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Steam Users Steamed
KrunchTime writes "The Steam network seems to be having some problems tonight. This is not good new for fans of counter-strike, day of defeat and other half-life mods. Some people seem to be able to log on fine while others, like me :(, cannot connect at all. The steam forums were filling up with invective when I was last able to get on. The forums now seem to have imploded under the strain of complaints. The question that was being asked most is why there isn't more redundancy on the log-in side of steam. They say that if one of the master servers goes down that the accounts held there become unavailable immediately. The other big problem is that while the Steam network is down even the offline games are unplayable. There was no sign of responses from Valve staff or forum moderators."
Someone hates these cans.
I've just literally came out of CS this minute (on Linux, via Cedega) and it works great for me. I came off because of a different reason to do with Valve - fucking cheaters.
HEADSHOT ME THROUGH 10 WALLS WILL YA?!
That's different. This a direct result of copy protection bullshit. You can't even play single player mode without authenticating against their central server
If so, consider them frozen solid. This entire city has become a giant block of ice.
Snow is manageable, but 36 hours of sleet/ice isn't. Everything in this town as been sealed in a 2 inch block of ice.
In fact, ** CRACK **
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I bought the game and installed it. Yep, works great. Yet I hated that it took what seemed forever to connect to Steam just to play Half Life 2.
.exe of HL2 that will let you play without ever connecting to Steam.
Enter the offline patch. A hacked
Sorry, but if I purchase a game for my personal machine and the game that I choose to play has no need for the Internet then that is the way it should be.
This is only half-true.
Once Half-Life 2 is decrypted and fully running, it is possible to set it to be playable offline, hence not needing an internet connection to run it, and the original single player games can be played from their original applications, not through steam.
Abuse was a crackdotcom game.... I don't think id had anything to do with it.
They don't guarantee 100% uptime. A lawsuit would lose.
And you're stupid.
combustion? since when was boiling water a chemical reaction? But yah, other than the incredible lack of science, funny joke.
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
I always thought that steam power was the worst type of combustion....
I didn't know steam was combustible.
Seriously, while going offtopic, steam itself is used for power generation, be it coal or nuclear. Nuclear subs and carriers? They use steam as an intermediary. Carriers used steam to drive the catapults for aircraft take off. I hear that they are being replaced with some sort of electrical system, that electrical system is powered using steam heated by the nuclear power plant. I hope it works better as it seems to be more round-about way to do it.
Actually, if you bought the game in a retail store you do own a copy of the copyrighted work. What you don't own is the steam account that's required to play it online, which is goverened by the license agreement.
What the hell. Put Steam into Offline mode. You can play Half-Life 2 in single player mode then.
I've played HL2 many times without a working internet connection.
Don't spin crap.
"Then if you have to buy a new PC to handle the bloatware, you have to pay $10 to transfer your CD key"
This isn't even REMOTELY true. all you need to do is remember your steam username and password, and reinstall the steam client. There is nothing. NOTHING! about a new pc that will force you to pay to release the cd key from the account.
Whoever told you this is wrong, and clearly needs to reread the part about needing $10 to transfer cd keys to another account (which is what it sounds like you should be referring to, and is a perfectly good idea to protect people from assholes)
I've made plenty of LAN servers, simply press the "Create Server" button in the main menu of any game on Steam.
If the Steam Auth servers are down, or you're not connected to a LAN with internet access you can't log in to steam to create a LAN server.
When WON's auth servers went down, it didn't make any difference for LAN servers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Steam is heavily bugged, easily overcome, and irritating.
Heavily bugged: That's a bit of an overstatement. The friends list doesn't work, but that's pretty much the only bug I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure someone will point me to some 3 page buglist somewhere, but I haven't noticed anything but the friend's list, so the other "bugs" seem pretty irrelevant to me.
Easily overcome: What does this even mean? Steam is easy to hack? It's much harder than any previous system (WON, for instance)... I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.
Irritating: This may be true, but you can always just stick it in offline mode and forget about it.
As for why Valve continues to use it. Just look at the content updates of the last week or two for that answer. Official maps released, bugs fixed, SDK updated, community informed (through the new weekly updates), and users tracked. These are all things that Valve wants to do, and Steam does those things quite well.
I have no idea how you're post was modded +4 insightful (especially with your second to last sentence being anything but on topic).
Steam isn't perfect for all users, but it serves its purpose. If you don't like it go into offline mode and never come back, otherwise boycott Valve games...
Try going Steamless
Well, in fact, it does not _all_ go down. You can leave the Steam tray app running and it will remain 'logged in' for an underterminate amount of time (at-least several days I believe).
I have been exiting and closing Steam completely when I finish for the night. Requiring me to re-authenticate each day when I want to play CS:S or HL2 again. This obviously has bit me in the butt.
