Old Steam Poll posts split and 'archived'

[corhen]

Look, in 20 years time, you will NOT be inserting an old DVD into an old DVD drive and playing that on your new computer, Far more likely is that you will be dialing into steam 1000 and downloading it off ther servers.

When dealing with old media, you not only need to worry about the life span of the phisical media, as well as the life span of the reader, the compatibility of the reader with your new computer, or possibly the lifespan of the old computer you want to play your old media.

does it not seem more like that the most popular digital distrabution program around will still be around in one form or another?

additionaly, Valve has said that they have a system inplace to remove the need for authorization from all their games if it seems that they are going to go under, which seems unlikely, considering they have one of the highest ratios of Profit to employ.

[Gavrushka]

I don't think it is necssarily rational arguments people are employing when arguing over steam. - It is simply unrealistic to expect everyone to accept or like it, and the statistics (which now have less than a 9% error margin) illustrate this.

The main argument Egosoft have used behind their use of Steam as an update mechanism, is that an individual cannot be relied upon to keep their product patched, although us forum users are far more likely to do so. I think there are plenty of games that can be set to update from the developers website, so I struggle with the principle- ALTHOUGH I will readily accept I may be missing something.

I do not like Steam, but if it was no more than a registration method, then no biggy - I accept- Updates - I don't see why we can't have the choice of updating via Steam, or Egosoft. - Surely there is not a huge financial burden placed on them as a result?

I doubt very much whether 40% of the community will boycott Rebirth, but I do think it will be a significant enough percentage to give Egosoft pause for thought as to whether they can cater for both groups.

[thetack]

i wont be doing that corhen at the moment i seriously doubt i will ever be buying a new game as most are total s**t and the rest are for spoty tenagers with an atention span of a goldfish.

i will proberly now not replace my rig unless it fails and then only with a cheep work station and find a hobby where the legal users with money to spend are apreciated and not alianated

[Dantrithor]

[karoliussen]

I can somewhat understand that this focus on a single verification system is somewhat more convenient to the developer, as it may reduce the workload when patching, and perhaps the administrative stuff.

I DO use STEAM and have a lot of games there. But I think it's unreliable.

I don't like these online verification systems, due to several reasons (yeah, I know there's an offline mode, as long as they let *that* stay there..), and I can't count how many times I've been issued:

"Your game is not available. Try later.", or "Servers are too busy, try later.", when trying to play or install the game I've paid for.

[apricotslice]

[apricotslice]

[madcow]

A lot of those problems are most likely due to your steam client choosing a datacentre which is having issues at that time. Choose another. It's under the tab named cloud something or other, and you choose which country you get data from.

As for steam being the only choice, that's good and bad. Good, because they won't have to make and maintain more than 1 branch of the code, and bad because it helps reinforce the fact that steam is probably as close to a monopoly as we're liable to get to on the PC.

For the latter reason alone I would've preferred it if they were using impulse, direct2disk etc at the same time. or just a disc, but we have to realize that this is a dying distribution method.

Actually, come to think of it, I kind of wish more would do the same thing Matrix Games is doing, which is publishing with 2 options, 1) download only, 2) download+physical. Sure, the second option costs more, but you get discs so you can install at any time, internet connection or no.

[Skid]

The choice of distribution method is more the decision of the publisher, not the developer, just saying you would be better off registering your complaints with Deep Sliver (assuming they are still Egosofts publisher).

[apricotslice]

[Dantrithor]

[xeon_1]

Steam is a broken system.

It crashed 25% of the time when starting
you have a 50/50 chance of it actually updating it self without chrashing or giving you a BSOD.
And on the rare occasion it works normally you can't play any games since now they are updating and failing.

and offline mode that goes back to online when ever it senses an active network connection and then overloads the servers at a lan party.
Is just plain stupid and i still don't get why they included it

No i had enough troubles whit it during my CS/CS:S/HL/HL2 days to last me a life time.

Just like esd i don't have a lot of game time on my hands and when i do have it i don't want to be frustrated by steam failing/updating again.

If steam is the way forward of pc gaming i bid pc gaming farewell.

[heratik]

[Burneyx]

I would never use Steam if it was the last surviving games platform.

More and more Publishers are trying to force the customers to go Steam....

My answer is, im owning an XBox 360 since yesterday.

So this is my future gaming platform, buying my game in a box, throw it in and play, like it should be......

Instead of paying about 1200 Euro for a new PC for X-Rebirth, i had to pay 249 Euro for an XBox 360 with a game in bundle......

So Egosoft's decision to force us to use Steam saves me 1000 Euro, not to bad at all, THX

greetings

Burneyx

[Geek]

I just read the news. That is terrible, i would never buy a game with mandatory online activation/check/whatever.
If the devs go this way, they have lost a customer.