Steam

**Belgolas** · 01-27-2009, 01:06

I just want to clear up a few things about steam. First steam is IMHO the best thing for PC gaming. It is a great service for lazy people like me. I have over $500 worth of games purchased on steam. With steam it has a store page, community page, my games, my media, and a tools page.

The store page which looks like this
http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/reso...8/05/steam.jpg
You can purchase and download all the games your heart desires that are available on steam. Once purchased through either a retailed hard copy or a digital download it is installed in your my games section. You can also purchase games as gifts for friends or if you buy a game like Half-Life 2 and then buy a bundle like the orange box you can then gift the extra copy of the game to a friend. Also most games on steam are far cheaper then retail because with retail you have to make the cd and box plus maintain a store front and all that shipping. There are also a ton of bundles like the buy Valve Complete Pack where it costs $100 and you get every single game made by Valve and it is $239.81 if you were to buy everything in an individually. So you save $139.82! Or there is the Buy THQ Collector Pack which is $100 also and save $117.40. Or there is the Buy Rockstar Collection and is $60 and save $19.94. So as you can see there can be some GREAT deals made because of steam(hint hint CA).

The community page which looks like this
https://img227.imageshack.us/img227/686/steamiw0.jpg
is the page that helps make steam so awesome for me. It has a friends list much like any online social networking site like facebook. With this you can make friends, chat with them, see what they are playing, see all your achievements or friends achievements, see how many hours you spent playing you games, join steam community groups or make your own clan. All that fun stuff. Also if a friend is playing a game like counter strike source your can just click on your friend and it has the option to launch the game(if you have it) and join the server s/he is playing with just one click. Steam also has great voice chat and great built in voice communication for online games like ETW.

The my games page looks like this
https://img146.imageshack.us/img146/8128/steammf4.png
This is the next greatest thing for steam. Here you can easily play any game you have purchased and you don't need to find your cd you just double click on a game you want to run and it runs. Also if a game has more then one option like benchmarks when you double click it will open up with option to choose different things like for farcry 2 to run the benchmark program or for like M2TW kingdoms you get to choice the different expansions like the Americas/Britain. You can download each game an infinite number of times so if you choice to delete it or build a new computer or whatever you are worry free. Also you can move your account to a friends computer and download your games on each computer you own but can only have 1 account logged on at 1 time. Since I have 2 comps(one power full one and one for if a friend comes over for lan) I have 2 accounts. Also all mods get placed here so you can quick launch them too. Another great feature is it auto downloads the patches so you are always up to date. This also works for mods too.

Then there is the my media page for trailers and some other stuff I don't use. I hope steam releases music and movies that way I can get rid of itunes because in itunes if you delete something and have no back-up it is gone but if it was on steam you could download it a million times if ya wanted to.

Then there is the Tools page which has stuff like SDK's and stuff for setting up your own server which is very easy. Here you also get to use some editing tools for some games like for Half-Life 2 for map making and modeling and the like. I hope ETW will have something here.

Well that just is the basics of what steam is. Also to settle some questions. Steam uses less then 1% of cpu usage. In fact I idle at 0% cpu usage in Vista with steam open and a few small programs like evga precision in the background. Also steam has an offline mode, but you still need steam to be running at all time to be able to play a game. So here is how it works. You install steam and create an account. You pop in the disk or download the game and install it. Then if you loose internet steam goes into offline mode. So if you are on this forum you obviously have an internet connection so no worries. You do not need any credit card info to make a steam account. Steam does not store any financial info. If you don't have an internet connection then to bad. But seeing as 1 billion people now have a computer with internet then CA doesn't have a big impact wth sales lost. In fact going with steam will probably increase sales and make their name bigger as a lot of people don't know about Total War. I hope this helps clear up some question and if you have any more please ask them. Also I am sure I have forgot some things to add.

Please keep this civil.

**Sir Beane** · 01-27-2009, 01:16

This is a good thread that helps explain what Steam is and what it does from a regular user's perspective.

I am seconding what Belgolas says. Keep this thread civil. Ask questions about steam, discuss various features, but do not use this thread as a place to rant about Steam or DRM in general.

