LOL, thx.

nice find!

Actually, copy protection will be done through the Solidshield system, Steam is probably there for the multiplayer/matchmaking and word of mouth advertising only.
If you run a sample search on any torrent website you'll see there are a lot of Steam games that are pirated, it's not difficult to bypass at all.

Interesting read...and wise choice, thx for sharing some behind the scenes information

Good find Novotny! The problem with the high street stores like GAME and Gamestation here in the UK (both fall under the same parent group) is that not only to PC publishers get the shaft from them but also console publishers. First the high street stores gave over most of their shelf space to console gaming but now have given over a lot of that space to used games sales. Console developers are not so happy with them and came up with incentive's for people to buy new like EA's online pass system. The shops don't like this but they still promote used games over new which is why console gaming is also going digital distribution - the PC with Steam is well ahead of the curve.

Microsoft could have done so much more with Games For Windows Live. It seems now they might realise that if you read this article where they pledge to make the service better but has Steam already got a stranglehold on PC digital distribution?

Well, mostly. If Steam is trying to update itself when you lose net connection, you can get pretty stuck. Of course I only had that problem because my DSL modem died in the middle of a Steam update, not because I was dialing out, so ymmv.


Steam's only loyalty driver is that they're overall better than the competition. I've bought games through D2D, Good Old Games, and Live!, as well as Steam, but I've found Steam to be better for most things. That said, I do highly recommend Good Old Games for older titles, as their games have been tested for compatibility with modern OS's and are delivered as DRM free standalones, but they aren't a source for current games.

Though I will admit, at least part of what makes Steam so effective is their integrating their storefront into their game loader. Its really easy to go from "What do I want to play today?" to "Ooo look, shiny new games!"

Even that is not really STEAMs error, to be honest. Any self-updating will crash or quit if you break connection and log in under a new IP.

Besides that, speaking of the offline-mode: In this mode neither STEAM nor the game will update automatically. There is also no "calling home" in this mode.


And one more sentence on modding:
It's claimed dozens of times here and in the UBI-Forum that Steam is blocking modification of games. The opposite is true. You can even download many editors and tools for free with the STEAM-platform.
You just run into a problem if you make changes to copy-protected files or try to run a modified version of a game as a normal version on cheat-protected servers.

It's just extremely poor that these kinds of obvious bugs and poor implementations of features ("it's not a bug, it's a feature!") have been around so long on the Steam platform. Resuming downloads and downloading updates in the background are not things you should be able to break, as a user. Don't get me wrong, I have no idea if they ARE still around, I don't play any of the games I bought on Steam anymore, but it certainly seems like it from people's recent comments.

I remember offline mode being very poorly publicised and poorly implemented initially, but as Steam matured it's now become much less irritating.

How can it continue to download something when the user goes offline? and how on earth by any stretch of the imagination is that the apps fault?

No, not "log in under a new IP". That it can handle. I'm am talking about a situation where the DSL modem died in the middle of an update, and it took the phone company a week to ship me a new one. As in a *week* unconnected.

Actually it was more fun than that. It eventually took them sending a tech out, and him saying "Yep the modem's dead" before they finally dealt with it.