I always hear about a small percentage of people with high usage spoiling it for the rest, but 14% running up against the caps during their trial is 1 out of 7 people, not a small percentage. If that many are hitting the ceiling already, I would say that the cap is set too low. In my household, with multiple computers, ipods, game consoles, and other devices all consuming data, I would be up against it in no time.
To many, Steam is an acceptable form of DRM but often I find the DRM gets in the way. There are many potential problems. I do not like the fact that your account and access to all your purchases can be locked out. I do not like that they do not have a support phone line where you can talk to a real person, only email.
First Sale Rights and Non Transferable License
Steam prevents resale of games, effectively stopping the used market. I can't even give them away and their EULA prohibits transferring the entire account too. Years ago, I had made purchases on my Steam account since my son did not have a credit card. Now that he has left home he has his own Steam account yet I am unable to transfer those games to his account. I play single player games, and these are games I have no intention of playing such as Counterstrike, yet I am unable to transfer it. Instead he had to purchase it again. Maybe poor planning on my part, but it allows me transfer the extra Half Life 2 license I had after buying the Orange Box, but not any other purchases.
Offline Play
While stationed overseas, my son's previously activated and working Orange Box would not start in offline mode one day. What he ended up having to do to fix the problem was rename the clientregistry.blob file, connect to the Internet and let the file be recreated. After doing that offline play was once again available. The problem with that was that he did not have Internet access for months so until he finished his tour even the single player games were unvailable.
Activation requirements not listed
One of his shipmates had preordered F.E.A.R. 2, even paying the extra cost to have it shipped to a FPO. Upon receiving the game he found out that unlike the first F.E.A.R., this version required Steam and Internet activation and he did not have Internet access. To this day there is still nothing in the description on Amazon stating that requirement unless you read the user comments, and Gamestop just says Connectivity: Broadband without stating Steam and activation required.
Disputes
If you have a dispute with Steam they can hold your entire account hostage and there isn't much you can do about it. Looking at some of the active threads in the Steam support forums I see one that stood out to me. Someone had purchased Left 4 Dead and had his purchase declined. He attempted it again and it went through. When he got his credit card statement he had been charged twice. He opened a support ticket and never got a resolution. When he had his credit card company do a chargeback his entire account was suspended with all of his purchases, not just the game in question. I had also read of a problem with a gift, where there was a Paypal dispute resulting in a chargeback and the account was suspended. It appears that you don't even have to be the one that intiates the chargeback and your account can still be suspended.
VAC Bans
Valve's anti cheating system will ban you for cheating. That's a good thing, but what if it is a false positive? Valve insists that they never make mistakes and that the bans are irreversible. There are several threads where people claim to have been banned without reason. I can't attest to the validity of their claims, but the attitude that our system is never wrong doesn't give me a warm feeling. It sure doesn't make me want to rush out and have hundreds of dollars tied up in their system.
Annoyances
I don't like to be forced into running a client just to play a game. Not only does it lead to increased load times, it also consumes system resources. I hate forced updates, even if I have no intention of playing online. If I want to watch a video for a M rated game why does it have to ask me every time to input my birthdate when they already have that information from my account?
Steam works well as a content delivery system, but being forced to give up your rights as consumer for a little convenience just does not sit well with me.
I bet that the next generation of consoles will have something to limit used game sales, and will push digital downloads much more than a physical media that can be easily traded.
What Amazon should do is publish the figures on how many of the used game sales were put right back in to new game sales and maybe it will convince the publishers that second hand sales is not necessarily as bad as they thought.
There are still possible problems with that though. There is a current thread on the Steam support forums where someone was gifted a game then the gift giver had his credit card company stop payment. If there is any kind of chargeback on your Steam account then the account is suspended and access to ALL of your Steam games as well. It didn't seem to matter that it was a gift and not the account holder themselves that initiated the chargeback.
With several recent stories about bandwidth caps by several major ISPs and trials by others, I can see that being a problem. Say you watched a movie a day and the stream averaged about a gigabyte (just guessing), that would be 30 gigabytes a month, about half of the allowance I have seen mentioned for some ISPs. I can see you hitting your cap pretty quick.
Currently I have nearly 100 movies, tv shows, documentaries, etc in my queue. Of those only 2 have the PLAY button beside them. They are going to have to increase the selection of titles before it will replace physical DVDs.
The grind in MMORPGs for example. Get a quest to bring back a dozen troll ears, go to turn in the quest and you are rewarded with another quest to kill stronger trolls, ad nauseum. Titan Quest was a single player game that just had too much repetition. I would have enjoyed the game more if it had been half the length.
