Meier’s Railroads! from Direct2Drive, and was pleased with the reasonably streamlined downloader. To their credit, you could also use a plain old download link in your browser.

I’ve personally never had a problem with Steam, and while I share Peter’s opionion about HL2 not being the end-all FPS shooter, I enjoy the Steam library. They sell Introversion titles, as well as excellent indie titles like “The Ship”.

I hope that we can all agree that in the near-future, direct distribution will be preferred medium of game transport. Why do we really want disc, or DVD laying about? I don’t. If I want to collect something, I’ll collect those cute little porcelain figurines of kittens.

By: Columbine

Columbine — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:18:24 +0000

When I finally installed HL2, having steeped in the Steam controversy for some months between purchase and install time, I realized what they were trying to do – it’s the same model that ANet’s MMORPGs use. When you buy Guild Wars, you get a little plastic box with some media in it, but that media is not the least bit required. (For the middle of the three Guild Wars games, Factions, I have never put any of the CDs in my computer’s drive at all.) The key bit is the piece of paper in the box which has the access code. Each code is a set of specific rights, basically – you’re entitled to do this, you’re entitled to have these extras, so on. Each code can be used – linked to the details of a particular user account/logon – once and once only. Everything else is disposable, and frankly, the first time you launch GW it’s gonna reload most of the content anyway, since CDs are out of date as soon as they’re pressed.

I like this model fine, and I think Steam would be a lot more likable if they weren’t so freaking paranoid. All their problems have stemmed from Steam’s “I don’t trust you and I think you are trying to steal my games” behavior, including its unwillingness to recover if, perish forbid, anything goes wrong during a game setup process. (Because *clearly* you were trying to hack it. Bah.)

I decided after a few weeks of dealing with Steam’s accusatory tone that if Valve wasn’t going to trust me, the person who puts food on their plate, then I wasn’t going to bother giving them any more money. Besides, HL2 was not all that and a bag of chips.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:08:37 +0000

So games get more complicated, take up more space, and our download speeds go up too. I wonder if there is a point where the games won’t really get any bigger because there is no worthwhile added complexity? Will our data pipe catch up to the game size to the point where it only take 5 minutes to download a good game?

By: Andrew Plotkin

Andrew Plotkin — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:02:17 +0000

I signed up with Gametap a few months ago. I did this for the sole purpose of playing Uru Live, but it turns out they have some other stuff like, say, the first three chapters of the new Sam&Max series. Also all the Infocom games. (I already own them, but maybe you don’t.)

The Gametap interface is not evil. Oh, it’s ugly and noisy and plastered with ads. But it runs when you run it and shuts down when you shut it down. It’s never refused to let me play a game, and I’ve only seen the app crash once. (During a self-patch at startup, and it ran fine when restarted.)

I’m sure they can get away with this because they’re offering old games, and the Global Piracy Empire just doesn’t give a crap. But it sounds a heck of a lot more pleasant than what you Steam users have to go through.

(I made a perfunctory attempt to steal the Zork 1 datafile out of the Gametap system, just to see if it was possible. I failed. Considering how easy it is to steal Zork 1 online, foiling a perfunctory attempt is probably their antipiracy design goal.)

By: Faisal

Faisal — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:22:14 +0000

I recently used e-link, which appears to be less annoying than Steam. The only real problem I’ve had with it is that it uses its own pretty UI elements which don’t really look like Windows UI elements. You can’t tell if the program is actually installing the game or is sitting behind the power supply selling old Magic cards to your serial ports. Eventually you hit some random button which you think is “quit trying to install” but actually is “delete the 2gb of downloaded game files”, forcing you to redownload the game. Since that attempt to redownload was pretty smooth (10 hours of smooth), and it didn’t try to charge me for the game again, or tell me I couldn’t play it because I was already logged in as me, I was merely annoyed and not dramatically torqued off. That said, had I realized the level of nonsense I’d go through to actually get the game set up I’d have just ordered the DVD off Amazon.

By: peterb

peterb — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:24:14 +0000

For what it’s worth, not only is Half-Life 2 not the greatest game ever made, but I didn’t even think it was particularly good or interesting.

I’ve been told I’m in the minority in thinking this.