Steam

[Sir Beane]

Monk is right. If there are any more mentions of the wider issues surrounding DRM and/or similar subjects then this thread will be closed. That includes replying to people who have mentioned it already.

I'm sorry to inconvenience those of you who are using this thread for what it was intended.

[BeenPlayingSinceRTW]

That makes no sense.

Firstly we are talking about Steam, specifically steam servers, and user agreements and how they work in regards to Empire total war.

Yes this is the single player forum, but as you must activate Steam to play the single player, surely the activation falls into the category of relevant topics.

Maybe not quite as relevant as a demo

but still.

Exactly.

If we were not being forced to install Steam in order to use ETW, there would be no need to discuss Steam. But since Steam IS being bundled with ETW, it needs to be discussed in the course of discussing ETW.

If I'm not mistaken, part of the reason that EA is getting sued, is because they stifled discussion about the risks/problems associated with SecureROM...

[Sir Beane]

Thread closed for business at the moment. It might be open again at a later date.

[pevergreen]

Bump, for possible incorrect closure?



BPSRTW, please apply for the Backroom, and create a thread there.

I' beginning to get ticked off, and only the calls for a demo are keeping me sane

(I dont know how its keeping me sane )

[Sir Beane]

This thread was temporarily opened to allow a member to edit one of their posts. It has since been re-closed.

Thanks for the mention anyway pever

[Martok]

THE VOICE OF THE CAMEL LORD:


I'm re-opening the thread, but on a provisional basis. *If* we can keep our comments/discussion on Steam restricted to how it can/will affect Empire, it will be allowed to remain open.

If it drifts into a more general DRM discussion/debate, though, it will be either closed or moved to the Backroom (at the staff's discretion).


We now return to your regularly-scheduled thread in progress.

[Belgolas]

Steam match making is just like any major online servers. And yes steam can more than handle graphical intensive games. Steam has the most graphicall intesnive online multiplayer game call Crysis Wars. Now a bit of topic but Crysis wars is Crysis online with up to 32 players. You can't get more demanding than that. Oh and if you want to know there are 559 games on steam right now and about a few dozen a month added. There are also some very old games released on steam like Commander Keen(CA PPPPPLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEE put Shogun and all Total War games on Steam). Steam already has RTW and M2TW and their expansions.

Anyways steam can more than handle ETW. Plus there will be new modes like Quick Match were it matches players to similar levels of skill. Also steam alows ranks and well hopefully easy clan matches too. So Steam is probably the single best online community for PC.



Steam also has plenty of Games for Windows games on steam. There are games like GTA IV on steam that still needs to be connected to Microsoft Live for online play. So any game that works for windows works for Steam.

Steam is also great for very small companies that don't have the money to market their games. Have you ever heard of I-Fluid, Mount and Blade, Defcon, Darwinia, and so many others and then there are the arcade type of games?

[Nelson]

I’ve been using Steam to play Left for Dead it has worked very well including the voice connection.

[Ituralde]

So, is there already a Total War Community on Steam or even a Orgah Community? If not, why haven't we made one yet. I think this would be a great way to battle against all my fellow Orgahs!

[AussieGiant]

From the description of how the Steam client will behave on someone's PC, I'd say this is the best of a "not so happy - not so happy" solution for Developers and End Consumers alike.

It doesn't invade your machine, it sits in the task bar if you let it (you can tell it not to fire up at start up) and if you don't want it there you can exit it from your processes and play E:TW off line.

You can then fire it up every now and then when you come onto the Orgh and see there is a new update to be down loaded.

It will then do it's update thing, you will then say things like 'oooh' and 'haaaa' as the new patch from CA fixed a few bugs and balancing issues.

You can then turn it off and play E:TW to your hearts content.

Me likey likey!!

[tgi01]

I would never ever allow anything by Microsoft to autoupdate .... ( never did and never will ) ...
( and I m not a big fan of autoupdate in general .. )

Steam on the other hand is another matter ...

I ve been using steam since HL2 got released on several machines both under xp and vista and

never had any problems with it ...

so dont worry about it ...

TGI

[Zenicetus]

Alot of people seem to be behind steam, which leads me to believe it is not the seem pos that I was playing blueshift and half life 1 with, that lead to maps never matching quite right.

It's good to hear that it's improved, but there's also some consumer psychology at work there. For people who are already running other Steam games, a new one on the horizon has zero additional impact. They're already living with the trade-offs like background processes, authorization requirements, potential game obsolescence without a physical disk, etc. It looks a little different when you haven't bought into the concept yet, and you're being dragged into it kicking and screaming just because you'd like to buy that one single game. I appreciate the user feedback from current Steam users, but I take it with a grain of salt.