If you ask a question and you don't like the answer then take your complaint to CA directly, or start a thread in somewhere like the Backroom to discuss it.

Now that is out of the way I hope everyone can use this thread to have their questions and queries about Steam answered.

**Zenicetus** · 01-27-2009, 01:44

Okay here are some questions I haven't seen a specific answer to yet. We know (now) that Empire can run under Steam's offline mode, without an Internet connection after the initial install and authorization. So far, so good.

1) If I exit the game to the Windows desktop, does Steam exit RAM completely along with the game? Or does some part of it remain as a RAM-resident background process?

2) A related question: I've read that Steam won't launch the game if either Steam or the game isn't auto-updated to the current version. When and how does Steam check for those updates? Is it only at the point where you launch a Steam game, or is it a background resident process, checking at timed intervals or on boot-up?

3) Finally, if I uninstall Empire from my computer and it's the only Steam game I own, and I then uninstall Steam from my computer, how clean is the uninstall? Does it leave behind any hidden file or mess with the low-level file system like SecureROM does? I'm not looking for tech specifics, I just want to know if it's a clean uninstall.

**Sir Beane** · 01-27-2009, 01:51

Originally Posted by Zenicetus

Okay here are some questions I haven't seen a specific answer to yet. We know (now) that Empire can run under Steam's offline mode, without an Internet connection after the initial install and authorization. So far, so good.

1) If I exit the game to the Windows desktop, does Steam exit RAM completely along with the game? Or does some part of it remain as a RAM-resident background process?

2) A related question: I've read that Steam won't launch the game if either Steam or the game isn't auto-updated to the current version. When and how does Steam check for those updates? Is it only at the point where you launch a Steam game, or is it a background resident process, checking at timed intervals or on boot-up?

3) Finally, if I uninstall Empire from my computer and it's the only Steam game I own, and I then uninstall Steam from my computer, how clean is the uninstall? Does it leave behind any hidden file or mess with the low-level file system like SecureROM does? I'm not looking for tech specifics, I just want to know if it's a clean uninstall.

1) I can't give you a 100% accurate answer on this, but another Orgah probably can. I do not think that Steam remains as a background process once you close it down however.

2) Steam searches for auto-updates everytime you connect to the internet and have steam running, in much the same way Windows update does. If Steam is running in offline mode it will not search for updates and will launch games just fine. Once Steam has found updates it will install them automatically (providing it is running). It isn't a background thing, it's part of the main program. The updating process is usually very quick, unless Steam has not been updated for a long time. It interferes very little with running games.

3) Steam does not leave hidden files and it doesn't mess with low-level system files. Steam is definitely not the same as SecureRom. It's a 100% clean uninstall.

**pevergreen** · 01-27-2009, 02:45

Point 2) will create havoc if we have another 1.1 -> 1.2 thing like M2:TW.

E:TW needs to be manual patches, for modding etc.

**Belgolas** · 01-27-2009, 02:54

Originally Posted by pevergreen

Point 2) will create havoc if we have another 1.1 -> 1.2 thing like M2:TW.

E:TW needs to be manual patches, for modding etc.

That is one problem for not having a good internet connection.

You can still copy and paste the whole directory for ETW so you can keep it at a certain patch but then you need a no-cd.

**Zenicetus** · 01-27-2009, 10:26

Originally Posted by Sir Beane

1) I can't give you a 100% accurate answer on this, but another Orgah probably can. I do not think that Steam remains as a background process once you close it down however.

Okay, it would be nice to hear some official word from CA or the Steam folks about whether it's a resident process when the game isn't being played.

Originally Posted by pevergreen

Point 2) will create havoc if we have another 1.1 -> 1.2 thing like M2:TW.

E:TW needs to be manual patches, for modding etc.

Yeah, roll-back to previous versions doesn't sound easy if the DRM demands the most recent version of the game. I can't be the only one who has been burned by an update that broke something. Is there a work-around for rolling back to a previous game version with Steam?

Originally Posted by hoom

Q1: Steam is a separate program & it stays resident in the taskbar.
You need to manually exit it from there (right click -> Exit), I do this but people who play lots of Steam games might leave it open.
Currently minimised to Taskbar its using 7-8MB of RAM, eg compare with Adobe Reader 9 with no pdf open & the ATI Catalyst Control Centre (ccc.exe) minimised to taskbar using nearly the same amount.
After the resident icon is closed down, Steam.exe disappears completely from taskmanager.

