Steam Updates On Hardware Changes, Debugging Innovations

Thanks to Planet Half-Life for reprinting a note from Gabe Newell discussing the latest changes and survey results regarding Valve's Steam 'content delivery system'. He compares the recently mentioned hardware survey to an earlier one, mentioning: "There's lots of interesting info, for example Windows 98/Windows ME users going from 62.8% down to 8.25%." Newell also discusses the code debugging innovations that Steam is now providing: "We've been able to increase the level and speed of our Steam upgrades by direct reporting of client bugs back through Steam. If a Steam client reports a problem, we can replicate it on our machines and jump directly to the line of code in our debugger", before ending by revealing that the much-delayed Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is now available for pre-order via Steam.

Comments

pre-order

[pizza_milkshake]

has any game offered via pre-order ever delivered on time?

Re:pre-order

[jantheman]

well....It (CS:Condition Zero) is already apparently on my computer already (via the steam 'trickle feed' update) - the 'gcf' (game cache file?) is there. Apparently all I have to do is wait for them to 'release' it officially, so delivery on time seems to be a moot point.

hmmm...have I got time to attempt to hack it out...?

Re:pre-order

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks Game *content* file...

Re:pre-order

[Robmonster]

How can valve place the game on your PC without at least a statement if intent from you to buy it?

They should not use up space on peoples harddrives just on th eoff-chance that they decide to buy it.

Or am I misunderstanding...?

Re:pre-order

[Ayaress]

I think the idea of pre-order is that you've stated intent to purchase the game.

Re:pre-order

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

You're downloading it regardless of preorder, but they do warn you so you can go in there and disable it.
The files are all encrypted with what looks like some weak 128bit encryption, and considering how many files you have to compare from the previous CZ leak, it looks like something anyone into cryptanalysis could break.

Re:pre-order

[Pvt_Waldo]

The thing is, this game HAS been delivered. That pre-cache everyone is downloading is the game, encrypted.

The game HAS been delivered - if you got that CZero Steam cache, you have the game.

Re:pre-order

[ksiddique]

And you know what? I didn't ask for the CZero Steam cache and it's still downloading it. My Steam network bandwidth is at 150 kbps and "Steam is not currently updating any games". WTF?

I have no interest in CZero. Why should I have to go in and manually tell Steam to stop downloading something I don't want?

stupid.

[ziggles]

I think it's kind of silly to compare the results from these surveys. One was taken via Steam, which is basically only going to be used by people on broadband and hardcore players; and the other was taken via the web which obviously includes a lot more people and a different kind of player in general. Comparing the results doesn't tell you anything.

Re:stupid.

[stedd007]

If you already have counterstrike 1.5 installed, the download via steam to update to 1.6 is small enough to be manageable. Also, most of the counter strike community has moved over to 1.6 now, so the survey should be fairly accurate of the gamers playing counterstrike, as you have to have steam installed to play 1.6

Re:stupid.

[bigman2003]

In the previous article- a lot of comments were made regarding the crappy video cards, and it was just assumed that since people were still playing Counterstrike, they had older computers not capable of running anything better. (Or, because they have older computers, they play Counterstrike)

So one of the assumptions must be incorrect.

Survey biased

[GregoryD]

This survey was only given to people who use steam.

Of course people who use steam would have more modern hardware and software. It doesn't require a broadband connection, but I doubt a 56k, 200mhz pentium, windows98 person would go through the effort of downloading 1.6.

the use of steam

[mandalayx]

One has to wonder why Valve seems to be spending so much time on Steam. I've seen previous comments speculating that the reason Valve is delaying HL2 is to work on getting Steam 100% correct.

Yet even if that were true, it's hard to see how Steam would really increase the amount of people buying Valve games. Even though I was a hardcore HL1 player, I would not buy any game because of the Steam association. If anything it just seems like a cool market research tool and possibly some DRM in the future. But to spend a few years programming a cool market research/DRM tool?

Re:the use of steam

[BrookHarty]

Even though I was a hardcore HL1 player, I would not buy any game because of the Steam association.

Steam is here, so if you want to play HL2, you have to use steam, there is no way around it. When you go to the next lan party and everyone is playing Hl2, what choice do you have?

