Steam Question about how/where Steam installs games

Demanding troll has high demands.

 

Yeah, Valve eh, makers of one of the best series of first-person shooters ever made, the pioneers of the only form of DRM that provides added value to the consumer, rather than just limiting installs...utterly incompetent...

 

had same problem first time I used steam
did the logical thing and uninstalled/reinstalled on larger drive and moved games over from old program folder

I doubt they'll ever make that change to steam, you'll probably never be able to pick where your game installs, just that default folder wherever you installed steam

but if you know a little programming, you could probably make your own patch for it, and hope it still works like it's supposed to

 

dont get me started on DRM...

 

Oh, come on. I mean, for sure DRM is inconvenient, could be construed as a violation of your rights as to the product you have bought, and is not what we want to see tacked to any form of media, but...

a) Steam is useful. Behold, the ability to install and play games I've bought in lots of places without needing to carry a CD around! Look! The inclusion of free demos, trailers, and the interlink with internet gaming that does, by and large, work and work well!
b) Steam supports independent studios. A considerable number of indie developers (Introversion, for example) bring excellent games to a wider paying audience that stimulate their growth and bring us new and exciting ideas.
b) Steam is light years ahead of its competitors. GFWL, for example, is buggy, slow and annoying. Steam shows the way to a better future where, y'know, stuff works.
c) Steam manages all this with a staff of about 13, IIRC, which is a lesson in itself to bureaucracy.
d) The alternative, and don't kid yourself, is piracy. See? And piracy means everyone loses because repeatedly not paying someone for their labour means, eventually, that they go bankrupt or drop that line of business, and that means less games. If it wasn't for the fact that stealing media - whether music, film or games - is one of the most popular internet pastimes I'd have more sympathy for the anti-DRM arguments, but until someone comes up with an answer to piracy that isn't Communism then it's just a necessary factor in the take-it-or-leave-it balance of buying.

No, Steam's not perfect. But it's a wholly necessary evil at the moment, I fear.
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1. Steam is not useful. It requires extra work and disk space on my part so that I can play my single user game, on my home computer, after paying full price. How many people really downoad their games to multiple computers from Steam?

2. This point I'm less willing to argue. I'll simply question why indie studios can't just go the direct route like iD did back in they day? And as for Cockquest games that released Velvet Assassin, that Steam supports the easy release of games not ready for prime time is not a plus.

3. The low staffing shows in the horrible slowness of the Steam software, even on a fast link. The only enterprise quality software I've seen that's this slow has been written in Java

4. Piracy? You mean that which the studios are constantly complaining we DO have? SO which is it, DO or DON'T (thanks to Steam)? Piracy is not the only alternative. For one thing, MMOGs do not suffer from piracy because the server side is regulated. Steam is not the Messiah...

 

That's a heavily biased statement, really. You may not like it, but for many it's extremely useful and a huge time saver for those that do install their games on multiple systems, multiple times a year. Especially when companies like EA are starting to implement heavily restrictive DRM in their games whereby you are only allowed to install a game (which you paid for outright, no less) a limited number of times before you have to ring them up and beg them to let you play it again. Also, say I want to download a game on my laptop or when I'm at a friends house, but I don't have the disc. No problem, I can just log into my Steam account and it's ready to play in less than an hour.

I've not really had any problems with slowness with the software so I can't comment on that, but what I will say is that their downloads are incredibly quick, at the maximum my line is able to cope with. That can't be said of any other rival service I have tried.

For the record, there are some things I don't like about Steam, namely their pricing strategies in different regions and the fact that it makes me use PayPal for purchases, but these are compromises I am able to live with.

Steam may not be the Messiah, but for now it's a damn good substitute and about the best we're going to get for a service like this. Until something better comes along, I think Valve should be praised for taking a different approach to others and giving gamers what they want. Think about it, there's a reason they're making an absolute ton of money from it, and that's that it's damn good software. People wouldn't even bother using it if it was crap and provided no perceivable benefit over the traditional method of buying a physical copy of a game from a store. Unfortunately, some people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the age of digital downloads, and that includes the software companies as well as customers.

 

This thread is so 2004.

To be honest, I'm not even sure what I'm seeing here. Are people complaining about Steam because they don't understand how it works or because they like having something to complain about?

Imo, Steam works. Okay it's not without its flaws but considering how much we pay for the service (think about it,) it's the best in its field.

 

I don't take issue with steam. For games that're released through it, it's fine.

I take issue with it being required by games with no dependencies on anything that Steam runs or owns.

 

Me, and its useful for letting friends play games when they are trying them out

Steam makes multiplayer games like TF2 work seamlessly, and your are all posting in a troll thread.

goddamn it the quote tags are broken on this forum, can a kind moderator fix it as i cannot be bothered.

 

i am confused. the steam installer lets you choose a location for installing when initially installing it. what you want to do is move the steamapps folder after installation. and you think this is a common use case?
how many applications do you know that have an option in preferences to let you move their install location after installing?

as for indie developers not needing to rely on steam - steam has a massive, massive audience. an unknown indie developer with barely enough budget to develop a game in the first place simply wouldn't have the money to market its game nearly as effectively as steam accomplishes.

as for being slow: wtf? when downloading games on steam i saturate my 20Mb link. every single time.

you come across as a kid partway through a CS degree who thinks that he's god's gift to software development. i was the same - you'll grow out of it once you realise just how complex these systems you take for granted really are. (and as for java being slow: well yeah, it's slowER. but that doesn't imply slow performance. you can write a pretty fast app in java if you know what you're doing)

 

Don't know if this has been specifically mentioned but all u do to move it to a bigger hard drive is cut/paste the entire Steam folder then delete everything but the steamapps subfolder and the steam.exe.

Then when you double click steam.exe it'll set itself up again.

Shame there's not an option to chose which drive each game downloads to.

 

You made a typo.

 

You mean the free software that makes life easier for almost everyone here but you...?

I'm not sure why this is such a big deal, your iTunes library (if you're doing it the organised way) is kept all in one folder, it means the software can better manage the content it has to deal with.

Man I hate getting trolled this easily