A few other peeves:
Impossible end bosses. There have been several games I have got all the way to the end and just cannot kill the final boss.
Not knowing that you needed an item until the end of the game only to find that you used it long before.
Loot glut. Titan Quest was a prime example, there was just so much junk that after the first area I didn't even bother to pick something up unless it was a magical or special item.
The inverse of that is having nothing to spend it on at the merchants. You get better gear from the drops than what you can spend your hard earned money on.
Are you cut off for the rest of the month or is there an option to pay for more usage? I remember an earlier slashdot article talking about a tiered service being tested for AT&T but it had the provision to pay for additional capacity above and beyond the cap.
I figure this is just the start, the other big players will follow suit soon.
The people that I know that are still on dialup in areas where broadband is available would switch except many providers want you to sign a 1 or 2 year contract to get broadband service, sometimes having an early termination clause even if you buy the dsl or cable modem. That's what they are avoiding. With dialup they can cancel at any time.
In the office settings when playing F.E.A.R. there were Dell computers sitting on the desks, just what you would expect to find in many modern offices. I didn't have an issue with that. Sure, it's product placement, but it actually added to the realism. On the other hand, if you went into the break room you saw Fizzy Cola, not Coke or Pepsi so they looked out of place. Maybe that's more a statement about how ingrained brand recognition has become, but placing a product where you normally see that product in real life doesn't detract from the game in my eyes. If it's out of place, a billboard in a fantasy game, then I would have an issue with it.
Different strokes, I have used the Logitech Trackman Wheel for years and it is the one that feels more natural to me. I tried the Microsoft Trackball Explorer but ended up giving it away. I guess it's what you become comfortable with.
I am a big advocate of trackballs in general. The last mouse I used for an extended period of time was on my Atari ST in the mid 80s. My wrist kept hurting after extended use so I started using a Wico trackball, which had a billiard sized ball, and never had the problem again.
Most of my passwords use the left side of the keyboard, though not actual dictionary words like in the article. I found that it is much easier to enter a password using only my left hand when trying to hold a laptop with my right hand when I am in an area where there isn't a convenient place to place a laptop.
You are right of course, it's not a constant fully utilized connection. However she does use quite a bit watching YouTube, last month it was 35 GB, verified with NetMonitor for OS X. More than likely she watches more than she claims while I am at work:)
To be honest the amount surprised me, but I am sure it's all streaming YouTube and not other applications.
A recent slashdot article discussed AT&Ts proposed plan of tiered bandwidth usage. For the 3 mbs service that I have, a 60 GB per month cap was mentioned. At full usage a 3 mbs connection is a little less than 1.5 GB per hour and the cap would be reached in 40 hours. That's just over an hour of HD video per day. That leaves nothing available for other downloads such as software updates or demos.
Even at YouTube quality, my wife's 2-4 hours a day would add up to well over 30 GB per month. She watched Thai lakorn (soap operas) and Thai music videos. Since none of the large satellite providers offer Thai channels, YouTube was the only available option to listen to broadcasts in her native language.
I see bandwidth caps preventing greater usage of such services for things like watching full length movies. Where a few years ago we had a computer that accessed the internet, now we have multiple computers, an Ipod Touch, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 all using Internet resources and media and all requiring updates. The bandwidth caps are being implemented at a time when more and more home devices are using the Internet, and adding to the speed that you will hit your capacity.
Spaces is one of the new OS X Leopard features that I use the most. This Desktop 1.0 looks essentially like a clone of it. I have VMWare Fusion with an XP VM running in one desktop (for the few programs like Visio that I don't have a Mac equivalent) and my OS X apps on another desktop. I love the ease of switching to another desktop instead of minimizing windows to get to the app that I want.
Even when they release the promised deactivation tool, how would you know the seller followed the proper procedures to deactivate it if you were to buy it used?
I remember years ago that The Settlers 2 had a crack for SciTech's Display Doctor, a shareware DOS VESA utility, buried away in one of it's directories.
I got up to above level 30 before giving it up. It wasn't the repetition, but the difficulty ramped up when you had several wizards competing for the same resources.
There needs to be an option in any utility plan that after a customer specified amount is reached they have to call to verify that they are aware that they are going over what they specified. There would not be any reason for these multi-thousand dollar bills if such a system was in place. My credit card company called me once when I spent more than usual to verify that it really was me making the purchases and that I was aware I was way over my normal pattern of monthly spending. This was before I had even reached my limit.
Slashdot Mirror
I always hear about a small percentage of people with high usage spoiling it for the rest, but 14% running up against the caps during their trial is 1 out of 7 people, not a small percentage. If that many are hitting the ceiling already, I would say that the cap is set too low. In my household, with multiple computers, ipods, game consoles, and other devices all consuming data, I would be up against it in no time.