But I know how you feel, DRM, and other things just pisses everyone off. I just bought a DVD player, and they had a damn advertisement logo on it, when I removed it, it left the sticky tape on the DVD player. The damn tape wouldnt come off. I uses a wet sponge and tried to remove the tape, but scratched the surface of the dvd player.

I was pretty pissed off. Next time I go into the store, im opening the damn box and looking at the unit first. I'm also sending a nasty letter to the company about such shitty services.

It seems like every company just does what it wants, and fucks the consumers, We can just hope that HL2 doesnt suck using steam.

Re:the use of steam

[metrazol]

DRM, and other things just pisses everyone off. I just bought a DVD player, and they had a damn advertisement logo on it, when I removed it, it left the sticky tape on the DVD player

Did you just compare DRM to a sticker on your DVD player? That's...well...the BSD is dead trolls are generally more on topic.

Of course, if you are comparing Steam to a useless sticker attached to the games that serves no purpose to the user, but makes the producer feel good, well now, that's appropriate!

Re:the use of steam

[Anonymous Coward]

One has to wonder why Valve seems to be spending so much time on Steam

One word: MONEY.

They get control of the distribution channel and get themselves a bigger cut. The more copies of the game they can sell via direct download (as opposed to in stores), the more cash they get. Typical costs are something like:

CD & box = $5
Advertising costs = $5
Retailer = $15 (shelf space == very expensive)
Publisher = $10
Developer = $15
Total price = $50

By selling directly they can eliminate both the publisher - and the retailer costs. Except that now they can change the price to $40 a downloadable copy. They not only sell the game for less - but they also make double the money on that copy:

Bandwidth for distribution = $5 (say, 4 GB transfers over the course of the game's life if it's installed three or four times when the customer upgrades machines)
Advertising costs = $5
Retailer = $0 (no shelves)
Publisher = $0
Developer = $30
Total price = $40

Re:the use of steam

[soundnfury]

I agree that they are wasting time with the Steam development. Potentially, they could make a lot of money eliminating the distribution middle men (MS/Atari/etc and Compusa/Ebgames/etc), but it seems to me that a game company should focus on games. If they want to be a content distribution company, great, but why work on Half-life 2? They only have finite resources, and they're being squandered on Steam, just like they wasted a bunch of time on some Steam predecessor (that was supposed to deliver content on demand or something), whose name escapes me. Maybe they just couldn't resist saying things are "Steam Powered." Of course, they could've called the HL2 engine "steam" and gotten the same mileage...

Re:the use of steam

[imr]

Hard core player don't play cs, anyway. Hard core lamers do... ;)

Re:the use of steam

[fireduck]

Blame Blizzard.

Whether you like their games or not, Blizzard struck gold with Battle.net. Easy one-click access to online gaming; built-in with the game, automagic patching when you log on. No messing with server lists, etc. Chat rooms. Battle.net is a PR dream and really helped propel Blizzard to the forefront of online gaming.

The easier you make it for people to play your products, the more product you are going to sell. In Valve's case, one can easily envision a whole number of retail mods being released. Since multiplayer is the rage, money is to be made in the online arena. Given that from the total HL population, a minority of them actually played online (no idea how small, but it's certainly much less than the millions that were sold), any opportunity to get a fraction of them online and potentially buying your online mods is money.

In the case of HL, I'm somewhat relieved that they're going the online autopatching method. There were a ridiculous amount of patches released for HL and if you didn't keep up with them you could easily get lost in what you needed (they released full standalone retail-to-current patches somewhat infrequently and lots of incremental patches inbetween). So an easy "click to update" system (or better yet, leave it running and have it updated and ready whenever you want to play) is a nice convenience.

granted, it sucked mighty hardcore when it was first released and it'll absolutely suck for a couple weeks after HL2 is released, but overall, I'm not too worried about it.

Re:the use of steam

[fireduck]

a damn advertisement logo on it, when I removed it, it left the sticky tape on the DVD player

totally off-topic, but there's a few products out there, sold as "Goo-gone" or similar, that take off tape residue very nicely. too late for this DVD player, but in the future...

Re:the use of steam

[mandalayx]

Intelligent, you have won me over.

