Apologies to all 'cos I know this has been done before, but I
really need to vent
<RANT>
As a gamer I'm a relative newcomer to the world of Steam, and I have to say I'm not seeing the value. Actually, it probably is an excellent model in many ways, but in others, well it's less than stellar
I have, over the last couple of months purchased physical copies of several games (call me old fashioned, but I prefer to get something tangible when I hand over my cash), but for the most part I am unable to play them because steam won't let me!!
Latest installment is CoD MW3. I couldn't even install it without a steam connection (hang on, didn't i just pay good money for this?). I live in a rural area so even connecting to Steam can be a trial. It eventually installed fine (EGAD!! requires 35G of disk space!!) but when I went to play, steam said, hang on, there's an update (WTF? I just paid for this and now you're telling me I can only play on your terms?). The update was only (!!) a few hundred Mb, so I let it update.
Great, says I, now lets play. Oh wait says steam, theres another update,
and its 14Gb!!!Are they serious? I mean I already paid for the game. What if I don't need, want or care to apply the updates? Don't I have some say here? I accept that there are going to be bugs (there always are) but most of the time they affect online and/or multiplayer usage. I play almost exclusively single player, and I never play online, so it's pretty rare for those sort of issues to be of any concern to me whatsoever. Why do I have to apply a 'patch' for something that's unlikely to change my experience in any way. In fact, by insisting on applying the update that's exactly what's happened.
Then there's the issue of size (yes, size does matter). As I said, I accept that there are going to be bugs, but if you have to 'patch' 14Gb then you should be refunding peoples money 'cos there's something seriously wrong. Either that or you're peddling some serious bloatware (in which case you should ashamed of yourself,
and you should refund peoples money).
It's worthwhile noting that 14Gb is equivalent to
14 months of my data allocation. I could run over I suppose, but I'd to have to sell a kidney to cover the excess usage charges just to find out whether I can play the game, or that there are more 'updates'. I suppose I could invest in an additional data pack, but a 2 year contract makes this a pretty damn expensive game, and it would
still take a few months to download it all.
I've even searched for alternative sources for the updates, but no, it appears you can only get them through steam.
Now I don't have an issue with Steam per se, as I said, in many ways it's an excellent model, but wouldn't we be far better served with something more like windows update where all updates are not only 'optional', but you can also see both what they are and how
bloated big they are.
and remember I said this is the latest installment? I can't even go back and play some of the other games I have installed because Steam has decided they all need patching as well, despite the fact that I've set ALL my games not to update automatically. Way to go guys...
Anyone else have a complaint about steam? I'm sure I can't be the only one
whoa! form a queue people!
</RANT>
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