Right now I haven't seen any other game I'm interested in on the horizon that requires Steam, other than Empire. And I'm not interested in playing online (recovering WoW addict). So it's basically down to whether this one game ends up being good enough to warrant that. It definitely puts a damper on any enthusiasm for early purchase, because I'll need to see plenty of user feedback first.

P.S. @ Jack Lusted, thanks for the answers so far, even if it isn't what some of us want to hear.

[Belgolas]

Oh everyone can calm down about steam going down in the future. Steam has it's own back-up program so once you have downloaded a game you can put it on either a disk or a back-up hard drive so even if they did go down you could still play it with a no-cd. Although the likely ness of them going down is pretty slim. Even games companies that get bought out you can still play on their servers for multi-player. Plus any company would be stupid if they bought steam and didn't support it because of how much money is involed. You are just paranoid.

I PREFER Steam over a physical disk so there is ZERO trade off.

Ituralde there is already a total war community on the steam forums. I don't think there is a group for this forum on steam but there is a Total War Center group and plenty of Total War clans and a few dozen ETW groups and most are even language based groups. There are Total War fan clubs.

[knoddy]

So, is there already a Total War Community on Steam or even a Orgah Community? If not, why haven't we made one yet. I think this would be a great way to battle against all my fellow Orgahs!

the steam Empire total war community seems to be a bunch of kids whining about paying extra money for special editions of a game. i mean really, its a special addition if u dont want it dont buy it, but dont whinge about paying extra to get more.

Cheers Knoddy

[pevergreen]

Steam is also great for very small companies that don't have the money to market their games. Have you ever heard of I-Fluid, Mount and Blade, Defcon, Darwinia, and so many others and then there are the arcade type of games?

Check the arcade for the Mount and Blade thread. Steam won't accept my CD key for it.

Defcon has been out for years before a physical version hit the stores, or came to steam.

[Tomisama]

Old news, but still an encouraging re-read to me

October 28, 2008, 7:18 am - Alden Kroll - Product Release
SEGA Europe Ltd. today announce that Empire: Total War™ will incorporate Steamworks™, a complete suite of publishing and development tools that offers PC game developers and publishers access to the game features and services available through Steam.

Steamworks will support both the retail and electronic versions of the Empire: Total War game giving players game updates, downloadable content, friend-list support and achievements. To play single-player Empire: Total War, players need only to connect to the internet once via the Steam client after installing the game.

Steamworks will serve as Empire: Total War's multiplayer backend, providing server browsing and match-making functionality, bolstering Total War's new level of commitment to multiplayer game modes and features. Further details on multiplayer will be announced soon.

“We are delighted to be working with an infrastructure as effective as Steam” said Mike Simpson, Studio Director at the Creative Assembly. “Having their matchmaking and support systems on board for Empire; Total War makes a huge difference both for players and for the development team. It not only helps make multiplayer slick and sizzling, it also frees up a huge chunk of the team's time which helps make the whole game better.”

“Total War has become one of the most successful franchises in PC strategy gaming, one of the industry's mainstay genres,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “We're honored Sega selected Steamworks as they expand the franchise with leading-edge online services.”

Empire: Total War is set in the 18th century, a turbulent era that is the most requested by Total War's loyal fan base and a period alive with global conflict, revolutionary fervour and technological advances. With themes such as the Industrial Revolution, America's struggle for independence, the race to control Eastern trade routes and the globalisation of war on land and sea, Empire: Total War promises to be the richest and most dynamic PC RTS game of all time. Empire: Total War will be released on February 3 in North America and on February 6 in Europe and other territories worldwide.

Pre-purchasers on Steam will receive a free copy of Rome: Total War Gold for immediate play.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=10500,10600

Go Steam

[Husar]

Check the arcade for the Mount and Blade thread. Steam won't accept my CD key for it.

It only accepts CD keys from a few selected games, whose developers worked with Steam in some way or another I guess.
On the issue of physical media vs. download, by the time your last CD drive has broken and you cannot buy any CD-compatible drives anymore, the download might still be available, but then by that time your hardware and operating system might be rather incompatible to your 30 year-old games anyway, so future proof is very relative. And when you go to the cinema, you don't own the movie either.

I too have a lot of old games sitting on my shelf but in some of my more honest moments I thought I should throw most of them away because realistically I'm not going to play them again anyway, because it would be too much effort and then I'd realize how my flowery memories made the graphics soo much better than they really are(happened with RTW once, man were those textures blurry...).

