Talk:Steam (service)

Steamcloud section?

I just heard of this new addition that allows you to keep your saves, configurations, sprays, etc., on Steam, to be accessed anywhere. Should this be added to the article?

Got it from here and here: http://www.1fort.com/blog/steam-cloud-to-arrive-with-l4d/ http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55705

The latter, of course, linked from the first one.

Also, an aside: this is my schools public PC, so it's not my real address. I may be back here, though, on my own computer. Signed SAC. 198.30.45.83 (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

There is now a paragraph on the Wiki page called Steam Cloud. It discusses conceptual advances that may or may not become available in the future for the games that Steam sells. My problem with this paragraph is that, like much of the article, not only do the services mentioned not yet exist for the vast majority of games Steam sells, but we Steam members see no action by Steam on this issue. Any gamer will affirm that this advance ~ namely, storing your game files on Steam, rather than on your own hard drives ~ would represent arguably the biggest advance in PC gaming of recent years. In brief, games can get to be massive on ones' drives and it be super not to have to carry this baggage on ones' own systems. I say that, until Steam is ready to offer such a Steam Cloud that is capable of holding a member's games files of games he or she bought from Steam, the Steam Cloud para should be rephrased to represent that the sort of Steam Cloud I've described doesn't yet exist, and that it is a work in progress at this time. ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by WyLd ThYnG (talk • contribs) 00:06, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not that it doesn't exist, it's that games have to opt to use it and be programmed to use it. To my knowledge there's only a handful of games that take advantage of it at this time, including both Left 4 Dead games and Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2. It's part of the STEAM Works API and any developer that wants to can use it (To my knowledge). Valve/STEAM can't really force adoption. I expect that MW2's usage of it may lead to many more games (Particularily Activision titles?) to begin using it. ferret (talk) 21:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Purchase vs rent

IceStryke (talk · contribs) went through and changed "purchase" to "rent" on the grounds that Valve can revoke access to a game. I undid this since it's a pretty major change and shouldn't be done without considerable discussion. First, it's original research to equate "can revoke access" to "renting", especially without a source. And secondly, "renting" makes Steam seem more like a Gamefly service, which is most certainly is not. Does anyone else have any thoughts? — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 16:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Renting implies recurring payments. Purchase should stay, with a note about the SSA's legalese (isn't there one already?). --Tom Edwards (talk) 19:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Renting is completely the wrong word and gives off the wrong signals. -- Love, Smurfy 01:33, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The following is from Steam's purchasing agreement:

"Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a limited, terminable, non-exclusive license and right to use the Steam Software for your personal use in accordance with this Agreement and the Subscription Terms. The Steam Software is licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Steam Software." The word "buy" means that you own whatever you purchased. As steam confers no ownership, the terms "buy" and "purchase" when they relate to steam games are inaccurate and misleading and must be changed. If the word "rent" is somehow insufficient, then in the very least the word "subscribe" should be used. --DoveNJ —Preceding undated comment added 17:12, 15 December 2009 (UTC).

"Rent" and "subscribe" both imply predetermined time limits on your ownership. Steam gives you indefinite access to the game for a one-off payment, although account deactivation is still possible. There is no word that I know of for this, but "buy" is the closest and least misleading I can think of. -- Love, Smurfy 18:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary defines buy as the following: "To obtain (something) in exchange for money or goods".

While the subscriber agreement uses legalese to stress that this is not an software ownership, you have obtained the "right to use" in exchange for money. As part of that exchange, you agree that the right can be terminated, but you have still "obtained (something) in exchange for money or goods". The verb "buy" does not indicate permanent ownership or even necessarily temporary ownership.

Likewise Wiktionary defines "rent" as a payment made on intervals, which does not apply here. ferret (talk) 20:04, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

"subscribe" doesn't imply limits on your ownership, because there IS NO OWNERSHIP. Furthermore, Steam doesn't claim that you buy anything from them when you exchange money, which is why when you hand over money you have to agree to a "subscription agreement", which contains many references to subscribing and no references to buying (for example, the phrase "as a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content" is used right away in the agreement). Furthermore, if we're going by definitions, wikipedia defines "subscribe" as "a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service.", which is exactly what Steam is offering. As you gain no ownership while the definition of subscription is more accurate as it uses a subscription model, and Steam itself refuses to use anything other than the word subscription, this is obviously the most accurate word to use and should replace any words similar to "buy" immediately. (DoveNJ)

Logo

I reuploaded a more faithful logo I recently made for Combine OverWiki. It is now with the correct font, FF DIN. If it's not ok, feel free to revert. Klow (talk) 20:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Couple of things. One, why is the ratio on yours so out of whack? It looks all squished. Two, why is yours 282 KB? The previous one was 4 KB. Sorry to be a pain, but I think I'm going to revert. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 20:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

If you can optimise it, crop it and maybe turn the logo black and make the background transparent I think it'd be perfect. -- Love, Smurfy 22:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

HelloAnnyong, your revert was totally dumb. Your reasons aren't valid enough. You just revert without trying to improve the new one, that at least use the proper colors and font, and adapting the summary. And if it's "all squished", that's because the new dimensions are different and that your cache just didnt update properly. So next time use your brain. Klow (talk) 19:49, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I uploaded a better cropped version. So HelloAnnyong before starting a childish edit war, you should suggest me how to make a smaller version, which would be much more useful than a blatant and brainless revert. Anyway I don't really see how 97 kb is a huge size and how it could ruin your bandwidth, even compared to 4 kb. Think McFly, think! Klow (talk) 19:58, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

