Talk:Steam (service)

Template:FAOL

Weekend Sales

Are these worth mentioning in the "promotions" section? Would be neat to have a table of all the games that have been part of this promotion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.22.55.237 (talk) 09:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it's definitely worth adding. I don't know of any except for this week's Stubbs the Zombie. Whitereflection (talk) 00:58, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

New version

First off, thanks to EagleOne for copying the page over. I'm going to go through and remove all the unsourced claims, since they should not be in there. — HelloAnnyong [ t · c ] 20:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Criticism of Steam

Just make a seperate article called Criticism of Steam, it is taking up half the article right now.--Zorgness (talk) 14:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC) no way, if the Criticism of Steam takes up more space than steam it tells a honest story24.76.40.15 (talk) 15:18, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Also here are some articles that are not used but criticise Steam;

• describes many issues with Steam
• see bottom of article
• read from Case Study: Half-Life 2
• Steam phishing article, 3 pages worth
• steam servers down breaking hl2 games
• "Steam was effectively broken at release"
• prolonged download times/frustration
• steam support on account security

All good sources.--Zorgness (talk) 15:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Most of those are specifically regarding HL2's launch. There's already an article on that which should be linked to if we want to add that kind of thing. The Indiecare page does have some new stuff, but how uncommon are those kinds of clauses relating to service availability and so forth? It isn't NPOV to talk about them of themselves if every other service like Steam takes a similar stance. --Tom Edwards (talk) 16:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd also remind everyone of WP:UNDUE with regards to criticism. Wikipedia is not a forum to list all the shortcomings of Steam. — HelloAnnyong [ t · c ] 16:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Turns out that the HL2 controversy article has been merged back into the HL2 article itself, and there's no mention of the release day network problems. Before this article was re-written it had a small section on the problems, but that has been removed too...--Tom Edwards (talk) 16:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Some of those sources can be used in the history section, similar to Half_life_2#Steam_content_delivery_system.--Zorgness (talk) 16:16, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

That's certainly how the article was before. --Tom Edwards (talk) 16:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Please don't just copy text over from the Half-Life 2 page. We worked too long and too hard on this page for its integrity to bec compromised now. — HelloAnnyong [ t · c ] 20:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Extra addition to HL2 section?

Can someone else please chime in on this? Zorgness and I have been going back and forth about adding another paragraph to the HL2 release section. I removed it because it's directly copied from here], and because it's adding undue weight to criticisms. Eagle, Tom - do you guys have any opinion on this? — HelloAnnyong [ t · c ] 16:47, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The following is on the page: "In some cases, the review score was lowered due to these issues." The link is to this review of HL2. First off, the page is non-notable, and there's nothing on the page to suggest otherwise. The review also says nothing explicit about the score of the game being lowered; in fact, the review doesn't even give the game a score. All it says is that "Steam was effectively broken at release and for all I know remains broken to this day." Based on that, I'm removing the review. — HelloAnnyong [ t · c ] 18:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I took that statement from the featured article Half_life_2#Steam_content_delivery_system, so feel free to fix that. Also the review is sourcable and the score is at the top right. It may been referring to this review.--Zorgness (talk) 18:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to have to go with Annyong on this one. Yes, there were problems with Steam during HL2's launch, but I think the current revision adequately covers the issues. There's no need to duplicate that paragraph here.

The undue weight policy says that coverage of this topic should be proportional to it's importance to the article's subject as a whole. And this section cover's one incident in the history of Steam, the launch of HL2. Granted, the game is an AAA list title, and it's launch really put Steam on the map, so this event deserves it's own subsection. But all this happened 3 years ago, Zorgness. A lot has happened since 2004, and many of the issues have been ironed out. This is relatively unimportant compared to the rest of the article. So please, do not add the content from the HL2 article. — EagleOne\^Talk 02:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Gabe email

I think that the following should be deleted:

On the issue of system failure, Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, has said:

“ If you right click on a game in Steam, you'll see that you can back up the files yourself. Unless there was some situation I don't understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available. ”

