News Paranautical Activity pulled from Steam following developer death threat

Wow, what an idiot, with the way things like this are being treated nowadays, what would he expect from an outburst like that? Unless it's now received enough media attention to be making sales though other means away from Steam?

That being said, I feel for the guy, Steam is crap. It's a ruddy monopoly pretty much (the main alternatives don't offer nearly as much of a repertoire to be considered proper competition really). They treat the customers like crap, good luck getting things like refunds or support in general from Valve.

The worst bit is that large numbers of PC gamers for some reason will heavily support this. Sure, I use Steam as it's a service where I can get a lot of content relatively easily and put it in one place. But I don't then go around preaching how godlike Steam and by extension Valve are. In fact, more often my responses are like this one. The whole PCMasterrace crap has simply been taken too far. What was once a satirical point is now genuinely believed by people, and it's frustrating beyond belief.

 

I never buy games on Steam any more. Sure, I might activate then on there, but Valve get none of my money direct - usually even during the sales.

If they ever release HL3 and it stands up to the hype, then I might buy that at full price.

 

Good call. No matter who or which company you are dealing with, such threats are unacceptable, business or not. Period.

That said, as a member of the pcmasterrace since the early days I find the worship of Valve and Newell hilarious. Valve has the second worst customer support of all gaming companies out there. Only Ubisoft is worse. It was no problem to get a refund from the Humble Store or EA. Activision Blizzard support has been even better - the girl on the phone was really competent, she actually fixed my problem so I did not need one.

Valve has been nothing but a pain. Good luck if you should ever have a payment problem they'll just hold your account hostage and then not bother to answer for days.

 

So he threatened harm upon the boss of a company and then wonders why that company told him to do one...

People need to get it into their head that crap like this isn't ok... It's not ok to threaten to kill the head of a company who you're relying on to sell your wares, even if their system did mis-label your game...

Like it wasn't ok to threaten a game's devs for nerfing that gun you liked...

Twitter [etc.] isn't a quiet chat between mates... It's you shouting into a megaphone on a busy high street...


And I wish the 'PC Master Race' label would piss off and die... You're not special, you're not 'better', you're not entitled to whatever it is you think you're entitled to... You're a PC-Gaming elitist ***** who embodies everything wrong with what most people think of when they think of 'Gamer'...

/Angry [Primarily PC] Gamer

 

This guy is an idiot and got what he had coming to him. He should be thankful it wasn't worse. Not sure why he thought Gabe had anything to do with his less-than-impressive game. On the other hand, he probably wasn't serious.


Not sure what all the hate is about with Steam. I think it's somewhat bloated but otherwise I think it's a great service. I don't know why people so often feel the need to contact Valve too. Steam isn't very buggy, so that can't be a reason. Valve isn't responsible for problems you have with games, so that shouldn't be a problem either. Valve has pretty explicit rules on getting refunds, so anyone who expects one outside of their rules is an idiot. I just don't know what people expect - you know exactly what you're getting into and if you don't it's your own fault.

As for Gabe, yeah, he's not that amazing. I don't have a problem with him and I highly appreciate his dedication to linux, but otherwise I'm indifferent about him.

 

There are other problems than a game not working. I had to contact Steam support on three occasions: One was a unsuccessful transaction where my account was being charged but I did not receive the game. The second was me not receiving the additional keys of a four-pack and the third was a chargeback by Paypal due to "potential fraud". The steam support was absolutely awful. Please tell me how I could have avoided those problems.

I had billing problems with Activision (completely my fault as well, I lost the game key after a car accident) and they were extremely helpful and understanding. The issue was resolved in less than half an our on a weekend.


On topic of the pcmasterrace: It was and still is satire. Coined by the quite prominent console player (at least back then) Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation who was unable to get the game The Witcher to run well on his underpowered Macbook and who bashed the game as a result. And quite a lot of our opinions are valid, like it or not. A company should not be able to treat pc gamers like second class consumers like Ubisoft does regularly. Otherwise ports like the recent bloody awful FFXIII would be the norm rather than an unfortunate exception. The worship of Valve, Steam and GabeN is ridiculous though and I hate the way "peasants" are bullied since the /r/gaming fiasco. But I digress.

 

I know who coined the term and why, but like a lot of things it's what it has become that i have issue with... And yes some of the concerns are valid, and I share those concerns but those concerns, however valid, get drowned out in a sea of dickheads who hide behind the term/label whilst dumping misery on other areas of the gaming community...

I'm just generally sick of the tribal 'x is better than y' bollocks that seems indelibly ingrained into 'gaming'... And the more times goes on I'm *really* glad i didn't pursue games design/dev as a job, it just isn't worth the grief... Just playing certain games isn't worth the grief...

 

Steam has always been a bit rubbish for me. They deleted my original account, seemingly for no reason, but kept my email in use, meaning I had to create a new one. Naturally I lost any of my purchases and couldn't appeal against anything because of the lack of support.

As for the software itself, personally I do find it to be rather buggy. For quite a while I've had it invade my startup every time I log into my PC. This is despite my never asking it to open on startup and after deleting the startup file from every location I could. It's like one of those fake chrome extensions that are impossible to get rid off, even with a registry clean they sometimes survive. Not only that, but because it starts up every time, it also decides to update every single time. This will happen even if I haven't switch the PC off and merely logged out. It once did this only 10 minutes apart! Meanwhile, when this happens it freezes parts of my computer, so I have to wait.

