SEV on Steam?

[Randallw]

Tycho on PA seems to thinks it's a great idea. Haven't heard him mention SE5 though.

[Fyron]

None of the people I know in real life that play HL are very satisfied with Steam. This is of course a small number of people, so take it as you may. I personally am not very keen on the idea of purely downloaded software purchases, especially not ones using vile DRM schemes. Too much of a hassle for when you need to reinstall Windows periodically.

EDIT:

Bold clarification added.

[Renegade 13]

Heh, downloading a single patch can take a day of dialup time. That can be incredibly annoying. If I had to be connected for an entire day just to be able to play a game that I'd already paid for the right to play, I'd be annoyed to say the least. In fact, I won't buy a game that forces me to do such things (HL2 and others that use such a system). Catering to only those who have high-speed internet is a very foolish thing to do, since there are millions of people who A) don't have access or B) do not have a need for it most of the time. Any time you purposefully exclude a segment of the market, you are cutting your own throats.

[Arkcon]

So STEAM is like Blizzard's Battlenet? Or is it ment to support the multiplayer like PBW? Is that it? Wierd. SE4 doesn't need this sort of mock TCPIP to play multiplayer. Is SE5 really different?

[Atrocities]

Stream is more like a program that tells on you. You cannot play HL 2 without it. You have to activate it in order to download your AUTHORIZATION to play Half Life 2. Not multiplayer, althought it does that too, but single player.

Its an anti theft, anti freedom, anti purchase, updater program that basically gives you a red or green light for playing. It is a pain in the *** to say the least. You have to have an account with them, so eventually they can start to charge you if they so desire.

After shelling out $55.00 for Half Life 2, and spending nearly an hour installing the game, I was shocked to have to wait antoher 45 minutes for Stream to approve me to play.

Now it doesn't take so long, but still its confusing, annoying, and out right 1984 encarnate.

While stream is running they have full access to your entire PC and or network. It really is THAT bad.

[Spoo]

SEV on Steam would expose it to a larger audience. As long as Steam isn't the only way to play SEV, how is this not a good thing?

[Arkcon]

Yeah, that's my question. What is STEAM and how does it work? And no their website doesn't have a quick faq for me to check.

So I buy SE5, it connects to STEAM, 45 min later unlocks my copy, and I play it solo all I want, without ever having to connect to the STEAM server again, right?

Or does it check online at each time the program starts? That would kinda suck. Or if I try play-by-email/PBW, that would kinda suck too.

I suppose I would try the STEAM server for a multiplayer game, but I do tend to have the same point of view as Atrocities does -- I don't like snoopy servers.

'Course, I never checked if the Battlenet server is doing something like that. Hmmm. There's a project for me today.

[EDIT]

Oooh. If SE5 uses the STEAM server, is it contractually obligated to only use the STEAM server for multiplayer. As in, PBW gets a cease and desist order, and Play-By-Email must be removed from SE5.

[Suicide Junkie]

The worst part is that you don't actually *have* the game... if you ever want to get a new PC and play on there, you need to pray that Steam still exists and that the company running it at the time won't decide to screw you over for another bunch of bucks.


Steam is just fine for Flash-in-the-pan games, which you will play for a few months and then throw in the trash.
Anything that is really worth playing, like Space Empires needs to be usable for decades.

[wilhil]

I have to agree and disagree with some points here, I think that "steam like" systems are the future,

At the moment the problems are really only, slows down the initial loading of a game, stops you from using on a computer not connected to the internet e.t.c.

the main forum I particpate in these days is gamedev, read this post I made on copy protection, and you will see a lot of game developers think the same http://www.gamedev.net/community/for...opic_id=353819... in there, I even said I downloaded SEIV, but plz read the whole thing past there!

I personally hate copy protection systems as you can read and see in that link above, but at the same time, I think that if steam was made better, it could be the best, these days A lot of people have broadband (not saying everyone, I remember the complaint in the other thread here ) and I am sure that by the end of the decade close to 90% of people with computers will have broadband available.

anyway, steam is annoying if you are just a solo player and want to install and go (personally I think for solo you should be able to bypass it) but for multi player, I think it is the best thing since sliced bread, it is kind of a game manager, it will allow you to always have the latest version and as for Fyron saying "Too much of a hassle for when you need to reinstall Windows periodically" I personally think that is steams best feature of all, I switch computers frequently, reinstall windows for diffrent reasons (I have multiple pcs and a computer lab, I always do experiments in the lab that need to do reinstalls) and all I need to do is install steam, click on the game I want, and without cds, it auto downloads the game, and within about 5 mins, it is ready to play and patched! and it streams it as I need it.

As I said above, I personally think that steam should not really be used for people without broadband, but at the same time, steam is a little ahead of its time, when we all have broadband, and the computer speed that the overhead of using steam loading will do nothing, that is when it will be best, already if you have a fast computer and broadband, I think it is brilliant!


anyway, I bet I will get stick and some comments about this post, but hope you read it all!

[Arkcon]

Hmmm... I hate to be a dick(and I only use obscenities when absolutely necessicary), but if SE5 requires STEAM to run, I may just give SE5 a miss, to coin the British phrase.