Steam prevents resale of games, effectively stopping the used market. I can't even give them away and their EULA prohibits transferring the entire account too. Years ago, I had made purchases on my Steam account since my son did not have a credit card. Now that he has left home he has his own Steam account yet I am unable to transfer those games to his account. I play single player games, and these are games I have no intention of playing such as Counterstrike, yet I am unable to transfer it. Instead he had to purchase it again. Maybe poor planning on my part, but it allows me transfer the extra Half Life 2 license I had after buying the Orange Box, but not any other purchases.
While stationed overseas, my son's previously activated and working Orange Box would not start in offline mode one day. What he ended up having to do to fix the problem was rename the clientregistry.blob file, connect to the Internet and let the file be recreated. After doing that offline play was once again available. The problem with that was that he did not have Internet access for months so until he finished his tour even the single player games were unvailable.
One of his shipmates had preordered F.E.A.R. 2, even paying the extra cost to have it shipped to a FPO. Upon receiving the game he found out that unlike the first F.E.A.R., this version required Steam and Internet activation and he did not have Internet access. To this day there is still nothing in the description on Amazon stating that requirement unless you read the user comments, and Gamestop just says Connectivity: Broadband without stating Steam and activation required.
If you have a dispute with Steam they can hold your entire account hostage and there isn't much you can do about it. Looking at some of the active threads in the Steam support forums I see one that stood out to me. Someone had purchased Left 4 Dead and had his purchase declined. He attempted it again and it went through. When he got his credit card statement he had been charged twice. He opened a support ticket and never got a resolution. When he had his credit card company do a chargeback his entire account was suspended with all of his purchases, not just the game in question.
I had also read of a problem with a gift, where there was a Paypal dispute resulting in a chargeback and the account was suspended. It appears that you don't even have to be the one that intiates the chargeback and your account can still be suspended.
Valve's anti cheating system will ban you for cheating. That's a good thing, but what if it is a false positive? Valve insists that they never make mistakes and that the bans are irreversible. There are several threads where people claim to have been banned without reason. I can't attest to the validity of their claims, but the attitude that our system is never wrong doesn't give me a warm feeling. It sure doesn't make me want to rush out and have hundreds of dollars tied up in their system.
I don't like to be forced into running a client just to play a game. Not only does it lead to increased load times, it also consumes system resources. I hate forced updates, even if I have no intention of playing online. If I want to watch a video for a M rated game why does it have to ask me every time to input my birthdate when they already have that information from my account?
Steam works well as a content delivery system, but being forced to give up your rights as consumer for a little convenience just does not sit well with me.
I bet that the next generation of consoles will have something to limit used game sales, and will push digital downloads much more than a physical media that can be easily traded.
What Amazon should do is publish the figures on how many of the used game sales were put right back in to new game sales and maybe it will convince the publishers that second hand sales is not necessarily as bad as they thought.
There are still possible problems with that though. There is a current thread on the Steam support forums where someone was gifted a game then the gift giver had his credit card company stop payment. If there is any kind of chargeback on your Steam account then the account is suspended and access to ALL of your Steam games as well. It didn't seem to matter that it was a gift and not the account holder themselves that initiated the chargeback.
With several recent stories about bandwidth caps by several major ISPs and trials by others, I can see that being a problem. Say you watched a movie a day and the stream averaged about a gigabyte (just guessing), that would be 30 gigabytes a month, about half of the allowance I have seen mentioned for some ISPs. I can see you hitting your cap pretty quick.
Currently I have nearly 100 movies, tv shows, documentaries, etc in my queue. Of those only 2 have the PLAY button beside them. They are going to have to increase the selection of titles before it will replace physical DVDs.
The grind in MMORPGs for example. Get a quest to bring back a dozen troll ears, go to turn in the quest and you are rewarded with another quest to kill stronger trolls, ad nauseum. Titan Quest was a single player game that just had too much repetition. I would have enjoyed the game more if it had been half the length.
A few other peeves:
Impossible end bosses. There have been several games I have got all the way to the end and just cannot kill the final boss.
Not knowing that you needed an item until the end of the game only to find that you used it long before.
Loot glut. Titan Quest was a prime example, there was just so much junk that after the first area I didn't even bother to pick something up unless it was a magical or special item.
The inverse of that is having nothing to spend it on at the merchants. You get better gear from the drops than what you can spend your hard earned money on.
Are you cut off for the rest of the month or is there an option to pay for more usage? I remember an earlier slashdot article talking about a tiered service being tested for AT&T but it had the provision to pay for additional capacity above and beyond the cap.