However every time I load up HL I connect to the Steam server. I wonder if these costs add up to negate the initial boost in cash? Keep in mind I have been playing HL since 1999 or so.

Re:the use of steam

[Chibi]

The damn tape wouldnt come off. I uses a wet sponge and tried to remove the tape, but scratched the surface of the dvd player.

Sometimes using nail polish remover will get rid of tape residue. I haven't taken organic chemistry in years, but I believe you need a like solvent to dissolve the "gunk."

Re:the use of steam

[SavannahLion]

One has to wonder why Valve seems to be spending so much time on Steam. I've seen previous comments speculating that the reason Valve is delaying HL2 is to work on getting Steam 100% correct.

I would imagine that this is a somewhat correct assumption. I once had a copy of a Steam PowerPoint presentation (Dead link, send me a message if you happen to have a copy of it.) that pretty much stated that Valve was going to use Steam, and it's DRM related design, to force markets like Asia to pay up for their copies. Knowing that, everything else with Steams design is merely a consequence of its nature.

Think about it. If you strip away all the things that many pro-Steam users cite as advantages of Steam that is also unique to Steam, you're not left with a whole hell of a lot to work with.

For example;
Automatic updates: So what? That was what Sierra Utilities was originally meant for. Of course, it was terrible since the FTP server in question was always full or down. But that didn't mean there couldn't be another non-DRM attempt.

Content (Game) delivery: Am I the only one that remembers the RealPlayer network offering of downloadable TFC?

New GUI: Like this couldn't be done with the old version?

Includes VAC: I swear everytime this lame argument pops up, they pretend the WON version never had VAC... ever.

I could go on and on about all these, "features," of Steam and how they've could have been done in other ways. But once you boil it all down, it's really another noose that's prettied up with cute little pink flowers that someone is trying to tie around our collective necks.

Re:the use of steam

[dzym]

They also hired a bittorrent dev recently, obviously with the intention of applying his skills to Steam.

Basically I'm assuming that means we the users will be responsible for paying a significant bulk of Valve's bandwidth for distribution costs in the (near?) future.

Re:the use of steam

[bigmouth_strikes]

> The damn tape wouldnt come off. I uses a wet sponge and tried to remove the tape, but scratched the surface of the dvd player.

Rubbing it with butter or oil and then scraping it off works. Old trick.

Does anyone find Steam annoying?

[antdude]

Ever since it came out, I stopped playing HL's multiplayer and all the mods (Day of Defeat and Natural Selection). I eventually uninstalled it recently due to outdated mods, lack of playable servers, and lack of free time especially with newer games. I'd rather download the files manually myself!

Re:Does anyone find Steam annoying?

[Robmonster]

That doesnt make sense.

You cite Lack Of Free Time as a reason for stopping to play (which I understand perfectly) , but then you say you'd rather manually find, download, and install game patches, rather then let Steam do it all for you overnight or something.

Re:Does anyone find Steam annoying?

[antdude]

Robmonster: All those reasons are why I left HL.

Drop in Windows 98 users (partially) explained

[StupidKatz]

I recently changed my gaming PC's OS to Windows XP Pro. I'd previously used Windows 98SE. Why did I, a rabid hater of all things XP (updates, EUL"A"s, wizardry, etc.) give up on 98 for my gaming OS?

DirectX 9 broke 98. I've been telling everyone within earshot that this was the way that MS was going to force the gamers off of 98 - via DirectX. All video files, under any format that I can find, (except real; I don't use it) are broken. They refuse to load. Breakdown of the issue here and here

It isn't a critical problem at this point, but the second "solution" is so obscure that I wonder how anyone managed to find it. (The first involves re-running the directx installer, which will allow the system to play back videos fine until the subsequent reboot.) How likely is an official fix for this issue? That's what I thought. Too bad, though - Win98SE still had a year or two worth of gaming life left in it.

Re:Drop in Windows 98 users (partially) explained

[Blakey Rat]

If you hate XP so much, why didn't you go to 2000 instead of XP? It runs DirectX 9 just as good as XP does, all the games coming out are just as compatible with 2000 as they are with XP, it 2000 Pro costs the same as XP Pro, and it doesn't have product activation.

