My Steam Client Review

So, I have been using the Steam Client for over 10 years now since Half-Life came on a CD and they switched over to Steam for Valve games. I think I was 14 when this happened and back then they only had 5 games for the client.

Overall I am at an 8/10, due to the annoyance factor of some of the games.

-1 Point for not telling people "You MUST have an internet connection to play THIS GAME" on some games. Note how NOT ALL steam games are like this. But the ones that are, there is no warning about

-1 For the client not having the common sense to fix it self like Impulse. I have had several Hanging, Crashing, and outright freaking out issues with the steam client that have prompted reinstalls at the oddest of times. And it gets old, very fast.

What Prompted this Review?

I contacted Steam Support recently about a issue with Steam and IOLO System Mechanic. Whenever IOLO System Mechanic does a Registry Defragmentation & Compact (Which I Normally do every 2 Months) since version 10 came out, it now stops steam from loading all together, and it prompts a clientregistry.blob file reset. As well as some of the games on steam (APOX, looked great, until I found out that the game itself was server based in INDIA) are a complete waste of your money. And they mostly don't even link reviews or ratings to the main store page of some games.

I guess they are some small gripes but they add up.

Oh and does anyone have some ideas on how to fix my Steam Crash issue?

Start It Up - Look @ Task Manager - Hangs around 12,242 MB Loaded on RAM and then dies. Tried reinstalling Steam, Doing a clientregistry.blob reset and to no avail. Fails.

I do not want to reformat my HDD and reinstall everything as I am deployed currently and it would be a HUGE PITA and waste of time just for steam as I go home soon.

 

as for your some games require a internet connection to play is somewhat true... some games for example Company of heroes require you to go into offline mode and just launch the game once while you have a internet connection... then forever more you will not need a internet connection to play.... other games you will just have to look online because of their drm requires you to be connected to the internet to play... ie ubisoft... Now I do have to say I too have random stalls of the steam client and random times... but this was only due to the new update. The old steam client never had any issues... as with issues with games thats something you would have to do research on prior to actually buying the game

 

How about the biggest disadvantage steam gives you: The inability to sell or buy a steam game 2nd hand (unless you buy an account with one game on it, and end up with 1 account for each game).

The only thing i like about Steam is the ability to download my games to one of my other laptops in no time, instead of wondering where the hell the install dvd of game X is and why i lost my product key.

Other then that i don't really like the whole digital distribution, i want a game in my hands with a nice manual and a nice case. If it's a game i really waited for then maybe even a special edition with some goodies. Not a key to enter in steam so you can download it.
There are actually games i'd love to play but didn't buy as they were only available as a digital download.

 

Every time a topic about steam occurs it always leads to digital distribution vs hard copy... As for selling games, in the past it would have been ok, but nowadays developers are doing whatever they can for the consumer to keep their games and not resell them. I could see reselling single player games, but for multiplayer games once the cd key is used the game can't be sold to anyone else for use, thus making hard copy obsolete.

Plus having your game to always be online is not entirely steam fault, but the publisher or the developer. Such as the case with APOX. I never had a problem with steam, beside when it first launch and I was on 56k. BTW, steam has not been around for 10 years as of yet, it came out in 2003, before Half-Life 1. Face it, for those who are tired of being online to play a game or want a hard copy then the console is where you want to be. PC gaming is moving in an all digital distribution format and that is where it profits.

 

It's simple. If you don't like it, don't use it.

 

steam does not allow u to sell accounts....

 

plus 99.999% of pc games come with a key that once it is used its locked to your account (for example ea games and battlefield)... and considering 2nd hand pc games sales... the last time i saw a pc game used in gamestop was in 2003... so resale for pc games is pretty much out of the question...

 

Physical discs will be 100% gone within 10 years, you better learn to break the connection. Developers and Publishers want/like the control over their product, and physical copies don't allow them to do that. Enjoy em while they last. In my view, Steam does digital distribution the best. Can anyone honestly say they prefer the EADM or GFWL Marketplace over Steam?