Regardless, authentication is so lightweight and featureless that as a software engineer I find the fact the service isn't working unimaginable. I know we've all (those who've played MMOG) have experiecned this in the past, but come on. Surely by now the fault tolerent designs of corporate banking/trading software has finally seeped into game server authentication. Multiple masters, distributed, clustered, geographically dispersed, big-ip'd or hell even round-robin with 1s TTLs. Anything to provide some redundancy.
This smells more like a data glitch then a software/hardware glitch. I heard they were going to be doing some account maint to disable some accounts that were being sold on e-bay and passed around pirate IRC channels.
I'd bet heavily that this is the result of a very poorly formulated UPDATE sql statement. And piss-poor backup/recovery strategy.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Did you even realize you need to LOG IN before you can go to offline mode... siriously WTF is with that
>
>SHHHHSH! People around here are just building up a full head of steam, and you're going to ruin it.
Incorrect. Once HL2 is up and running, and in offline mode, it only remains in offline mode so long as the "ticket" is valid. The tickets have expiry dates and times.
Sorry bud. Offline mode is still pay-to-play. You currently pay $0.00 and a few TCP/IP packets per subscription period, but you're still on the subscription model.
if you bought the game in a retail store you do own a copy of the copyrighted work.
No, you own a copy of an encrypted datafile, which is worthless without the decryption key, which is available only under contract with Valve through Steam.
Which you can also get around if you use something like All Seeing Eye... Provided the servers in question are hooking up with that server...
The two UT2004 Master Servers are usually fairly reliable. I know the same can't be said for the U2XMP one (but I don't believe thats under Epic's control). UT2003 one is still up as well I think.
Insert Sig Here
Actually, you can't just forget about it in offline mode. I tried playing Half-Life 2 in offline mode since I'm paranoid and told ZoneAlarm to block it. After a few gaming sessions, the software kindly told me that it needed to connect to the Steam servers, and I wouldn't be able to play the game until it had a chance to update.
General Forum: Yes, something is not right
Paste of the link's contents in case the forum is too bogged down:
Many people have already pointed out that you only have to connect to Steam once to check authorization, and after that you can play single-player in offline mode all you want.
What I'd like to add is an explanation for why Valve created Steam at all. It wasn't just to get more "control" and defeat hackers and pirates. Steam could allow Valve to do without a publisher, as they could do all their distribution through Steam and skip the boxes on the shelves entirely. Think of not being beholden to Sierra or EA. IMHO, Valve chickened out and released HL2 both through stores and through Steam (which maybe makes sense IF enough customers are only on dial-up) which meant that people who bought the box have to have the disc AND all the Steam stuff, and it feels like a big hassle to them. If Valve had only distributed through Steam, the authentication would be transparent and everyone would think they were part of this great new paradigm and they were sticking it to "the man" at the evil publishing house and the crappy retail outfits. People would say: "Isn't it great how I don't have to keep track of a CD and I can go re-download all the old games I paid for 5 years ago to as many computers as I want to without any hassle. And they give me free content later as it becomes available without paying for an expansion pack."
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
[...] imagine buying a DVD and [...] not being able to [watch it] because first it needs to connect to a authentification server [...]
What? Did someone say Divx? (No, not the hack of an MPEG4 codec...)
I'm seriously hoping Steam meets the same end as the original Divx in short order. I'd really like to play HalfLife 2, but my money's staying firmly in my pocket as a direct result of the Steam BS. I only paid $10 for HalfLife 1 (a year after it came out), so I'm in no hurry. With any luck someone'll get a clue and kill off Steam before then...
Actually, Gabe has apologized about the September 2003 fiasco. AFAIK, he originally put that date together in good faith with the information he had at the time. As things slipped more and more in the project, he just didn't want to face it. So, he ostrich'ed. According to what I've read, it's one of his big regrets and he has acknowledged that it was stupid.
No, I don't know the guy, but that's what I know about the situation.
I will agree that the gaming industry is weird. But it's not any weirder that any other entertainment industry. Eccentricity is bound to run rampant in an industry where entertainment is the key deliverable. Creativity has to be given a safe zone in which to flourish; which only occurs through failure and learning from mistakes.
As far as DRM in general goes, I agree with that too. People in general won't put up with security related inconveniences where their entertainment is concerned. What's scary though is that we'll probably all just throw all of our rights away the very moment that DRM and other security initiatives becomes effectively transparent. Now THAT I care about.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Um, Halo 2 sold over 1.4 million units since launch, on the larger audience console market, and with advertisement that rivaled movies. Where the HELL did you pull 1.7 million units for Half-Life 2 from? Final Fantasy 7 sold like over 4 million units TO DATE, and you're telling me a PC game is halfway to outdoing the most fan acclaimed RPG? Yeah, RIGHT.