I mean, your choice, but it seems strange.

Re:Drop in Windows 98 users (partially) explained

[IntergalacticWalrus]

You should've switched to Windows 2000 instead. All the stability and performance, none of the bullshit.

Re:Drop in Windows 98 users (partially) explained

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be you or your config. W98SE and DX9.0b coexist on my box with nary a problem.

I won't give up 98 as my gaming OS until I absolutely have to.

It still isn't available?

[Anonymous Coward]

I chuckled when I saw this. Nothing changes

HL2 *requires* Steam?

[StupidKatz]

HL2 was not originally going to, and as far as I know, won't require Steam, as long as someone buys a boxed copy. ... Until you patch it. You should have seen the thread on the Valve/Steam forums that blasted that decision to hell and back. No one, save Valve/Vinvendi, likes it.

I won't buy or play HL2 if it requires Steam. Exception: when I can buy a used copy off of someone for single-player or when a LAN fake-Steam server will fool the software, I might buy it (used) for ten bucks, as long as my purchase won't add a tick to their sales figures.

Think about it - the entertainment industry (Vivendi/Universal, hello? MPAA/RIAA, hello?) wants to own everything. Forget about fair use if this Steaming crap becomes the norm; you won't even be able to use your computer when your ISP borks your net connection. The only way to fight this crud is to fight it by keeping your money away from the people resonsible for this farce, even if it means passing up something that might actually be really fun.
If HL2 really will require Steam, then don't purchase the game. Don't increase their sales figures, don't let them think this is a profitable way to force DRM down our throats. Behave like customers, not simpering consumers, and take your business elsewhere.

Re:HL2 *requires* Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that brother. I've been looking forward to HL2 but if it requires Steam, as you've said, I won't buy it. I'll just have to stick to Doom3 or some other game. I do believe it's part of their DRM solution, but I don't use M$ products like Media Player either. Too bad though, the game looked pretty good too!

Re:HL2 *requires* Steam?

[ctr2sprt]

HL2 requires Steam, period. What you are thinking of is Valve's intial proclamation that, once you patched HL2 or played online, you would thereafter always need to be connected to the Internet, even when playing the single-player game. This has already been dealt with - Steam has an "offline mode," so you connect once, disconnect, and then play single-player (or multiplayer on LAN) without an Internet connection. Probably HL2 will ship this way.

I don't really have anything to say about your actual point, just clearing up some facts.

Slightly OT: Steam and your hard drive

[StupidKatz]

Who owns your hard drive? If you've installed Steam, read this, then answer the question again.

Yeah, let's all give game developers on-demand access to our storage. Cheat detection notwithstanding, this is bad news; is it worth the cost? I like to think intelligent people agree: it isn't.

Re:Slightly OT: Steam and your hard drive

[Robmonster]

That is outrageous!

Valve have no right to load unrequested software onto your PC, despite any clauses buried 3 billion pages deep in a EULA that no-one reads anyway.

Re:Slightly OT: Steam and your hard drive

[fireduck]

this must have been a bug.

I've got steam running (and usually leave it running when I'm not home) on my DSL line and the only games installed are HL and Day of Defeat. None of the other mods have installed giving me the "icon is now colored indicating game is ready to play" condition described in the post. And I'm sure most of the gaming population has experienced the same. Sure it sucks that something is going wrong for this guy, but that's just 1 guy.

Re:Slightly OT: Steam and your hard drive

[delus10n0]

That guy sounds like an idiot. I just let it download it's pre-cache dealie, and I was fine. On another box I have Steam installed on, I stopped the pre-caching, and it was fine as well. Haven't had a single problem.

Re:Slightly OT: Steam and your hard drive

[DeadboltX]

I'm guessing this guy shares the computer with someone else, most likely a brother or something, and that person initiated the pre-load AND the download of counterstrike

Re:Slightly OT: Steam and your hard drive

[ksiddique]

Make that two. It happened to me as well.

see als firingsquad.

[leuk_he]

I can complain about STEAM, but Jacub at firingsuad.com summed up the problems with STEAM much better,

Don't purchase the game?

[That's Unpossible!]

