After four months, I'm giving up STEAM.

[AsteroidBlues]

This is half rant and half explanation of my problem. You've been warned.

~

A few people around here might recall my roiling hatred for the STEAM platform in general, but I've dealt with it due to the excellent games that are only available through this abysmal service. Well, this past week has broken the last straw and I'm done.

Out of the four months that I have been a member of this illustrious service, I have only been able to access it for two weeks. After two weeks (just enough time to complete DX:HR and to consider buying Fallout:NV), I booted up STEAM one evening in offline mode and an error message popped up saying I could not access STEAM because I needed to be online... Ok, I guess. I hopped online just so I could get logged in and start playing. Well, steam doesn't even try to log me in, it just starts an update. The update is around 100mb, so it says, so I wander off to do some errands while it completes. It never does. I come back (update was halfway DL/d) and it says that I need to be online to update. What?

Well, fast forward three and a half months, multiple customer service contacts and multiple supposed solutions later and it's still happening. I try to boot up STEAM and it tries to update, and fails every time. I've literally tried everything, booting from STEAMTMP.exe, disabling firewalls and Antivirus, changing my internet settings, trying a different ISP altogether, changing regedit settings, uninstalling and reinstalling steam TWICE (once the normal way, then again by uninstalling it and removing all registry references to Valve and Steam using CCleaner and manually removing registry listings in the regedit tool), and literally everything I and other, more tech savvy people could think of. I never was part of the "Beta Test" program so I can only imagine the hell people go through using the beta versions of steam versus the "Stable" version I got my hands on.

No matter what I tried, even reinstalling fresh from the website TWICE, the same damn updating screen pops up (looks like a regular Windows popup versus the usual Steam-Stylized window) before I can even try to login. And like always, it would fail halfway through saying the same thing. The closest I've EVER come to the update completing was when I booted up from the STEAMTMP.exe and it downloaded the whole update then gave me some bullshit about an uncompressed file error. Tech Support just sent me to troubleshooting pages that I found all on my own long before they graced me with their help (Read: said "Fuck you" and took the piss)

I've given up on STEAM for good, even if by some black magic this problem is solved, it's just a matter of time before shit like this happens again.

[alexdz]

It makes me fear for the future of gaming with regards of games using always -on DRM, if one of the most reliable systems still has this kind of problem what does it say for others? Always-on DRM is a concept that should be dropped and forgotten.

I'm by no means advocating piracy, but if you were to pirate Fallout New Vegas would be able to play it at any moment regardless of Internet connection, and that says a lot but this problem the companies and the industry themselves are creating for consumers.

[AsteroidBlues]

It makes me fear for the future of gaming with regards of games using always -on DRM, if one of the most reliable systems still has this kind of problem what does it say for others? Always-on DRM is a concept that should be dropped and forgotten.

I'm by no means advocating piracy, but if you were to pirate Fallout New Vegas would be able to play it at any moment regardless of Internet connection, and that says a lot but this problem the companies and the industry themselves are creating for consumers.

Putting the words 'reliable' and 'STEAM' in the same THREAD, let alone post and sentence, is laughable- but I agree with you. I wouldn't be NEARLY as critical towards STEAM if the customer service was worth a damn. If they had actually shown interest in my problem and ways to solve it, I'd be a much happier camper regarding all this... mostly because I feel that my problem would have been solved months ago if they actually gave a shit. I hate STEAM DRM, but I would be able to live with it much easier if the damn thing worked.

I'm not an advocate of piracy either, thus my dilemma. I really would like to play Fallout:NV and a few other STEAM-Only titles- Hell, I'd just like to play the titles I already BOUGHT- but at this point I've given up hope on that.

[Branden_Lucero]

never had any real issues with Steam, and i have almost 500 games installed on it. must be bad luck for you.

[yurieu]

Dude, i had this too. can not open it in offline mode sometimes. it is annoying. i understand u. made me want to kil myself.

how did i solve this? keep steam opened. if internet crash, as steam keeps on, switch to offline. but if you open it without connection, be sure to heve it up to date. and cross fingers.

updates? well, erase steam clientregistry.blob and open it again.

if teh update is slow, change download location.

unfortunately, you cant give up on steam, other services like uplay, GFWL and Origin are craps too, so much worse. as an example, just donwloaded a game from origin, had to update it from 1,5 gb(stupid origin keep outdated game version) and then i went to torrents to get it- without update, no game.

we see an age of darkness; all those tablets and touchscreens, and Big picture for "console-looking". no one cares about giving us performance.

[biohazard_star]

You only need to log-in online once a month in order to be able to use offline mode for an entire month . Keep this in mind if you have a shitty internet connection. As for the random "updates" you keep on getting, most of the time this is the result of files getting corrupted whenever Steam is prematurely shut down while it is in the middle of synching your save files and achievements/statistics with the Steam servers. The only thing you need to do in order to >completely prevent this from happening is to close Steam manually and wait for Steam Cloud to finish synching before you turn off your computer. That's it. As for getting the update to finish downloading, delete clientregistry.blob and try this: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2713262

If it works, be sure not to accidentally fuck yourself over again by closing Steam during a synch process. If you're only playing single player games, then play offline so Steam won't try to synch.

[Spera01]

I've used Steam for over 4 years now and I have about 50 games installed on it. I haven't had a problem once with it.

That's strange what you're going through. I'm no expert but it sounds like it's either some sort of connection/network issue or there's something up with your comp rather than Steam itself.

[ccrogers15]

Steam is just fine for me. Only gripe i have is 90% of players there are rude people.
Everytime i join a game i get kicked randomly.

Not because of stats either, its an ongoing game were troll groups randomly kick people in games. Happened in L4D2 and TF2.

[Lead belly]

Never had a problem with Steam either, and I'm not a Steam 'fanboy' by any means. I'd suggest you google until google gives you an answer. Or hell, it just might be your pc is effed up in one form or another, and/or your internet connection.

[yurieu]

Steam is just fine for me. Only gripe i have is 90% of players there are rude people.
Everytime i join a game i get kicked randomly.

Not because of stats either, its an ongoing game were troll groups randomly kick people in games. Happened in L4D2 and TF2.

yes, there are a ton of these trolls, join, kick for no reason, or just shoot you to death.

[ccrogers15]

yes, there are a ton of these trolls, join, kick for no reason, or just shoot you to death.

Yea me and my friend got to the end of a l4d2 level on expert. Right as we were about to finish this guy shot us down and then killed himself, so we died at the very end. I hope him and his family rot.

[Darkmoon]

...probably a touch harsh for just screwing you over on LFD, but it is why I don't tend to play online games with people I don't know. Bar Mass Effect 3, which is oddly light on that sort of thing. I also played the beta for Guns of Icarus Online and din't have too much trouble, but it didn't have a kick function.

[Rick Hunter]

Never had that kind of problem during the 9 years I've been using steam.

[ccrogers15]

I dont have any problem with it like i said, but its certainly the best on PC.
Origin and Ubisofts Thing are just plain out retarded.

Origin is hacked like crazy and people always lose their accounts, and ea dont help recover them either.

In general, PSN is better. Yea, its PLAYSTATION network, but recently they are expanding to tablets and phones. Maybe PC will be next.

[Ohmycod]

Steam is when I stopped buying games. When you start asking people to sign in to buy or play a game then i'm off.