Steam has been getting a lot of press attention recently, mostly because retail boxes of Half-Life 2, which requires online activation via Steam before it can be played, have unexpectedly made their way onto store shelves several days before the sheduled release date of November 16th.
Valve Software is in a very unhappy situation. They're trying to push Steam as both a content delivery system and an anti-piracy tool, while at the same time fighting a vicious legal battle with Vivendi Universal, their retail distributor. The battle with Vivendi is no surprise; when you buy Half-Life 2 (or any other Valve game) over Steam, Vivendi doesn't get a cut. All the profits go straight to Valve. Vivendi is understandably upset about Steam. As a result of this legal battle, even though customers have been able to purchase and download Half-Life 2 via Steam for over a month now, Vivendi has demanded that Valve agree not to allow the game to be played until the official retail release date of the 16th. So even though stores have jumped the gun and started selling the game early, and even though a lot of gamers have already bought the game via Steam, nobody can play it until the 16th, and Valve is powerless to change this because they are under a legal obligation to Vivendi.
Vivendi didn't contribute a single dime to the development of Half-Life 2. Valve funded the entire project out of the revenues from the original Half-Life, which was itself funded entirely out of the pockets of Valve's founders, two rich ex-Microsoft programmers. By pushing Steam as a content delivery platform, Valve is trying to free themselves (and other game developers) from distributors like Vivendi, who, in return for packaging the game and getting it into retail stores, take a huge cut of the profits -- profits that Valve would rather keep for themselves.
But Steam is more than just a content delivery system. It's also an anti-piracy mechanism, and a damn good one at that. As with any form of copy protection, there are tradeoffs. When you buy a boxed copy of Half-Life 2, you get a set of CDs that contains a Steam client and all the game content, but not the executable actually needed to run the game. Before you can play, you must create a Steam account and activate the game online, at which point Steam automatically downloads the necessary files and lets you play the game.
That's the part most people can't get over. You can't play the game you've purchased -- not even in single-player mode -- without being online, so that Steam can verify your copy's authenticity each time you run it. What if Steam's servers go down? What if I want to play Half-Life 2 on my laptop on a plane? What if Valve goes out of business and I can't play my game anymore? Scary questions.
But if you can look past those uncertainties, Steam is actually an ingenious platform. It's not just an excellent content delivery system, and it's not just a secure copy protection mechanism: it also adds value and convenience for the user. And that's why Steam will work.
A few weeks ago, anticipating the release of Half-Life 2 and dreading having to roam the city looking for a store that wasn't sold out, I decided to purchase the game via Steam. For $59.95, I got Half-Life 2 and a bunch of extras, including the original Half-Life. I was able to start playing the extras immediately, although I won't be able to play Half-Life 2 until Tuesday.
I was astonished by how convenient Steam makes things. I can install the games I've purchased on as many computers as I want, a feat made incredibly easy since installing a game I've purchased is as easy as telling Steam to download it to the machine. This means I can have a legal copy of my games both on my laptop, which is convenient for LAN parties, and on my more powerful desktop machine, which provides a better gaming experience when I'm at home. While I didn't expect to be able to, Steam even let both machines play online at the same time (but not on the same server).
What's more, Steam provides a simple, elegant, and powerful configuration interface and server browser that is shared by all of Valve's games. The server browser is the best I've ever used, bar none, and the in-game Steam interfaces are fast and responsive, unlike most in-game UIs. Most impressive of all is the fact that there was no delay and no glitchiness when I Alt-Tabbed to another application while playing a game. This is unheard of.
There are still more questions than answers about the reliability of Steam's online authentication requirements, and there are certainly privacy issues (if, for some reason, you're worried about Valve knowing how much time you spend playing their games), but on the whole I'm impressed at how Valve has managed to turn something that could easily have been an unfriendly, restrictive anti-piracy mechanism into something that actually benefits customers. Granted, you've gotta be willing to make some concessions in order to get those benefits, but I feel much more comfortable doing so knowing that Valve is a company that actually cares whether or not I have a good time playing their games, instead of caring only about parting me from my money.
Comments
about steam
well i think Steam is a great program,but the only problem is I’m most of the time traveling so when i want to play a valve game i can’t because I’m not online and that’s what i don’t like at all,i have so many valve games but just drives me crazy when i can’t play them because i can’t connect to steam,i personally think that valve should do something about it,or it might get to the point where costumers won’t buy their games anymore just because of steam.