I figure this is just the start, the other big players will follow suit soon.
The people that I know that are still on dialup in areas where broadband is available would switch except many providers want you to sign a 1 or 2 year contract to get broadband service, sometimes having an early termination clause even if you buy the dsl or cable modem. That's what they are avoiding. With dialup they can cancel at any time.
In the office settings when playing F.E.A.R. there were Dell computers sitting on the desks, just what you would expect to find in many modern offices. I didn't have an issue with that. Sure, it's product placement, but it actually added to the realism. On the other hand, if you went into the break room you saw Fizzy Cola, not Coke or Pepsi so they looked out of place. Maybe that's more a statement about how ingrained brand recognition has become, but placing a product where you normally see that product in real life doesn't detract from the game in my eyes. If it's out of place, a billboard in a fantasy game, then I would have an issue with it.
Different strokes, I have used the Logitech Trackman Wheel for years and it is the one that feels more natural to me. I tried the Microsoft Trackball Explorer but ended up giving it away. I guess it's what you become comfortable with. I am a big advocate of trackballs in general. The last mouse I used for an extended period of time was on my Atari ST in the mid 80s. My wrist kept hurting after extended use so I started using a Wico trackball, which had a billiard sized ball, and never had the problem again.
Most of my passwords use the left side of the keyboard, though not actual dictionary words like in the article. I found that it is much easier to enter a password using only my left hand when trying to hold a laptop with my right hand when I am in an area where there isn't a convenient place to place a laptop.
You are right of course, it's not a constant fully utilized connection. However she does use quite a bit watching YouTube, last month it was 35 GB, verified with NetMonitor for OS X. More than likely she watches more than she claims while I am at work :)
To be honest the amount surprised me, but I am sure it's all streaming YouTube and not other applications.
A recent slashdot article discussed AT&Ts proposed plan of tiered bandwidth usage. For the 3 mbs service that I have, a 60 GB per month cap was mentioned. At full usage a 3 mbs connection is a little less than 1.5 GB per hour and the cap would be reached in 40 hours. That's just over an hour of HD video per day. That leaves nothing available for other downloads such as software updates or demos.
Even at YouTube quality, my wife's 2-4 hours a day would add up to well over 30 GB per month. She watched Thai lakorn (soap operas) and Thai music videos. Since none of the large satellite providers offer Thai channels, YouTube was the only available option to listen to broadcasts in her native language.
I see bandwidth caps preventing greater usage of such services for things like watching full length movies. Where a few years ago we had a computer that accessed the internet, now we have multiple computers, an Ipod Touch, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 all using Internet resources and media and all requiring updates. The bandwidth caps are being implemented at a time when more and more home devices are using the Internet, and adding to the speed that you will hit your capacity.
I have to agree. With the advent of MTV, music became more about looks than actual talent.
Pinball Construction Set from 1983 was the first I remember that allowed you to create your own levels.
Of course all of the girls go for the math whiz, right guys? Guys?
/Goes back to posting on slashdot
Spaces is one of the new OS X Leopard features that I use the most. This Desktop 1.0 looks essentially like a clone of it. I have VMWare Fusion with an XP VM running in one desktop (for the few programs like Visio that I don't have a Mac equivalent) and my OS X apps on another desktop. I love the ease of switching to another desktop instead of minimizing windows to get to the app that I want.
Even when they release the promised deactivation tool, how would you know the seller followed the proper procedures to deactivate it if you were to buy it used?
I remember years ago that The Settlers 2 had a crack for SciTech's Display Doctor, a shareware DOS VESA utility, buried away in one of it's directories.
I got up to above level 30 before giving it up. It wasn't the repetition, but the difficulty ramped up when you had several wizards competing for the same resources.
There needs to be an option in any utility plan that after a customer specified amount is reached they have to call to verify that they are aware that they are going over what they specified. There would not be any reason for these multi-thousand dollar bills if such a system was in place. My credit card company called me once when I spent more than usual to verify that it really was me making the purchases and that I was aware I was way over my normal pattern of monthly spending. This was before I had even reached my limit.
I live in TN and while I still use Newegg for a small hardware purchase, usually for a whole system build I will go with ZipZoomFly
The real test of a vendor is what happens when you have trouble. I had a DOA hard drive from ZZF and their RMA process was pretty straighforward.
I guess the Ministry of Silly Walks will be accused of aiding and abetting terrorists...
If you are on a Windows machine, DUMeter is pretty good.
http://www.dumeter.com/
A red crowbar has been sent to CERN in anticipation of the LHC particle accelerator going online.
http://www.destructoid.com/reddit-sends-crowbar-to-scientists-to-protect-against-headcrabs-98281.phtml