I avoid programs that stay resident in the taskbar when I only need them to run one single program. It's one of the more annoying things about Quicktime updates. Is there an option for right-clicking the Steam icon in the taskbar and telling it not to load on every system boot? Do I have to do that every time Steam updates itself again, like Quicktime?

To be clear, I can live with Steam if the only thing it does is launch the Empire game, and it stays completely out of my way when I'm not running that one game. I don't think that's too much to ask. I have zero interest in being a part of some Steam online community, or buying dozens of games through the Steam portal. I just want to buy this one game -- Empire TW -- if they don't make me jump through too many obnoxious hoops.

**Jack Lusted** · 01-27-2009, 10:35

Okay, it would be nice to hear some official word from CA or the Steam folks about whether it's a resident process when the game isn't being played.

Steam will remain running once you close down the game unless you exit it yourself. But it's easy to close down as it will be on the taskbar.

Is there an option for right-clicking the Steam icon in the taskbar and telling it not to load on every system boot? Do I have to do that every time Steam updates itself again, like Quicktime?

You can set Steam to not load on system start easily, and it remembers that setting every time it updates.

**BeenPlayingSinceRTW** · 01-27-2009, 13:58

Originally Posted by Sir Beane

Now that is out of the way I hope everyone can use this thread to have their questions and queries about Steam answered.

Thanks, I have three questions about Steam.

1) Why does Steam insist on granting themselves the right to automatically install any software they want on my PC as a condition of installing their client? Isn't that behavior similar to a trojan? ( see Section 2 of the Steam subscriber agreement: http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement )

2) Is Sega/CA aware that EA just got sued for bundling Spore with SecureROM (which has features similar to Steam that ended up causing massive problem for Spore users)? Link about the EA lawsuit: http://www.gearfuse.com/electronic-a...ver-spore-drm/

3) What do people think abotu the following description of Steam from Slashdot:

Steam is DRM. It controls what you can and can't do with a product you have bought and paid for. It's dependent on activation servers, which it contacts every time you launch a game, just like Spore was going to before the outcry.

In a very meaningful sense it's less abhorrent than SecuROM, as it doesn't go out of its way dig its tendrils into the OS, breaking random things and throwing hissy fits if it finds innocuous software it doesn't like. There's no

"activations" to use up, and it doesn't leave bits of itself behind when you uninstall it.

But in other ways it's worse. You don't really own a Steam game. You can't loan a copy of a Steam game to a friend, or sell it to someone, or even give it away for free, except in specific cases where Valve decides to let you. If something happened to Valve, or they just decided they didn't like the cut of your jib and aren't going to let you play your game anymore, you'd be

out of luck.

**Polemists** · 01-27-2009, 14:12

See this is my major concern.

The activation servers.

Spore had the same thing.

I mean its' fine this year, and next year, but i've been playing shogun since shogun.

I'd be very depressed if five or even ten years down road I can't play etw because suddenly the activation servers are taken offline.

Almost as depesseressed as I would be without

A demo.

**Monk** · 01-27-2009, 14:26

Serious discussion and debate on DRM is not a topic fit for this forum.

Martok comes in and hits us with a wrench everytime we try it.

If you want to discuss that kinda thing, the Backroom has been pointed out as the place to do it.

**Polemists** · 01-27-2009, 14:30

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.

**Monk** · 01-27-2009, 14:35

Originally Posted by Polemists

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.

BeenPlayingSinceRTW's last post is very clearly quoting Slashdot on how Steam Compares to other DRM systems and asking for feedback. Not only that he is asking "WHat gives steam the right" as well as if CA is aware EA is facing a DRM related lawsuit. His post's topic is very heavily on DRM as a whole, and not ETW.

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.

The activation method was adressed in another topic that has since been locked because we couldn't stop talking about more serious DRM issues. Like i said, the Backroom is the proper place.

**BeenPlayingSinceRTW** · 01-27-2009, 14:46

Originally Posted by Polemists

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** · 01-27-2009, 14:34