Letting off steam about Steam.

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Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:30 am

At first, I thought that Steam was a great idea. I was able to pay once for a game which was supposedly playable on Linux, and if it proved unplayable on Linux (as of course it fucking did), I could play it on my Windows partition. Plus, if you're patient, you can get games at steep discounts.

I haven't played EU4 in about a month, because booting between Windows for games and Linux for fucking everything else is a pain, and I'm not going to start using Windows for anything except games and a little bit of Internet browsing while I wait for them to start up.

Once again, I'm reminded of three things that I fucking hate about Steam, particularly if I come back after a long time (in other words, more than 48 hours or so):

  1. Steam decides it wants to update itself, a process that takes ten to fifteen minutes. I don't understand why it needs to update itself. If you're updating the shopping cart, you can update when I decide I want to buy something. I don't want or need anything else Steam might be updating. I don't. But there's no option to not update Steam.
    -
  2. After updates, Steam forgets my password. I don't just mean it doesn't autocomplete, though it doesn't do that either. It literally insists that the same password I've reset roughly a dozen times. I have to reset the password, I reset it to the same thing it was, and it insists that it's an invalid password after the next update, forcing me to update again.
    -
  3. After all that, I have to update the game, which takes ten to twenty minutes, and cannot be avoided or even delayed. So I'm wasting forty minutes of my time on Windows. I can't leave the computer because I need to wait for Steam to update, then try to login twice to confirm that Steam lost my password again, the reset my password so I can log in, then wait for updates, then get to the game launch screen, then launch the game which takes another five minutes. So I'm stuck browsing the internet, and if I wanted to spend almost an hour browsing the internet, I wouldn't boot into Windows to do it.
In short: Fuck you Steam; I fucking hate you!

What's frustrating is that these are Paradox games, which lacking DRM should be playable without logging into fucking Steam. In fact, Paradox customer support has told me I can avoid Steam's BS by clicking on the EU4 icon itself. But if I click on the EU4 icon? It logs me into Steam in order to launch the game.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby Dr. Ambiguous » Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:27 am

1). Steam doesn't force me to update, it gives me an option. I'm not sure why it's different, and I just poked around in settings and couldn't find an option.

2). Steam is stupid about this, I *think* I've had issues with this before, but I might have just been being dumb.

3). This I think would be an issue with the game, not Steam, but I'm not sure.

You should be able to load the game without booting up Steam, so I'm not sure what the issue is.

I like Steam a lot, because cheap games. But the client needs some work, as it's kinda shitty.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby LaChaise » Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:21 am

I have never had any of these problems with Steam.

Their browser on the other hand... That browser sucks hard. Unfortunately it's the only option when I want to look something up on the Internet while not crashing my computer with 30+ tabs opening in chrome.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby Dr. Ambiguous » Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:45 am

@LaChaise Why not just open a temp session in Firefox or another browser to avoid that? There's a reason I have 3 browsers pinned to my taskbar.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby LaChaise » Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:49 am

Alt+tab can get wonky when I'm playing a resource-hogging game in fullscreen, unfortunately.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby Dr. Ambiguous » Wed Jul 08, 2015 5:36 am

Aaahhh, I misunderstood you then. I thought you meant you didn't want to load chrome because you had it set to auto load your previous, tab heavy, session. Yeah, I've had some alt tab funkiness too, unfortunately. I just put up with it because I have no choice.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby ShuaiGuy » Wed Jul 08, 2015 6:29 am

<Redacted>
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby DjiboutiDan » Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:42 pm

Have you tried Offline Mode?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -AGCB-2555

Log in normally, let everything update (game must be up to date to work offline), uncheck the 'Don't save account credentials on this computer' box in Settings, select Go Offline from the Steam menu. This should (emphasis on should) keep you in Offline Mode permanently.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby Blackfish » Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:56 pm

That really sucks. :( Steam is great when it works, but you're fucked when it doesn't, because you won't have any clue what exactly is wrong, and Steam customer support is.... bad. Like real bad.

DjiboutiDan wrote:Have you tried Offline Mode?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -AGCB-2555

Log in normally, let everything update (game must be up to date to work offline), uncheck the 'Don't save account credentials on this computer' box in Settings, select Go Offline from the Steam menu. This should (emphasis on should) keep you in Offline Mode permanently.

I had intermittent, shitty internet for the whole of 2013 and a few months into 2014, and unless something has changed since then, that doesn't work. Offline Mode is a bit of a misnomer - Offline Mode still requires you to be online when Steam boots, every time, so you can log in. It's very annoying.

cmsellers wrote:What's frustrating is that these are Paradox games, which lacking DRM should be playable without logging into fucking Steam. In fact, Paradox customer support has told me I can avoid Steam's BS by clicking on the EU4 icon itself. But if I click on the EU4 icon? It logs me into Steam in order to launch the game.

Hm. It shouldn't - I just tried to launch EU4 directly with the eu4.exe on my computer and and it loads just fine without Steam. A lot of Steam games do do that when you launch the game from the .exe, but not Paradox games in my experience. I played a ton of CK2 this way when my internet was crap.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby Jack Road » Wed Jul 08, 2015 2:38 pm

I never have an issue with Steam. Blizzard on the other hand... [Road glares]

Why on earth do you need to be down 12 hours every Tuesday?
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby FieldMarshalFry » Thu Jul 09, 2015 1:22 am

think of it this way, at least it ain't Origin
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby ShuaiGuy » Wed Jul 15, 2015 12:24 am

<Redacted>
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby Absentia » Fri Jul 17, 2015 12:32 am

FieldMarshalFry wrote:think of it this way, at least it ain't Origin


Or... Uplay.

*thunderclap, dramatic violin*
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Fri Jul 17, 2015 2:35 am

FieldMarshalFry wrote:think of it this way, at least it ain't Origin


Thing is, Origin would probably be the best front end around if it weren't for the fact it's only selling EA's games. It has a refund policy, doesn't fuck your game up all to hell like UPlay tends to, apparently has decent customer support and generally feels like it's handled by the only people in the company who have souls.
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Re: Letting off steam about Steam.

Postby FieldMarshalFry » Fri Jul 17, 2015 4:02 am

however Origin is very slow compared to Steam, taking several minutes to open, the design is not as pleasing to the eye, EA are bastards, it lacks sales, Steam now has a refund policy if you buy a game right before it goes on sale, EA are bastards, there is no mod support, it is harder to use, less intuitive, and EA are bastards
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