Steam sucks! • Gaming • PC • Eurogamer.net

Cuchulainn 30 Jan 2005 03:28:29 845 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 18 years ago

I'm slightly annoyed right now. In fact, I'm more than that, but I'm trying to be polite.

I wanted to play some single player half-life 2. Steam couldn't connect to the servers and so I couldn't play. But that's another rant entirely.

No, what's got me is that, according to Valve support, one thing to try is to uninstall steam and then reinstall it.

What they fail to tell you is that, without any warning. this option
DELETES ALL YOUR SAVEGAMES!

What stupid, dozy, idiotic son of an egg sucking, puss-infested, genetic-pool reject allowed that one through quality control!?!

Cuchulainn 30 Jan 2005 03:41:37 845 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 18 years ago

No, any games I've unistalled recently have left the savegames or have explicitly asked if I wanted to delete everything in the folder.

Secondly, it was valve's own advice to do so and they did not mention anywhere that games could be lost, let alone over a gig's worth of downloaded data.

I tried the offline mode, but because steam could not connect to a server the first time round it would not let me use offline mode (that only works if you start up steam _without_ an internet connection at all)

It's absolutely shitty quality control and it's not my first bad experience with HL2 - I bought a boxed edition at christmas and the product key would not work out of the box. I know technically that was Sierra's and not Valve's problem, but the underlying cause is the same - why do I need a net connection to play offline a copy of a game I legally bought?

Cuchulainn 30 Jan 2005 04:28:43 845 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 18 years ago

duncan wrote:
you don't need an internet connection to play just to update and authenticate.

if you don't play CS:S then once your up and running again deselect automatic updating and then start steam without an internet connection and select offline mode.

That's the thing - if you have steam running at startup then if it fails to connect to the servers on startup your screwed - there's no way to run offline mode because it failed to connect once. That's pathetic!

as to the save games thing you made an assumption and it's wrong. Absolutely gutting I agree but not technically anyone's fault. I'm sure everyone one on this forum has had unfortunate experiences with save games. This is why I tend to back mine up.

I've lost savegames before, sure, but not when following the developer's own guidelines. That's what really annoys me - one line in a FAQ and I would have backed them up.

Deleted user 30 January 2005 12:49:43

Where, in Steam support, did you get that information? The public (non pubic) forums?

Cuchulainn 30 Jan 2005 17:48:58 845 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 18 years ago

Nipples wrote:
Where, in Steam support, did you get that information? The public (non pubic) forums?

It's here, option g

I've been thinking more about why I'm so annoyed over this and I've realised: steam is not Half-life 2 or Counterstrike or any of these other things. Steam is a content delivery and verification system. As such, it should not touch your data. If I unistall iTunes or Winamp, should they also delete all my mp3 files? Or to use a slightly different example, if I buy a (say) Canon camera and use the software that comes with it, is it reasonable to expect that, when I uninstall that software that all the photos I've taken with the camera are also deleted? On the other hand, since Steam allows the downloading of all these games, why should it automatically uninstall _any_ of them when it is installed?

Deleted user 30 January 2005 17:54:59

I had 'problems' with Steam not so long ago as medulla will tell you. I had to reinstall it over and over again and couldn't use my new profile. I eventually got it working, but boy, was it a lot of work.

mugwump 30 Jan 2005 19:39:08 654 posts
Seen 4 years ago
Registered 19 years ago

Steam was down for me all yesterday too - just wouldn't connect to servers. Checked the server status, and it said it was online. Fortunately, there were quite a number of ppl reporting the same thing, so I left it. Feckin annoying though. Basically meant I couldn't play HL2 or CS all day.

They seem to be allowing connections again today. Sort it out, Valve!

mugwump 30 Jan 2005 19:57:07 654 posts
Seen 4 years ago
Registered 19 years ago

I'm not sure...

I know you can somehow configure HL2 to run in offline mode through the Steam property menus. But if you can't get into those menus, how do you set it to offline mode? :-S

While it works though, how do I set the offline mode?

Cheers!

HarryB 30 Jan 2005 22:52:35 7,630 posts
Seen 10 months ago
Registered 18 years ago

pull out your network cable or just get your pc disconnected from the internet and it goes into offline mode itself

Deleted user 25 November 2010 10:50:19

Post deleted

Deleted user 25 November 2010 10:50:19

Post deleted