I have no idea why this happens, and even reinstalling the bloody thing doesn't seem to fix it for me. I'm just holding out for when I next to a complete upgrade and redo everything from scratch.

Is it though? That's how it started, hell I found it very funny back then. But now I think people genuinely mean it. It's become the tagline for an us and them mentality, with PC gamers being the hardcore proper gamers and console players being 'filthy casuals'. The term 'filthy casual' in itself is satirical, but again is being used alarming frequently within a genuine context.

Whomever actually coined that phrase was alarmingly correct, and it applies here I believe.

 

I don't really get the steam hate either. It's a really cheap way to buy games with the sales. It makes it easy to play those games with your friends. It automatically keeps them all up-to-date. It's also really easy to move between computers/hd's and not have to individually install and patch 30 different games. Valve aren't perfect but at least they seem to be more interested in making and promoting games then screwing their customers for every penny they can get.

Just to state the stupidly obvious but did you trying going to the steam settings uncheck "run steam when my computer starts" - pretty well the first thing you will see if you google this.

 

I wouldn't be so magnanimous, the term is "dirty console peasants"
Now stand aside while the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race shows you how it's done..

 

Wait what? at no point did post the bit of text you've just quoted and attributed to me... ... nvm, I see it's quote fail... It's Maki Role's post you've quoted not mine...

Are responses like that are precisely the attitude I take issue with... I'm assuming it's posted in jest but often it's not...

 

Hmm so it seems some of you actually have legitimate problems wtih Steam. Sorry to hear about your bad luck.

 

Ahh darn, sorry. Edited the original post.
Apparently the darn Glorious PC Gaming Master Race can't even work a keyboard correctly, goes to show how much they know...

And yes the original was meant in jest.

 

I know people like to let off steam, but threatening to kill someone is never a good idea

 

If I remember right this developer got his game on to Steam initially with a little drama. I think he ranted like a out of control child then as well. To add some fairness at the same time, due to his uncontrolled outbursts (although he may well be clever in some ways) he may well have a social/behavioural issue.

Sadly I say good riddance. For the moment at least. He really needs his friends and family to help him sort his issue out. After that he should request to be seen by Gabe's developer liaison person to deliver a very personal apology to Gabe and Valve.

I don't mind reading a bit of Valve/Steam bashing now and then, but when I've had issues their customer service has been perfectly adequate - not perfect. Yes there was a delay, but I expected that. I also knew it would niggle/frustrate/annoy me while my gaming need was unavailable. At this stage it's good to recognise a little case of withdrawal symptoms and grab an unwatched blu-ray to calm the nerves.

Steam serves me well. My PC couldn't be happier without all the fuss of other install methods; patching manually; boxes laying around; losing discs; the benefits of Steam for me are priceless. Big Picture mode on the TV looks great and is a great extension of my PC gaming needs. SteamVR is awesome, and has a tonne of potential.

I bought Theme Hospital from GoG, and I usually buy all Humble Bundles to tie to my Steam account so long as I can justify what I spend on games that I don't already own. I don't knock people for how they choose to buy their games, and it makes me chuckle when I compare other gaming industry dramas to the comparatively minor issues with Steam!

Maki, I googled steam deleting accounts and honestly couldn't find any such policy for Valve deleting Steam accounts for 'no reason'.

 

Obviously I'm new to Steam so I don't fully get this - how do you mean you can move between computers/hard drives without installing on each? My understanding was that each PC needed the game downloaded and installed locally before play.

Which also reminds me of two questions - can you pull a HDD with Steam library from one machine and just slot it into another and carry right on? And once downloaded and installed, do you ever need to use Steam again if you chose not to ie. cancelled your account, or would your installs then be invalidated?

 

No you can tell steam to install games to a folder of your choice... if you move PCs, point the steam install at that folder and bam! your games are there and 'installed' in the library...

For example i have both Windows 8.1 and the Tech Preview installed on my pc, both have steam installed and pointed to the steam library on my 2nd HDD... should i swap PC i'd put that HDD in the new one, install steam and point it at the library...

And no you can't just kick steam into touch once you've installed the games, best you can do is put it in 'offline mode' [though you still need to sign in ever 30-ish days iirc]...

 

I have no idea what caused the problem, but part of it appears to be that the original account wasn't completely deleted? This is from a long, long time ago so doesn't directly affect me any longer, but it's a worry in the back of my mind in case it were to happen again somehow. Basically when I rebuilt my rig a while back, I reinstalled steam but was unable to log into my account. I checked my old computer (I hadn't logged in for some years nor used it, was on Mac at the time and couldn't really play much) and sure enough wasn't logged in there either. So I asked to have my login details sent to me again, only they said that there wasn't an account with that email attached. Confused, I tried all the combinations I possess, only for none of them to work. Tired and a bit peeved, I decided instead to just make a new account and be done with it, only my email wouldn't be accepted as it was already tied to an account apparently.

So somehow my account both existed and didn't exist? Very odd indeed.

 

Nice one - cheers Red!

So does this work for networked libraries too? I'm assuming running from USB enclosure is waaaay too slow, but would hope fast enough networked drives can handle it.

Why's this then? Does it mean that should Steam ever disappear from the planet, all my purchased games are gone/unusable?