 

A few Steam issues I've griped about before, may be nitpicky, but still issues nevertheless.

1) Installation locations. Why does EVERYTHING have to be in the same folder? It may not seem like a big deal but over the years I've accumulated over 750GB of games. I may be crazy to store all of them on my gaming desktop, but it's faster to port it over to my laptop or other PC than redownloading. I really don't want to have to buy a 2TB drive once my 1TB drive fills up either. I know I can use junction points / symbolic links, but I shouldn't have to fuss with that at all. Not to mention with SSD's and their limited space, would it be so hard to install a handful on the SSD, and maybe the rest of less used ones on an external drive.

2) Backup feature. It's useless. Sure you can back up a game on occasion, the one nice thing about it is the game DOES consume a decent amount of less space. But you can't schedule backups, add game updates to an existing backup, heck they don't even alphabetize the list of games you have to backup!

3) As mentioned, second hand games. I don't even care if I don't get a penny from sales of my games, but at least let me either gift the game to someone else, or let Steam get all the money from a resale at a discount. You would at least have control over who gets it, and Valve would reap additional profits from someone who probably wouldn't pay full price for it anyhow. I have at least a dozen or so games that I would easily give up to someone if they'd let me. Let Valve take their share of the resale, it's better than no sale.

 

See that's the problem with people 'griping' about Steam: you can't take them seriously. The 'problems' listed by many in the context of Steam is 99.99999% a PEBKAC issue (queue forum user with PEBKAC avatar).

"Dear Steam Support: I have this problem where a piece of software I downloaded that essentially destabilizes my registry and is in no way supported or related to your product in anyway causes your product not to work. Plz fix it".

 

I was that PEBKAC avatar... it is now a goldfish... much worse.

 

Amen...

Impulse allows you to install wherever you want. Direct2Drive allows you to install wherever you want. gog.com allows you to install wherever you want. There may be a good technical reason for it (D2D doesn't auto-patch unless you use Comrade *blech* and gog.com doesn't auto-patch). Impulse allows you to install wherever and auto-patches your games wherever they may be.

Since I don't do multiplayer across the internet, the social aspect of online gaming via Steam doesn't appeal to me so there's no advantage to Steam over Impulse. However, Steam's game catalog and its firesales make it my preferred platform. If Impulse could only get more publishers behind it...

And as far as the OP's concerns...I guess your mileage may vary...I've only had to do the blob file thing once...and I've also been using Steam since it was required by Half-Life 2 (I was really upset at the time that a game I bought in the store had to have an internet connection before playing the first time...I'm not even sure the acronym 'DRM' had been coined yet)...

I stay away from games that require a permanent internet connection to play (I'm looking at you Ubisoft...as much as I would love to play Silent Hunter 5, I refuse to support that type of DRM...I'll just stick with SH3 and SH4)...of the dozens and dozens of games that I have on Steam, none require a permanent internet connection...I download, I run, I adjust settings and then I'm free to play in offline mode...

And the real beauty of Steam for me is multi-computer/platform installs...I have lots of Steam games on my m1710...many of the same Steam games that are slower paced on my m11x for gaming on planes, trains and automobiles (and a couple just to show off what the tiny computer can do)...and I have some cheesy games installed on my wife's iMac for my 8-year old son to play (Swords and Soldiers, Madballs, Trine, Gratuitous Space Battles)...he can play them on a Mac and for no extra money, I can play them on either of my laptops...

 

I understand the auto-patching Steam requires some control over install location, but it should manage it and know where everything is installed. Even if you had to set up one, two, or three install points, it could ask before downloading, and manage it easily that way.

But yeah, I was a little hesitant with Steam when released, but now I think it's great. Still some caveats that I'd like to see ironed out, but it works, especially considering the rock bottom deals I've bought games for over the years, like 5-10% of normal pricing.

 

My remaining issue with steam is that you can't disable those group event popups. Really annoying when you are part of several large groups who like to use this feature legitimately. And why do they have to constantly blink in the taskbar background?!

