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

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?

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.