If it didn't cause a problem, why would anyone have mentioned it? I'm quite aware of how internet connections work you know, but I've had it get stuck in an update cycle before where I'd lost connection and even if the connection was resumed it got upset got stuck in some kind of half-updated broken loop and I had to install Steam from scratch. Which makes me wonder whether it's installing on the fly as it downloads, which is just ludicrous.

He said in the same breath that it wasn't really Steam's fault.

Is that in any way related to my experience or opinion of Steam? He can think that a program having a very poorly implemented self-updating feature is fine all he wants, but my own experience is that it can be rather unreliable where that particular feature is concerned.

I was refering to you saying "then why did he mention it." I've never had that particular issue with Steam. I've been using it since Half Life 2 came out, so about 6 or so years now. I have been using it pretty much exclusively in an always on manner for about 5 of those years. It doesn't use an on the fly install so I don't know what has caused those particular hiccups for you. Pardon my being short with you. Getting pretty frustrated about people only reading and seeing what they want to read and see and ignoring factual information for paranoid delusions. It was in no way your fault and I again apologize.

It was a issue because Borderlands was updated, but Steam was half updated so when the net connection failed mid update, it couldn't validate my game, so I had to play it off of my laptop while my phone company got their lead out. Again, the only reason I got stuck on my desktop was because it happened in the middle of an update. My laptop hadn't been connected at the time, and I could play offline on it just fine.

By comparison with the type of DRM used in Mass Effect 2, I would not have been able to play on any system, and with the DRM used in Assassin's Creed 2, it would have deleted my save points to boot.

My point, which you seem to be conveniently missing, is that there are some limitations with Steam, though they are not nearly of the same level as other current DRM systems.

It flabbergasts me how little people on these forums seem to know about current generation DRM. Things have changed since Il-2 came out.

Addendum: This is a really weird flamewar.

@Kikuchiyo: It's fine, there does seem to be a lot of hysteria around the issue, particularly the issue of people being unaware of the offline mode, which is one I remember going as far back as HL2, Valve just don't seem to like telling people about it, and neither do publishers. To be fair I haven't used Steam for a long time in gaming terms (not since Empire: Total War was released), but I did get HL2 on release day and I do remember a lot of hiccups and issues. I mean, even as recently as E:TW if I'm on my friends' computer and I wanted to switch accounts I often found the logout button very unreliable, often it just closed Steam and didn't bring back the login prompt, so I'd have to open it and click logout until it finally decided not to close itself instead of offering me the login screen. As useful as it is it's still one of the more buggy pieces of software that I've dealt with on a regular basis.

EDIT: As for the game updating issue, I don't understand that either...why once you've allowed it to begin downloading an update does that prevent you from playing the game on single-player? Does it still do that? Why would that ever have been a feature? I don't understand how it could be so hard to implement a check as to whether the player is playing the game before it begins the actual extraction of the update. It's just weird that Steam as a platform always seemed to be unable to separate the downloading and installation of updates for the convenience of the user.

I can't answer that questions about that issue as I never experienced it, but I do seem to recall hearing that complaint a couple of times regarding E:TW from co-workers. If that is the only time you experienced it perhaps it was more an issue with E:TW?

Not sure...certainly I used to have it with Valve games as well much earlier on. I expect they're phasing out/have phased out that kind of update method now.

I would be surprised if UBI gets nothing from Steam sales.

I don't know what version of Steam you guys were using or when but at this time Steam will stop all of it's downloads / updating as soon as it detects a full screen app running, even one that is not listed in it's game list.

These errors you guys are talking about sound to me it was Steam years ago.

There are times when the current version of Steam will sit and wait for a while to login but it's almost always due to the fact that I'm in the middle of downloading something.