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Valve Releases Counter-Strike 1.6 Installer
Thanks to Blue's News for pointing out that Valve has released the Counter-Strike 1.6 installer for Steam, the broadband delivery platform for which "over 200,000 new accounts have been created" since its official launch on Friday. The 379mb install, helpful for those who can't get swift downloads from Steam itself, is available from Gamer's Hell, Worthplaying, and FilePlanet (reg. required).
steaminstall_cs-exe.torrent
Downloading movies will never be as popular as going to the theater or renting, especially if the system is anything like Steam. How many people have fast enough broadband to download movies in the amt of time it takes to run down to the local Blockbuster or Hollywood. There is no reliability in the delivery via broadband. Anyways I would prefer Netflix.com over a downloaded movie that would probably be only viewable once.
I think you're also excluding a lot of people if you don't have rental stores. This may shock some of you but there are people out there who have no use for the internet and are getting by in life without it.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Will broadband systems for software and entertainment take over the traditional systems tommorrow? Probably not. In ten years? Maybe.
A perfect example would be the shipping company UPS. Last month, they decided to switch from their 'traditional' system of filling out paperwork for each box (lame when you ship a dozen or so random boxes each month) to a computer system. So basically, the consumer walks into a branch, logs in using his precreated account (works anywhere) types in the receivers name and zip, and then clicks 'print'. He sticks the label onto his box, and takes it up to the cashier. While this is a total timesaver for me, I watched as an older lady (mid 70's) came into the store, was told to make an account (after she asked a clerk for paperwork), and promptly stated that it was ludicrus, leaving to walk across the street to the Postal Annex, which uses the same system except addes an additional charge.
Okay, while that isn't the greatest analogy, you see where I'm going. Are there plenty of people who won't be using Steam for purchasing Half Life 2? Totally, just as there are plenty of people who purchase CD's in stores instead of using iTunes or something. But it's not like the online systems are starving for consumers. They ARE growing, and that can't be bad!
Downloaded the steam non-beta client right after the original story was posted to slashdot. the beta client wouldn't uninstall through window add/remove. eventually found the correct unwise.exe command line to get it out.
Installed steam and pretty much left the computer while it updated itself, I'm guessing it took several hours (what with the thousands of other people doing it simultaneously).
Then it died at some point while trying to transfer my existing content (HL and whatever mods I had installed through regular means). So we had to re-install steam and go through it all over again. (where it didn't want to transfer existing content anymore, for some reason)
After several more hours, I finally have steam working properly, so I try and play HL. Does nothing after pressing the install button over and over (install, wait 10 minutes to see if it's doing anything, no? click HL again and repress install). Eventually, half a day later (literally), it finally opens the progress window. Have to download it (400+ MB). So, after what it predicts to be 140 minutes, apparently it has HL. (I went to bed at this point). Get up, try to run HL, steam crashes with some memory address is can't access or whatever. Reboot, retry several times, same problem. Steam is crashing on load (far before it gets to loading HL)
The stupid client seems to keep corrupting itself. So for now, I've given up. Steam FAQ doesn't address this, and they've taken the steam forums down temporarily.
I seriously can't see how they can distribute HL2 through this method. Regardless of how much cheaper it is to purchase HL2 through steam, I'm buying the retail version, simply because I want a freaking executable I can run. (this presuming they don't hide the HL2 executable behind steam; and only use steam as the cd-key verification tool. which is a big presumption at this point).
Steam beta eventually worked for me (after a few initial corruptions of the client requiring re-installs), but I don't have 13 hours to install steam, update steam, install HL only to have it corrupt itself again.
I've talked to a lot of clan folk in IRC lately for some CS and TFC clans I know - a LOT of people are not happy with Steam.
And to be honest I can't blame them. The close to 400 meg download apparantly only has CS 1.6 but doesn't include TFC 1.6. Plus Steam also shot up the system requirements for Half Life from a 133mhz machine with a decent 3D video card to at least a 1ghz CPU with lots of ram and NTFS Partitions.
I just pray they don't use STEAM with Half Life 2 - who need's STEAM to auto patch your installation whether you agree to it or not.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
I don't have steam installed yet, so I can't verify personally. But maybe someone here can, and hopefully reply if they find the kazaa and mp3 strings in said steam files. True of false?
People have the right to complain especially seeing how VALVE has handled STEAM from the get go. Problems galore since the beta release and now the non beta release - plus the fact STEAM is so bug ridden and shoots up system requirements that it is killing off a lot of the players the TFC and CS community HAD to begin with.
Besides STEAM won't be running free games forever - eventually they will want people to use credit cards to play "future" games on it.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy