stenchy Beyond Steam news

good point look at music, napster, Itunes , aol music ect
I like it when its nice and simple

I don't think computability will become a huge issue. There will probably be a handful of Digital Distribution Platforms (DDPs), and they'll probably play decently friendly with each other.

EA has their own DDP. I believe it's called "EA Downloadeder" (amazing, huh?). But even if you've heard of it, I doubt you're using it. Steam is the reigning champion because it offers the most to both developers and consumers. If this shifts, then it shifts.

It's kind of like Search Engines. There are a few of the kingpings (mainly Google, then Yahoo, then MSN). There are also smaller ones, but they're mainly not of importance, and only a select few use them. I can't see the amount of DDPs going past 3 or so main ones.

"believe it's called "EA Downloadeder" (amazing, huh?)"
Well for a time it was, then EA Link and now its EA Store. Really I wouldn't have minded the name changes had EA not lost my account and my purchases along with it. I have since gone to another DDP system, aka Bittorrent for my future EA Game needs.

Google runs the Yahoo search engine.

Steam will take them away in the end.
Steam is God
the rest are like Mortals.

dude you are so freaking right sure Steam has its major screw ups but its great and usually never fails and with something like "Impulse" Coming out it sounds like a cheep bitch imitation. If some one agrees with me just say XXXX <-(your name) agrees with Commisr1032

Well, you seem to be affected by the worst of it. Me and all of my friends use Steam and have no problems with it. It's a god send for us. :P

Steam is a little annoying with the constant update but its really good when it comes to managing games and talking to friends.

I really don't give a crap about info collection on my hardware while I play. Just as long as it doesn't crap out my performance

But I dislike Steam for my own reasons.

One big one is the big mess it is. If you want to mod a program on Steam, you basically have to modify AROUND Steam. It's a mess.

For starters the directory path is just irritating. Why does everything have to be installed at "C:/Program Files/Steam/Steamapps/blah/moreblah/"

I prefer gaming/modding without Steam.

aisle twelve, laxitives

might help you get that stick out of your ass.

for a linux kiddo it sure seems a bit hypocritical to call for software to be banned. Besides, i'm just going to assume you've actually ran steam on a win32 box? Steam allows plenty sane backups, has never crashed for me, never misupdated itsself, it asks me if it wants me to send my data back to valve (hey there eula!)

so in otherwords, linux guy going off about problems only he has

and as for "5) Online while playing? The most sick idea up to date and steam enforces it" - doesn't even make sense, if you mean "playing while offline" steam will allow you to launch in a fully featured offline mode, wow!

So have fun in the land of free software, where you just "ban" software you don't like

Steam doesn't "misupdate" itself. It does update itself. Always, with no exceptions. Which sometimes can be a problem if a new game patch causes problems. Steam ensures that everyone is always at the latest version, and makes rollbacks impossible - something that's a fairly simple matter in an otherwise installed game. Personally, I had Steam royally screw up my Hammer install all by itself because of this.

As to Steam allowing you to launch games - that's another annoying thing about it. I never bought one game off Steam. I bought a boxed version of HL2 in a store. However, I do have to run Steam for it to allow me to run the game. From my point of view, therefore, Steam is nothing but an extensive, complicated and unnecessary DRM layer of the game that tells me whether or not I can play the game by actually calling back home and asking Valve.

You can set a game to never update via steam.
So, it does always update no exceptions.

I think you're completely ignoring the fact that Steam runs fine for some people.

I have no problems with Steam.

You do have problems with Steam.

So this gives me the position to say it's a great piece of software, as this is the experience I've had. You're more than free to mention the fact that the experience you've had with it is pretty crappy, but stop comparing other people's positions on Steam with your experience.

No. You didn't read what he said. He said that he hasn't had problems with Steam, and you have.

By the way, there is such thing as the opposite of fanboy you know, dunno what the word is though. Plenty of things that are e-cool to hate.

Just watch this page and you see immediately what fanboys are... those "misusing" the voting system for fanboying.

I'd say it's using the response system to rant for days and days...
anti-fanboy :O

With STEAM people either typically love it or hate it. Sure, there are people who don’t care one way or the other, but that doesn’t seem to be the norm. When it first came out, it was buggy, it felt like downgrading when I started using STEAM (especially on day one when STEAM went public/Gold/whatever and the whole STEAM network went belly up). The constant barrage of updates didn’t help. It seemed that for a while, quality control went out the door in favor for just rolling out update after update to justify the concept behind STEAM. After some time (years), STEAM got better. It was a gradual process.. each time a “feature” was added, it took them a while to iron out all the bugs. How long was the friends list out of commission, how long did it take for them to get STEAM to ask you if you wanted to enter into offline mode.. much less the pull-down menu option (for example)? Though, today STEAM has become pretty robust. It took a while, but it’s not the STEAMing pile of.. well, it’s not what it was.

But, I’d like to see how Impulse does. I really like the approach taken with Sins (Stardock’s updater). It was refreshing to be able to buy a game, install it, and run it without having to have a CD in the tray or an Internet connection going (I am aware of the offline mode in STEAM). I personally like being treated as a customer and not a possible criminal.

I don't see why you're complaining about backing up, as they already store it off-site for you.

The principle of a backup is to store critical stuff ( hence stuff you can "not" restore from a "default installation" ) on a physically detached medium "not" on the same HD ( hd failure = everything including backups lost ). But the system is so entangled that doing manual backups is a pain ( and restoring an even bigger pain ).

Do you not know how to copy and paste? Just copy the damn steamapps directory to your backup location. How is that "so entangled"?
Also, almost nothing is automatic in Steam, you can tell any piece of software installed in Steam to not update, if you wish. You can tell them not to survey your hardware, etc. You can run Steam in Offline mode, which precludes the need for internet access while running the software, which seems to be such a huge issue for you and others.

And what do you mean by "2) Games you can finally "manually install" without having to totally reformat whenever the installer "fails for no reason"."
Doesn't even make sense. If you need to reinstall a game with Steam, for whatever reason, just backup all your saves/data you need to keep, and delete the directory, then reinstall it. I don't know what you mean by "whenever the installer "fails for no reason" either because I've never once had a game install fail with Steam... Not with the SDK, not with any game's I've purchased through it.. Even if an installer "fails for no reason" (which, by the way, makes no sense, no software fails for no reason, there's obviously a problem which you have and no one else has, fix your own computer, don't complain about Steam) you can just use the extremely complicated copy+paste backup system which Steam forces you to use so you never have to reinstall any Steam software again. ^^

With no offense intended, I believe you're not seeing the point people are attempting to make. That point being that Steam, at this point, works properly for the VAST MAJORITY of people. Just like any piece of software, it may have occasional errors with certain machines, but just because YOU are having those problems with it does not mean said problems are universal. Everyone I know who uses Steam enjoys it, and that seems to be a fair indication.

And I believe that the problems people are posting about on forums (that you mentioned) were largely posted when Steam was first coming out. Since then, the quantity of issues has dramatically improved, and only a small number of people post about errors on forums.

Basically, Dragonlord is a lazy ignorant git who wants things to be done pretty much for him without him having to lift much of a finger.
Where he has had problems, probably because he's done something wrong.
He can't admit to that it's his fault and not steams.
Sorry Steam fucked you up so bad DL, but your crappy attempts to 'insult' people calling them steam fanboys is rather childish, anyone who defends steam is a fanboy?..they could be girls you never know XD
but anyway...dig dig dig

actually.

1) Your computer must suck or YOU did something wrong because mine never crashes upon click.
2) reformat? what, delete the traces of that ONE game then download it again?..heck, you hardly even have to do that.
3) Just copy and paste where the games are and stick them somewhere, backups done.
4) Never really happened, stop thinking back to the years ago when Steam was roughly as bad as a beta, it's decent NOW.
5) Actually, if you cannot get onto the internet, you can play it offline. Guess you're to stupid to figure that out though.

Stop looking back at how bad it was and how good it is now.

Noooooo, I acidently hit the negative karma button!!! NO!!!@~!@~12

This is more directed at options for independent commercial games and how we'll be able to obtain the other, AAA titles people might want to mod for on the future.

oops.. forgot.. sigh ( at times I hate not having a edit button )

As far as future programs like steam.. To be honest I don't really care as long as the majority of the games out there can be bought and played without having to use one or the other program.

I agree its a massive plus when i know i can always access my games no matter where i am. The only problem i have with steam is that most of the time i dont get the new games (cos im in Australia) so its like hmmm.

Monopolies are never good - sure you may love steam, I love steam. They have ironed out the bugs over the past 5 years and it works a treat now. However to essentially control game distribution on the PC platform might lead to some messy consequences. Valve might have the purest of intentions, but you only have to look at the record industry monopoly (oligopoly to be technically correct) and the pressure they put on artists and their own consumers to realize this isn't the best thing. Competition encourages innovation - and that is essential.

Having said all this I'm not sure how successful these other endevours will be, since Valves focus has been and will always be game development - where with these competitors it is merely an after thought.

lets hope someday other people dont try to start up mod sites in order to attempt to replicate this place.
of course, things that are community based always end up good with the originals so...*yay*
(meaning - Long Live ModDB)

EA is the perfect example of this.

I doubt Impulse is going to kic Steam's ass though for several reasons. 1) People already use Steam, it'll take a while before many people even know about Stardock's new DDP.
2) The most popular games are on Steam, and won't be cming to Impulse, for example, CS 1.6, CS:S, HL2, TF2, etc., which Impulse has Sins of a Solar Empire as it's main flagship title, and while it is a fantastic title, it's nature, as a strategy games, means that it will never be as popular as something like Counter-Strike.

I do excitedly anticipate Impulse's release this month (or next month :P) because I love a lot of the games totalgaming.net has.

I have no idea, the idea of the article was just to focus on the possible alternatives to Steam that are in the works. Whether or not people commenting on the article like Steam doesn't even relate to its success and viability as a platform - which is the only thing I stated in the article.