This one was a long time coming. It’s not much of a secret that I’m not a fan of Steam but I’ve been asked why a fair number of times. So here it is, the definitive answer. Today’s rant is about Steam developed by Valve Corporation. So hide your Gabe Newell shrines and grab your Che Guevara hats and AK47s.
Adverts
By default Steam will open a large pop-up window advertising games in their store. There’s an option to disable this in the options but a large number of less advanced/informed users will be presented with these adverts on a regular basis and will no doubt become frustrated. Why not use something less intrusive, surely those that are interested in buying from Steam will access the store. The offers are already there on the front page, there’s no need for aggressive marketing.
Other platforms don’t do it, there’d be uproar if the Xbox Dashboard was updated to bring up pop-ups each time you boot up your Xbox 360 or quit to the dashboard.
VAC
VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) system is draconian. Valve have the power to cut off any account at any time, permanently marking the account and causing the account holder to be banned permanently from any game that employs the VAC system (pretty much everything on Steam with online functionality). That might sound reasonable; however they refuse to even state why the account has been blocked.
I’m well aware that the general response is “well they deserved it, they were cheating, of course they should be banned”. The problem comes from VACs inability to correctly punish those that go against the system. Forums are packed full of people that have been blocked seemingly without good cause. VAC is notorious for ‘detecting’ programs completely unrelated to the game it is meant to be protecting, putting forward a ban on accounts that have done nothing to infringe upon the T&Cs.
Other systems give a reason for action taken on your account and allow for appeal, where somebody will look into your case. Valve apparently doesn’t care about those it wrongly accuses.
Payment & Activation Issues
Steam is well known for having issues with payment and activation. A more specific example can be found in this thread.
It seems Steam uses an anti-fraud system that blocks you out if you connect from another location. If you go away on holiday or visit relatives (like everybody does) then you’ll be faced with problems like this.
Slow Downloads
Downloads frequently become slow during high-traffic, such as new releases and sales. Seems everybody using a single group of servers puts a lot of stress them. Who knew?
Offline Issues
Think you can have a game of Skyrim on your laptop? Steam has other ideas.
Steam requires you to sign into their servers to boot up games. No connection? No game.
You can select “offline mode” from the Steam menu, however this requires you to plan in advance to activate this mode and still requires you to sign into the servers before playing anything for the first time (not to mention taking the initiative to find this out yourself or allowing for automatically going offline when you don’t have a connection). Steam was meant to tackle the issue of restrictive DRM, all it’s doing is creating its own.
You Don’t Own Anything You Buy
Nothing you buy through Steam belongs to you. All Steam users have accepted an agreement that states
” All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Software and any and all copies thereof are owned by Valve and/or its licensors”
It continues:
“ Valve has the right to terminate or cancel your Account or a particular Subscription at any time”
You have literally no rights over the games you’re buying. On top of this, should Steam go down for any reason you’ve lost your entire game collection.
Auto Updates
I honestly can’t believe this is still an issue, especially with so many complaints.
Steam will automatically download updates, whether you like it or not. You’ll need to manually pause each update to prevent it or disable the option for each game individually. A quick trip to various forums on the topic will yield hundreds of topics on the issues of this.
No Choice
This is the big one.
Whether you love or loathe Steam you have to face that PC gaming is moving towards it at an alarming rate. A vast number of games can only be played through Steam, even offline-only single player games such as Skyrim. The worst part? You won’t even know until you’ve bought it.
Test the theory; try a retailer and find where it tells you it requires Steam activation.
You could start here for a recent example from a popular retailer (Skyrim from Amazon).
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
…
Did you find it? No? That’s because it’s not there. This is totally unacceptable yet it happens all the time. You can even search on the physical boxes, mention of Steam is rare.
Valve are running a monopoly with Steam, you can’t avoid it as a PC gamer. Under Gabe’s heading it’s expanding and absorbing more and more titles, just as it tried to gain the games released by EA lately. EA have set up their own gaming download platform “Origin”, with titles such as Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2 exclusive to the Origin system. Valve have since been attempting to gain the games for themselves, essentially making this system (and generally rival systems) obsolete. Valve are killing off other company’s attempts to enter the market, it seems PC gaming is heading to an inevitable conclusion. I for one am sad to see it going.
If I get any feedback or interest I might delve into a few ‘big’ areas next time, both with relevence to Steam: PC Game Piracy and Second Hand Sales