[Merak]

as a person that never have used steam is there any ports that need opening in the router?

[Belgolas]

as a person that never have used steam is there any ports that need opening in the router?

You shouldn't need to. I never had too.

[pevergreen]

On a concern I had earlier, you can tell steam to not automatically update games.

[gardibolt]

I've never used Steam before, but it seems to be an acceptable compromise that doesn't drag us into DRM-land. So I am feeling pretty secure (ha!) about getting Empire whereas I didn't about Kingdoms. I appreciate Jack adding the comment that you can tell Steam not to load automatically and it remembers that setting. I've got too much junk loading automatically that I can't figure out how to stop.

[Belgolas]

I've never used Steam before, but it seems to be an acceptable compromise that doesn't drag us into DRM-land. So I am feeling pretty secure (ha!) about getting Empire whereas I didn't about Kingdoms. I appreciate Jack adding the comment that you can tell Steam not to load automatically and it remembers that setting. I've got too much junk loading automatically that I can't figure out how to stop.

In XP click on run, msconfig, then click on the start up tab and deselect stuff that doesn't need to be open. In vista you just need to type msconfig in the search bar. Note do not deselect the video drives and other important drivers like wireless, etc. I am not responsible if you do.

[oldgiffer]

Ok, I didnt read the last comments but couldnt see it answered earlier:

First off, im a fairly active steam user, and have been for some years. By all means, im no fanboy, but I will share my steam experiences, atleast how the service have been for me.

1. Auto updating:
I have ~40 games on steam, and ALL games have the option of;
- Always keep this game up to data
- Do not automatically update this game

2. Resource usage:
I use steam on my laptop, and my home stationary computers, all varied in specs, one good one bad one decent, i have M2TW boxed and on steam, and tbh, i notice no difrence in performance.
On my vista rig, the steam application uses about 15-20mb of RAM, with todays RAM prices and availability is just so little it isnt even noticable.

3. Allways checking online, allways need activation.
Your steam computer needs to be online, once. The first time you run the game, you must be online. After that you can just go to File -> Go Offline, then start the steam application in offline mode ever after.

Overall, since i created my Steam account back in 2003, i've been a happy customer. The stability of the service is good, support is acceptable. I've never had much problems with download speeds, it's ususally good enough to max out my connection. However I have a couple of friends that have complained a couple of times, but i know too little details about the situations to make anything out of it.

All in all, Steam is not the worst thing that could happen, in my humble oppinion that is :)

Cheers
- v0rtex

EDIT: LOL, just spotted this; You last visited: 02-19-2006 at 21:11

[Polemists]

So has anyone ever had steam not work and try to contact customer support?

E-mail, phone, etc?

Does steam even have a customer support?


Can that customer support

procure me


a

DEMO

[oldgiffer]

Well I have had 2 cased with their support;

1. The store not working properly
- solved in ~24 hours

2. My account was hijacked and all my games went *pop*
- I think it took about 12 hours from start to finish. So my experience have been good, but as with all customer support, theres probably good storys and bad.


But, I guess im just the lucky one :P

[Polemists]

I just wanted to make sure there is a customer support as some clients don't have it...


It's good to know they do have a customer support...

that way come tommorrow I have someone new,

to ask

for

DEMO

[knoddy]

my only worry with their customer support would be the fact that its probs only in america so we have to call up at some ridiculous hour just to get through at some crazy cost :S

but then i dont know much about steam so i could be wrong.


to the steam forums polemists so we can ask


for a


DEMO

[Polemists]

Indeed Steam, hear me, you are the demo distributors, save your forums from my wraith

provide us

with

a

DEMO

[Belgolas]

steam support is pretty good. they answer in about 1 business day for support tickets. Although for 3rd party game issues you have to rely on the 3rd party to give you support so in other words for ETW you mostly rely on CA/Sega for customer support for the game.

[BeenPlayingSinceRTW]

Right now I haven't seen any other game I'm interested in on the horizon that requires Steam, other than Empire. And I'm not interested in playing online (recovering WoW addict). So it's basically down to whether this one game ends up being good enough to warrant that. It definitely puts a damper on any enthusiasm for early purchase, because I'll need to see plenty of user feedback first.

P.S. @ Jack Lusted, thanks for the answers so far, even if it isn't what some of us want to hear.

I agree.

I went out and bought the last few TW editions in the first week, but I'm definitely going to wait on this one...