A forum post by a standard user is not a reliable source, there is nothing stopping me from making up an email and claiming Gabe Newell sent me it. Also forum threads eventually get deleted. link to thread.--Zorgness (talk) 17:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that's true enough. In lieu of the forum post, can we find a more reliable source on this subject? — HelloAnnyong [ t · c ] 17:15, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Now deleted from section Steam_(content_delivery)#System_failure. There may be an interview with Gabe which answers a similar question, but that quote isn't ever going to be reliable.--Zorgness (talk) 17:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Portal: The first slice

I just added a mention to Portal: The First Slice under Hardware promotions, since no one had added it yet. It's still not encyclopedic enough so if anyone could please correct it a bit and make it more encyclopedic it would be appreciated. Garci (talk) 12:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

svg-Logo

There is a .svg-version of the steam-logo availabel in the german wikipedia: de:Bild:Steam Logo.svg made by de:Benutzer:Norro. --84.141.172.80 (talk) 21:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

The proportions aren't quite right. I don't know if it's sensible to use it as it is... --Tom Edwards (talk) 10:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Besides, the article already has an image with the Steam logo. We don't need another one. I understand that the pic is in the SVG format, and can smoothly scale up or down, but I just don't think scalability is a big concern here. The current pic is just the right size, and it's properly tagged and sourced. — EagleOne\^Talk 14:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Steam logo.png

Image:Steam logo.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 06:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

So...

So is this basically like a game distribution version of iTunes, except not by Apple? 65.40.21.13 (talk) 17:20, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Except that valve doesn't distribute their games with drm, or have ridiculous advertising, or cut themselves off from the operational world, or use a nonstandard form of distribution.....then sure, they're alot like apple. Joe3472 (talk) 20:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The 26% Problem

I'm quite surprised to spot that there has been no mention of the problem with steam where steam would update to 26% completion then crash. The problem is quite common in the steam forums. It would also be worthwhile to note that steam have been relatively tightlipped about this; with the only official fix relatively outdated and the resource files offered removed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.8.12 (talk) 04:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

- That is a problem Linux/UNIX systems have when using Wine to install Steam. Steam itself has no Linux client, so it's not worth mentioning an issue on systems unsupported by the program. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.156.193 (talk) 02:48, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

26% if the point at which the bootstrapper gets restarted with an updated version. Problems arise when another program takes over control of the EXE and prevents it from being overwritten - and it's entirely out of Steam's control, since it isn't running at that point. --Tom Edwards (talk) 16:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Overcharging

Though Steam is the distribution platform, it is the developers that determine the price of games to be sold in various regions of the world, not Valve. Since outcries on the forums began regarding the price differences throughout the world Valve has replied several times to these threads explaining that they do not have any say in the price of games being sold. As such it would be unfair to criticize Steam for it. Zeraliten (talk) 13:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

We can present the facts at the same time as making the above point clear. --Tom Edwards (talk) 16:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality?

The way a lot of the information is stated, this article seems almost like an advertisement for Steam. Case and point: "Steam can validate its downloaded content for errors, a process that gives many of the benefits of reinstalling in a fraction of the time." Everything after the comma is completely unnecessary. I think this whole article needs to be reworked to provide a more neutral tone. User:Ronan5557 17:30, 16 June 2006 —Preceding comment was added at 21:28, June 16, 2008 (UTC)

Why is it not neutral? It's a fact about the reason why the feature under discussion exists. --Tom Edwards (talk) 16:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

—Preceding comment was added on August 8, 2008 (UTC)

I feel like the article needs a good balance of the advantages of steam content distribution in addition to the criticisms. Steam offers some novel new features that aren't in previous content delivery - carrying user accounts, ease of game installation, and uniform launcher/online manager that are unique and provide a good experience. It has its faults too ;) --Allan Stewart (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.179.73 (talk) 01:51, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Steam Community Privacy Options

I've noticed the article talks about the Steam Community and its lack of privacy options, however, there are now news privacy options available, so the article should be changed. I'd do it myself but I'm not the best to write out things like that. 90.240.82.175 (talk) 20:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Software Infobox

Can anyone work out why removing the "|name=Steam" part of the software infobox removes the version information? --DogGunn (talk) 06:09, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

No, but I would like to know why we need it in the first place. :-p --Tom Edwards (talk) 10:21, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Because like most software articles on Wikipedia, the current version is listed. --DogGunn (talk) 11:34, 4 October 2008 (UTC)