You seriously need to read WP:NPA. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 23:41, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if I offended you (I hope you didn't cry), but reverting for no proper reason exposed you to this. Klow (talk) 16:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I've had a fiddle with Inkscape and drastically cut the filesize. -- I need a name (talk) 19:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that's much better. Well done! — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 19:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Klow you need to chill out, seriously. -- Love, Smurfy 15:20, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Criticism section, again

We've discussed this before, but I think it's time to bring it up again. The Criticism section is getting pretty long, and I think it's starting to break WP:NPOV. Anyone have any thoughts on it? — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 19:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I came here to say this, it's just massive and ridiculous. If it's going to continue to be this huge we should consider spinning it off into Criticism of Steam, but IMO it should just be cut down. -- Love, Smurfy 19:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, well, I'm not going to get into an edit war over this edit, but it seems like we need to do something. Aside from me and Smurfy, does anyone else have any thoughts? — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 19:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

move the details to Criticism of Steam and summarise it all in two paragraphs here.--Vaypertrail (talk) 19:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess the question is, would creating that article violate WP:POVFORK? I would think so... — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 19:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

no because the amount of negative criticism something gets is out of our control.--Vaypertrail (talk) 20:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I've been following this article on and off for over a year, and I've always felt the criticism section was heavy handed. I also feel some of the recent additions such as the mention of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 requiring STEAM don't belong here and should instead (If its even worthy of note) be listed on the article for that game. I also feel the delayed release situation (Also a COD:MW2 situation....) shouldn't be given so much weight as it's not STEAM or Valve's fault but pressure from the retailers and retail publishers (Activision in this case). On that note... I feel several sections could be summarized into a single small paragraph stating something about how release dates and prices are influenced by the retail chains and publishers, outside of Valve's control. I also don't understand why most of the regional pricing is relevant, as the section basically says "Non-US customers are mad that they pay non-US prices instead of US prices". I can see some validity to the complaint that Valve is charging 50 GBP because the game is 50 USD, instead of the correct exchange rate, but most of the rest...

There's also several criticisms listed in the wrong sections, such as the COD:MW2 requiring STEAM and the delay in Borderlands being released. The default minimum requirements section critizes STEAM for dropping an OS no longer supported by it's vendor (why should they support it anymore?), then critizes the change of minimum requirements for Source games, which should be a critize of Source, not STEAM.

I feel like I'm a little too opposed to most of the criticisms (And a little too unsure as a newbie editor!) to attempt to clean it any myself. I shall end my long-winded post here. ferret (talk) 21:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I also really don't understand why Phishing is in the criticism section. Do all the wiki articles for various banks and credit companies have a similar criticism listed? How can you be criticized for being targetted by criminals? A more valid criticism would be a general paragraph on the slowness (Irregardless of the issue) of Steam's customer service. Similarily the phishing and resale sections could probably be combined into a smaller paragraph about rights inherent with "digital ownership". I'm not sure (But I can check) but there may be other wiki articles discussing those issues that could be linked to to help shrink these sections here. ferret (talk) 21:30, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to make some edits and cut this thing down. -- Love, Smurfy 22:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've cleaned it up a bit. There is still the problem that the section merely looks fairly hefty from the contents list though. -- Love, Smurfy 23:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to remove the section about minimal requirements that deals with Source games, as that doesn't directly have anything to do with STEAM. Great work though, much better summarized. The regional pricing section before was probably the longest section of the entire article. ferret (talk) 01:21, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I decided against that after rereading how you integrated it into the "auto-patching" section. ferret (talk) 01:23, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't do it for the fame, maaaan -- Love, Smurfy 21:20, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I must say, I was surprised to find only negatives on Wikipedia about Steam. I mean even in the community section there is criticism of phishing attacks - common? Really? Phishing can be done by anyone in any chat, I don't think it's fair. Steam right now has become the platform of choice for me and many other users of getting the games downloaded to their PCs with no hassle. I think the wiki reflects some of the attitudes of the past. (Just my 5c & sorry if i am posting in the wrong section) -Andriyko (talk) 04:44, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

No Refunds, If Software Does Not Function

Left 4 Dead 2 is created and distributed by Valve. The game continually will quit and kick the user out of the game. They acknowledge that there is a problem with the software. The companies response is that they won't give a refund because it's software, yet they control access to the software. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.170.131 (talk) 23:07, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

New "number of games" count

I've switched the game number count to Steam Calculator. I believe this is much more reliable than Steam Community games list as it counts only games and not things such as Source SDK. It also excludes packages which the Steam Store search method does not. -- Love, Smurfy 17:30, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I just looked at that source, and.. we're using Robin Walker's account as a way to determine how many games there are? There really isn't a better way to do that? That source doesn't seem all that reliable... — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 12:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Valve employees automatically receive all games, and Steam Community / Steam Calculator together produce a list with demos, tools, and other non-games automatically filtered out. I can't think of a more reliable solution to the problem. --Tom Edwards (talk) 14:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm, alright. I didn't realize that they automatically get all the games. It's fine for now, I suppose. And a more reliable solution would be a page on Steam's site that says "We have X number of games available". Just for clarification, let me ask this: if I go to Steam Search and search for only games, it says that there are 1003 games available. That appears to not include demos, mods, and trailers. Why not use that number? — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 14:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

That includes packages. -- Love, Smurfy 20:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It also changes depending on your location. The figure is 976 for me, in England. --Tom Edwards (talk) 00:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)