About Steam
I dont know why, so many people dont know, that you only need the internet connection once. Steam only ask you for the internet connection when you install the game for the first time. Then you can play the game (or games) any moment any where, just activate the Offline Mode and that’s it. You will be playing Valve Games with no need of the internet in Offline Mode.
a little pissed
I’m not happy with steam at all, my bro got the orannge box for his birthday and we couldn’t play any of the games because my no internet acces computer has all the gaiming stuff and the internet computer has nothinh T_T
memory hog
i have halflife 2 and i origninally bougt it when it first came out, and even to this day with a custom built gaming rig, the steam client is a memory hog, i have 2gig of ram in my pc, and duo core processor and a geforce 7300gt and i still cannot play HL2 episode 2 on max resouloution and all settings set high. it gets choopy as hell, more than crysis and time shift get when i tune the graphics so i know its not my computer its the stupid steam client thats been making my comp slow.
Cant play HL2 in offline mode
I dont know why so many people say “just put it in offline mode and you can play” Because you cant, i put it in offline mode and try and play and i get a error message saying i cant do that in offine mode, and YES my game is update, ive tried updating it again but it says its fully updated, so fuck it. Steam is a big dissapointment.
offline mode
i second that Irma…i dunno what Waba is talking about…. you can’t play Valve games when offline… sorry but you just can’t…
sleepingdragon777
steam sucks
Steam Offline
Hello,
all HL2 games can be played offline.
I had problems with Episode-2 and just read that the “automatic update” should be turned off after updating and then also Episode 2 shall run offline after starting online the first time.
Jens
The Orange Box [aka The Criminal in Disguise]
I purchased The Orange Box at Future Shop 5 days ago. I am utterly disgusted with this product for the following reasons:
(1)extremely small warning print on the top right hand side of the box,on a sticker, saying that ‘You must activate this product via the internet by registering a Steam account and accepting the SSA.’
>At the time of purchase, I was only concerned with min.system requirements/recommendations, so I didn’t see this warning at the time. I’m sure that would have tipped me off as to something being different about the installation.
>When I got home, I inserted Disk #1,turned on the internet at the games request, entered the product key that came in the box,installed ‘Steam’, and selected all disk contents to be installed. What happened? The Steam program started downloading the entire game, not just patches/updates.
This is major glitch #1 that I noticed.
So, I stopped the downloading of the games, rebooted and reinserted dvd. This time an option screen appeared asking to install from the dvd. Good, that’s normal. Proceeded with disk #2.
(2)Games are now installed, but wait…I am not allowed to play any game until I update/patch the game in question. Fine, so I updated Half-Life 2.
(3)I now turn off my modem, virus scanner, firewall, the usual single player game routine that I’ve used for years. I click on the pretty little Half-Life 2 icon on my desktop. Oh…a ‘Steam’ window opens asking to connect to the internet. Strange, I thought Half-Life 2 was an offline single player game. It is!
So, I followed Steam’s orders and turned on my modem and of course my firewall. Great..now the main Steam window opens. I found the Start Steam in offline mode setting under ‘File’.
So, this tells me right now that Steam always attempts to connect to the internet upon reboot of your computer. In fact, there are no settings options within Steam to stop Steam from connecting upon reboot….why? Because all game events happen through Steam, regardless of whether or not you’re even going to play a game at that given moment.
That’s frustrating and I find it highly offensive, dictating to me what I can or cannot do, not to mention it’s constant desire to connect to the internet.
(4) Game crashes occur fairly often within either Half-Life 2 or Team Fortress 2. These aren’t show stoppers for me, but are annoying enough to complain.
(5) Over the past 5 days [hmm, the length of time I’ve owned The Orange Box], Steam has been the sole reason for random internet drops. Complete loss of internet connection. This is irregardless of whether Steam is running in Online or Offline mode. Sometimes I’m just browsing the web with Firefox or chatting within instant messenger, while not even playing a game. All of a sudden, connection drops. Sometimes rebooting the computer helps this matter, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes rebooting the dsl modem helps, sometimes not. According to their website there have been issues regarding some firewalls causing connection problems. Fair enough, yet that’s not my problem Valve, that’s your problem. ZoneAlarm for example has been in existence long before Steam was created. Valve went so far as to suggest disabling ZoneAlarm while gaming. A fine example of absolutely horrid advice from incompetent staff members at Valve.
This was the final show stopper for me and reason enough to raise a red flag and think twice about ever purchasing a Valve product again. I have uninstalled Steam and all Valve products and even had to go back to a previous Winxp Restore point just to bring my unhappy computer back into happy zone.
I am pleased to say that with no Steam on my computer, it’s running like a champion with a solid internet connection and not one random internet drop.
I would actually love to file a lawsuit against Valve; not for the loss of $40.00 I paid for a retail version of The Orange Box…but for a product that just does not behave as advertised. Nor is Valve rectifying this situation.