Also if the cloud were smarter it would be much better - when I upgraded to better hardware any game that I already played on the old one still had the old settings, low res/graphics ect...

As for install locations, I don't like that steam defaults to C:, but I do like that all the games are in the same folder. If you drag the entire steam folder over to whatever drive (mine is D then all the games will follow accordingly and nothing will break.

 

Are you expecting the cloud to automatically adjust settings for you? Or are you saying when you switch to another computer, say desktop instead of laptop, it should remember that specific computer and settings?

 

Second option, it should remember the settings tied to each computer. Maybe ti already does this, but it sure doesn't do it well!

 

Ok, yeah, I agree. The way you worded it sounded like you wanted it to configure your machine automatically. But yeah it should remember each machine, otherwise what good is the cloud?

 

I think they should rethink the interface though, make it a bit more user friendly. They've got tons of money im sure they can make something a little easier and pleasing on the eyes to use. I know theirs mods of their but nothing the greatly makes it easier to use, if someone can link something similer to the xmb ps3 has I'd be down.

 

>Steam to have a PS3 XMB
>Steam
>PS3 XMB
>Steam
>Console

No.

My main problem with Steam is that it whenever you get an update or close it and restart, it's fairly slow to actually stop the process. I usually have to bring up Task Manager and kill the process, then start Steam again.

 

haha dont be such a hater, it could use a better interface, I use xmb as an example, its won awards for its design. Some people may like the steam interface, I would like to see something nicer though.

 

I don't particularly like the current interface myself, but I don't want it to become too proprietary and console-ish if you know what I mean.

 

Agreed, windows media player tries too hard at this aswell, I think if they could have a better interface is all, Its just soo ugly boring and sometimes hard to navigate.

 

A steam review. Ah the evolution of gaming is a challenging one. Disk CD-ROM -> Disk DVD -> Digital Download -> Cloud Thin Client. I remember CD-ROMs. They were fun. Had multiple of them sometimes for big games. Then DVDs fixed that. Sometimes you had to install the game then go online and grab some patches. Then digital download with steam came around and patches were automatic. Then OnLive came out out and you just jump in the game and play with the patches already installed. It's fun watching technology progress so quickly. I remember having 7 floppy disks for a game.

 

since this is a steam review, I thought I'd ask a quick question. When trying to use steam at school (my friend can log on...) it freezes at the "updating steam" dialog box. and everytime I try it adds a "Clientregistry.blob" file. anyone have any idea why?

 

Does your school use an HTTP proxy?

 

You haven't been around long enough my friend. Try manual input of BASIC or God forbid machine code --> punch cards --> cassette tape --> 8" floppy discs --> 5.25" floppy discs --> 3.5" floppy discs --> CD-ROM --> and you know the rest.

 

Probably. But my friend logged onto steam on the schools network, and I can't seem to be able to.

 

my biggest grip is the total lack of support...send us an email and we will get back to you in a......few days...ahhhhh!!!! Again i agree. they are binded to your account forever? why? Also when you buy a game and than buy the pack....you only get one copy....bs! I want to gift that freakin copy man!

 

I can relate to that. First PC game was on an IBM PS/1 machine. Was a mix of a math and mystery game...the name escapes me though. Your character had to find a mad scientist or something in a building and you went around to different rooms, solve a math problem, get a clue and move on. And you had like a ray gun thing with a big button

Good times.

 

Yeah, probably the most disappointing weakness. People should be aware of this fact.

 

So, your complaints about Steam are:

1) Game publishers like UbiSoft (who are unrelated to Steam / Valve / Activision) that choose to use always-on DRM in their games... is somehow Steam's fault.

2) Steam crashing, and not magically repairing itself... is somehow Steam's fault.

3) Steam doesn't work well when you (the user) use a 3rd party registry tool to mess with the Windows registry in an unsupported way. And somehow, that is Steam's fault.



You're pointing the finger at the wrong boogeyman.