When I first started using it as my homepage it was declared 'Beta' so it probably still is. At least I havent heard of anything saying it isn't. Just seems a highly popular public beta to me.
I too would like further customisation of the boxes and what have you, but they already through a lot of the stuff I would have suggested they add (Sports comes to mind first...) so kutos to them. Hope to see more options later on.
True. I can't think of another webportal that allows you to customise it so completley. It eliminates many a hatred of webportals I've gotten from people that angle along the 'Its ugly/messy' lines.
I'm noticing a lot of complaints involve steam updating games at inoportune times. You all should pay more attention seeing as you can simply tell Steam NOT to automatically update a game so you have to tell it manually to download and install the update. If you didnt tell Steam not to automatically update its your own fault.
The next numerous complaint involves how many 'megs' it takes for Steam to run and away from HL2. If you actually checked Steam takes up only twice as much as FireFox. It would hardly make a diffrence if it wasnt running.
And third the problem with internet connection. "Shouldnt have to use the net for a single player game" and the like are very common complaints regaurding Steam. Personally I think this is a bullshit excuse seeing as 98% of the people that would want to play HL2 have internet connections.
Sure on day 1 of HL2's release people had trouble getting their games to authorise. But its a *free* service and when you get as many people hitting your servers at one time as they did for authorising its no wonder there were problems.
Note that most of these issues were for people who had retail. This is most likley because all the net buyers (or damn near) preloaded the game before Nov 16th. By the time most of the retail owners had their copy in their hands others were authorising. By the time they installed the game and attempted to authorise they were already having issues with people being unable to authorise right away.
Also a good portion of the people that had issues authorising HL2 were at colleges and universities that blocked the ports Steam was using to auth HL2.
And then the second part of this third complaint, once you authorise HL2 you do NOT need an internet connection. Infact you dont even need to LOGIN! You can play in "offline" mode and be 'happy' that you dont need the internet to play your game.
I just dont understand what people's problem is with needing the internet to authorise that you purchsed the game. Sure it takes time but we've all played games that take a while to install (Hello Far Cry and your 5 cds, nice to play you in 25 minutes). Its a more effective step than a CD-KEY (at least I assume so, when was the last time you heard of 20 thousand people getting their accounts disabled for using illegal copies of a game and credit card fraud to boot? Cause its been a while for me) and doesnt take up all that much time really.
-The game itself takes a bit to start up on my low end system anyways so I didnt even notice the grand total of 15 seconds it took for me to login to Steam.
-Steam barley takes up any processing power. -Steam allows me to update my games a lot easier (I dont have to wait in line at FilePlanet or something because for one reason or another the downloads from the official site arent working) and at my convienence as well as installing automatically.
-Steam is just as easy to customise and you dont have to backup the original files when you add in new skins/sounds.
-The more popular mods are standalone now.
-It has an easy interface, minus the Browse Games and Play Games menus which are poorly named.
-Harder to play pirated copies online (NOTE: Yes there are 'hacked' versions of Steam or w/e but they dont work except on 'hacked' Steam servers so you wont find some hacker repeatetly coming on your server and hacking as often as other games. Its a lot more difficult to get random Steam IDs than it was random WON IDs where any numbers worked. They usually have to obtain a second Steam Account. Bannage works 99% of the time, 100% for all I know but I seriously doubt that any system is full proof and without flaws)
-Rev
Well this is a good 6 or 9 months late. This was posted on just about every gamer forum that had a HL2 section or Case Mods section out there all those months ago. Funny how its only now slashdot worthy.
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When I first started using it as my homepage it was declared 'Beta' so it probably still is. At least I havent heard of anything saying it isn't. Just seems a highly popular public beta to me. I too would like further customisation of the boxes and what have you, but they already through a lot of the stuff I would have suggested they add (Sports comes to mind first...) so kutos to them. Hope to see more options later on.
True. I can't think of another webportal that allows you to customise it so completley. It eliminates many a hatred of webportals I've gotten from people that angle along the 'Its ugly/messy' lines.
I'm noticing a lot of complaints involve steam updating games at inoportune times. You all should pay more attention seeing as you can simply tell Steam NOT to automatically update a game so you have to tell it manually to download and install the update. If you didnt tell Steam not to automatically update its your own fault. The next numerous complaint involves how many 'megs' it takes for Steam to run and away from HL2. If you actually checked Steam takes up only twice as much as FireFox. It would hardly make a diffrence if it wasnt running. And third the problem with internet connection. "Shouldnt have to use the net for a single player game" and the like are very common complaints regaurding Steam. Personally I think this is a bullshit excuse seeing as 98% of the people that would want to play HL2 have internet connections. Sure on day 1 of HL2's release people had trouble getting their games to authorise. But its a *free* service and when you get as many people hitting your servers at one time as they did for authorising its no wonder there were problems. Note that most of these issues were for people who had retail. This is most likley because all the net buyers (or damn near) preloaded the game before Nov 16th. By the time most of the retail owners had their copy in their hands others were authorising. By the time they installed the game and attempted to authorise they were already having issues with people being unable to authorise right away. Also a good portion of the people that had issues authorising HL2 were at colleges and universities that blocked the ports Steam was using to auth HL2. And then the second part of this third complaint, once you authorise HL2 you do NOT need an internet connection. Infact you dont even need to LOGIN! You can play in "offline" mode and be 'happy' that you dont need the internet to play your game. I just dont understand what people's problem is with needing the internet to authorise that you purchsed the game. Sure it takes time but we've all played games that take a while to install (Hello Far Cry and your 5 cds, nice to play you in 25 minutes). Its a more effective step than a CD-KEY (at least I assume so, when was the last time you heard of 20 thousand people getting their accounts disabled for using illegal copies of a game and credit card fraud to boot? Cause its been a while for me) and doesnt take up all that much time really. -The game itself takes a bit to start up on my low end system anyways so I didnt even notice the grand total of 15 seconds it took for me to login to Steam. -Steam barley takes up any processing power. -Steam allows me to update my games a lot easier (I dont have to wait in line at FilePlanet or something because for one reason or another the downloads from the official site arent working) and at my convienence as well as installing automatically. -Steam is just as easy to customise and you dont have to backup the original files when you add in new skins/sounds. -The more popular mods are standalone now. -It has an easy interface, minus the Browse Games and Play Games menus which are poorly named. -Harder to play pirated copies online (NOTE: Yes there are 'hacked' versions of Steam or w/e but they dont work except on 'hacked' Steam servers so you wont find some hacker repeatetly coming on your server and hacking as often as other games. Its a lot more difficult to get random Steam IDs than it was random WON IDs where any numbers worked. They usually have to obtain a second Steam Account. Bannage works 99% of the time, 100% for all I know but I seriously doubt that any system is full proof and without flaws) -Rev
Well this is a good 6 or 9 months late. This was posted on just about every gamer forum that had a HL2 section or Case Mods section out there all those months ago. Funny how its only now slashdot worthy.