In my eyes, all employees of Valve are criminals and should be treated as such.
Load of bollacks
To be honest it should be renamed to Steaming pile of shite, companys are going a little overboard trying to fight copywrite protection and forgeting about the people who actually buy the games! what happend to a serial key and that was it?! You could never get pirated games to play online anyway and as CSS, HLDM, TF2 ect… are some of the most played games online, people are still going to buy them! Steam is slow a system hog and basicly stoped me from buying valve games… guess what I DOWNLOADED Half Life 2 and played through the single player WITHOUT buying it and WITHOUT steam, so it doesn’t work as copywrite protection anyway… I hope Steam goes down and no one can play the games they bought again. I think that would teach a good lesson plus it would be pretty funny.
Steam
Actually, Steam as a platform is pretty rock solid, aside from a few individual problems which by reading them could be caused by any number of unrelated system issues. And the real reason behind it was not to stop piracy, Half-life was VERY successful, and not widely pirated; but to stop cheating, which was RAMPANT in counter-strike (or cheater-strike as we called it back then) and until version 1.6 when valve released it on steam you couldnt play it without getting awp’d through a wall. After that magical day that game became playable again and showed what a good game could do to survive when supported by a great company that cares about its users.
How big is HL2 Episode2
Could someone here tell me how big the updates or installing of HL2 epside2 is? I have the orange box and only want to install HL2 eps2. Could care less about the other games on the dvd. Id like to get it installed and verified online and then that is it, suppose it will not go so smoothly looking at what is said above!
STEAM IS AWESOME
Well I personally think steam is brilliant. The only thing wrong with it is that when I’m downloading something like HL2, it just crashes. XD
HL2 and the orange box
My problem with HL2 is probabaly because I bought it for Xbox first. Put it in, played it, beat it, traded it, no problem.Then stupidly I bought orange box on PC about a year ago, and had nothing but problems. To this day, I STILL have not been able to play it. On Xbox, you do not even have to deal with Steam, so I thought I was getting the same thing only on PC. In fact i’ve never heard of steam and was given no indication of what the hell it was or what to expect. I ve always played off-line and based on my previous experience with HL2, had no reason to think it should be any different, EXCEPT that it says INTERNET CONNECTION REQUIRED. Which can mean a couple of things. For me it means I’m screwed because I still have dial up. HL2 would take over 2 f-ing days to download from steam. And forget episode 1 and 2, thats another 3 days of downloading. What i’m saying is that this is totally not practical and not an option, even though steam says it is. Maybe they would like to sit here for a week while their damn game is loading. They should specify, but the way it is indicated on the box, well any ‘ol internet connection will work. But wait! We dont have to mess with all that, as I have the disc! Unfortunately downloading steam is still required and when I use it it keeps trying to download from steam. When I try in offline mode it gets stuck saying Preparing to download HL2 and sits there indefinately. After numerous attempts to resolve this with tech support I’m still sitting here over a year later with no HL2. So I’ve been all over the internet trying to find some solution and I’ve found alot of pissed off people. I think it really sucks that people pay money for something and get a lot of wasted time for it. What you are getting into with HL2 orange box is very vague, then instructions are very vague, and to top it off, solutions are very vague. I shouldn’t have to go and research something that should be readily available ON THE F-ING BOX! So I’ll have to agree with the majority of the people I’ve encountered and vote that steam sux!
Steam offline
oh and by the way u only need the internet for the first time in steam cuz i play steam in offline mode when im out of my house
steam sucks
its anti consumer bloatware
I'm shocked... and terribly sad
I got the Orange Box for my birthday. I was very happy, being hyped up on previews for weeks. I put the disk in my drive, and Steam downloaded. Then it stopped. I was a little scared. I took it out and tried again. It gave me an error message. I was really scared. Shellshocked, I put in disc two. Another error message appeared. I was suprised beyond words. I could not believe such a thing could happen. I look at the requirements, and in the spot that I didn’t see, it said INTERNET CONNECTION REQUIRED. I’m sorry. I never heard of such a thing before. I only wanted to play offline. I was in a daze. Searching on a friend’s connected computer later, I found that Steam is holding back the files to make the game work. Wow. I… don’t… get… it… Thanks, Steam, for ruining a great thing for a kid just a step behind in today’s computing technology.
On a second note
Looks like the good old days are over. You just can’t play anything offline. I don’t have internet! (I’m typing this on a friend’s computer) How can I do anything without internet now. This is crazy. Can’t anyone help people like me? Thanks for the info, though. It cleared this issue up.
P.S.
I have sealed the ‘unboxed’ game in a plastic bag and await a solution. I don’t think you can return a game bought from Amazon after opening it.