steam

[judge alba]

theres a company called steam that sell games (yeah I know you all knew that already) and I was wondering what are they like?. is thier customer service any good?.

I have seen saints row 2 on there and sort of thinking of getting it though I was wondering do I need to keep the pc connected to the internet to use the game? or can it run off line? .
sorry if this is a stupid question not bought anygames like this before normally get them from the local store

 

[Reverend]

I don't think any Steam games require a constant connection to play their games, just while a game is registered (if you bought it off the shelf) or while you're downloading one direct from them (duh.)

Can't say much about their customer service as I've never had a need to use it and I've had Steam on my system(s) since Half Life 2 first came out.

 

[backstept]

I love Steam. I've got tons of games on there, and it's really great to not have a CD to lose

 

[Chaos Descending]

I've never had a complaint about Steam, so never needed their customer service.

You only need to be connected to the internet while initially downloading a game, or when launching a game (it validates the game that way), but not to actually play the game.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I've never needed their customer service, either. It's a pretty slick system they've got.

 

[Switch]

Steam is fairly insidious in that you can't re-sell games that you've bought. Taking that into account its only during the sales that it's worth buying anything.

You only need to be connected to the internet while initially downloading a game, or when launching a game (it validates the game that way), but not to actually play the game.

There's also an "offline mode" available.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Steam is fairly insidious in that you can't re-sell games that you've bought. Taking that into account its only during the sales that it's worth buying anything.

You only need to be connected to the internet while initially downloading a game, or when launching a game (it validates the game that way), but not to actually play the game.

There's also an "offline mode" available.

It's "insidious" that you can't resell a digital product? A little hyperbolic, I think. It's a fair point to make but a lot of people never sell any of their games anyway.

 

[Arrqh]

I had my first customer service issue with Steam the other week. Apparently if you try to use a credit card with a billing address in a different country from what your current IP is, your account gets locked without giving you a proper explanation why. Apparently this is put in place to stop account theft, which is fairly ridiculous.

Anyway, the issue was resolved a few hours after I sent them an email. So no complaints about their service, though the fact that it was a problem to begin with was pretty irritating.

 

[Switch]

It's "insidious" that you can't resell a digital product? A little hyperbolic, I think.

Maybe. I only meant that it's not the sort of thing which occurs to one at the time.

I had my first customer service issue with Steam the other week. Apparently if you try to use a credit card with a billing address in a different country from what your current IP is, your account gets locked without giving you a proper explanation why. Apparently this is put in place to stop account theft, which is fairly ridiculous.

Seems more likely that it's in place to prevent people from using proxy servers to bypass regional price gouging.

 

[Yoda]

Their customer service kind of sucks. Some games you can play in offline mode, but I got kicked out of MW2 multiplayer far too often with 'Lost connection to Steam' messages when they go down for maintenance. They also do a poor job with third party releases in some respects. Their overlay would get me booted from MW1 via punkbuster, and there is no way to disable it on a per game basis which is incredibly annoying. Their Valve Anti-Cheat could be a little less cryptic as well. To this day I have no idea if the Widescreen Fixer app could get me banned in say MW2... I just want to max out my resolution without getting an impossible to play Vert Minus aspect ratio.

You'll get ok support for things like account hijackings... pretty much canned answers for anything else you ask about. You can go to the Steam Community forums where you'll get useless smug shit from 'volunteer mods', which basically means creepy fanboy propaganda.

They let third parties sell their games with extra DRM on top of the Steam DRM. Like Wings of Prey, which I bought not realizing there is a 3 install limit. I reinstall windows at least once a year it seems... that's the kind of obnoxious shit that you're not supposed to be dealing with in Steam. So you need to do extra research on DRM included with games before purchasing.

That said, it's really convenient in most cases. A couple of clicks to install, reinstall, delete your games, etc... Steam Cloud for saves and settings is a great idea that will hopefully be implemented well in more games. They also have really good sales now and again. Their regular prices are usually much worse than what you could get a boxed copy for... these days if it's not on sale on Steam I'm not even considering the purchase.

Also the messenger, community profiles, and achievements are pretty well done and add value for me.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, the sales are a good point. I pretty much only buy stuff when it's on sale, otherwise I could get it cheaper elsewhere.

You're wise not to use the Widescreen Fixer app. If it modifies the executable or modifies the game in-memory it would most likely be picked up by VAC as an exploit attempt. Such mechanisms aren't all that smart, they just see you tampering with the executable and it sends up red flags.

If it's just an INI or registry fix or something it should not trip VAC.

 

[Yoda]

It definitely tampers with memory, which is why I steer clear. If it was just an ini or reg hack I'd just fix it myself and cut out the middle man.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of good information on exactly what VAC does. There are lots of people claiming that they use the widescreen fixer for a long time with no ban, despite the fact that it modifies FOV in memory. With the delayed ban system they have it's hard to tell what got you banned when it does happen, which I'm sure is an additional reason nobody seems confident that the widescreen fixer is ok.

I kind of imagine that VAC works somewhat like a virus scanner, detecting processes in memory against known hacks... As such you can't really ever be sure that an application is ok if they don't come out and say it.

Of course it would be a moot point if more developers didn't treat the PC as an Xbox port.