If HL2 really will require Steam, then don't purchase the game. Don't increase their sales figures, don't let them think this is a profitable way to force DRM down our throats. Behave like customers, not simpering consumers, and take your business elsewhere.

Can someone point me to an official quote from the company that explains that if you don't have a network connection, you can't play HL2? Because other than them requiring me to connect to their computers to play this game, I don't really see the big deal about having to install their content delivery platform to play HL2. I am going to want to do that anyway to get the updates. As long as I can play HL2 even when my net connection is fucked, what does it matter?

p2p and steam

[mandalayx]

wow, highly interesting. text here in case the Valve mods don't want you to know:

*********

Here's what happened to the silent majority of people that found themselves with steam having downloaded CZ to their machines without any real notification. Story below is in chronological order. The reason I'm making this into the separate thread is because I don't believe something like this belongs in the CZ forum (this is steam issue and has nothing to do with CZ mod) and because I have two questions I'd like to hear the answer to (those are at the bottom of the post).

Here's what happened:
Steam started, and suddenly popped up an ad (something I don't recall it doing before). Seeing "CZ" label, I closed the window as soon as it opened. I switch to another window for a few minutes (note: I'm on 10mbps). In about 10 minutes I notice steam icon has changed to "working". I switch to netlimiter bandwith monitoring software to see the bloodsucker having already downloaded 50 megs of "something", yet my game of NS plays just fine. Odd. Also I notice the new "CZ" icon in the games menu, but right click on it only shows "start pre-loading" option. Well I could care less about pre-loading it since I have no intention whatsoever of bying that game, so I just let it be (note to unbelieving teenagers: there was no "preferences" or any option like that. Only standard info options and "start pre-loading". Nothing else.)
Okay, open steam preferences in netlimiter, find the address of the update server and choke download to 1KB/sec. No more weird download traffic for a while, as that choke kills the connection. Yay for good anti-bandwith-leech software.
About 2 hours later I come back and restarted steam to find that I now have ~40% of counter strike mod installed (that mod was set to "never update" in the preferences and never installed on the machine). Rather pissed at it (I'm on daily traffic quota) I choose to delete the whole thing and set the preferences to "never update" again thinking that would fix it.
Next day, evening, start up steam for daily couple hours of NS, and play normally. After I'm done, I notice that steam icon indicates "working" again. Okay, since the update server is still choked to hell externally, no way it could have downloaded downloaded anything weird. Additionally I notice that I now have CS and CZ icons active. WTF? Okay, again, CS preferences, delete local content (almost none of it this time, thanks to the external choke). Nope, error message pop up indicates that "CS cannot be deleted as CZ requires some CS content". As you can figure, at this moment I'm getting beyond pissed, and right click on CZ icon, and finally see that "preferences" option where "start pre-loading used to be"! Allright, click on that, and notice that I have a pretty decent persentage of the game pre-loaded. Delete that content, never update both CZ and CS, and since then it didn't seem to start again. Then again, I don't know what it will try to pre-allocate tomorrow, so steam is now on permanent external 4KB up/down choke just in case.

Now a few questions to people that are actually in contact with valve steam team (not the random forum users please, I ask for input form people that know what they are talking about, as I can make educated guesses just as well as anyone here)

1. Is this sort of thing going to happen in the future? Unlike many teenaged amercan boys seem to think, everyone in this world pays for their bandwith. ISPs pay per download and upload gigabytes, and these costs are covered by customers who pay for their connections. If this sort of useless downloads begin to be used, ISPs will experience greater amount of traffic. Think all those gamers that never really use their computers for any massive downloads suddenly pre-load something like half-life 2, gigabytes worth of data likely, I'm ready to bet any ISP, american, european or australian is going to notice the spike, and someone will have to pay for it. And as always, it will us the customers.
2. With valve hiri

Hope they understand the slant of the survey

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they only surveyed Steam users, they didn't get the vast majority of 56k users who are still on the old version of Half-Life. And, generally speaking, broadband users are much more probable to be people with better computers and therefore, Windows XP. They should have waited until they shut down their WON authorization servers (forcing everyone to move to Steam) before doing this survey.

I won't buy it either, if it *requires* steam.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I draw the line there.

I'll buy a used copy as well in a year and
play it on a lan.