Steam General Thread

I encountered the problem when listening to music on foobar2000 and then someone messaged me on Steam.

Maybe it's because I don't really listen to music much.

Anyone ever thought of Censor Steam... with Steam, not steam?

edited 21st Aug '12 8:46:22 PM by MetaSkipper

Heh, the past is funny.

Who wants community beta?

So I opened the Steam store out of curiosity and noticed they'd added Maple Story. Maple Story.

Huh.

^ Wait, where, what???

Oh, not available in my region...damn!

If I am ever interested in playing Maple Story, should I get it through Steam or not through Steam?

The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav

You guys have info on that game? Its on steam.

My computer and internet connection are normally perfectly able to handle TF 2 and Moonbase Alpha.

But for some reason, when I try to play them right now, they are lagging like crazy.

In TF 2, the lag spikes whenever there are other players on screen.

I think this lag exists even if I'm playing a game with bots on my own computer, but I'm not sure.

Anyone got a guess as to why?

This problem persists even if I close all programs other than Steam (which takes up a fuckton of RAM, sadly) and the game. Well, all programs that show up on the taskbar; there are those that don't show up there (or otherwise in a form that I'm well aware of their presence), but they only take up like five-digit amounts of RAM. And I'm supposed to have eight gigs of it.

My graphics card is integrated, but I do have a pretty good processor on this computer, it's an Intel i7 with HD Graphics 4000.

edited 24th Aug '12 11:07:53 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

nvm, the beta's open to everyone.

edited 29th Aug '12 3:36:33 AM by EarlOfSandvich

Looks like we're getting a new way to view Steam: the Big Picture.

This is old news, but I figured that I'll bring it back up to everybody's attention. In particular, I wanna see if anybody's been trying out the games offered in it...

Steam has released a another program on their service to help advertise upcoming games that are early in development called Early Access. To quote their own words:

Most of the games posted for the program require you to purchase them. Furthermore, many are in a VERY early beta state, which means a lot of people won't dare touch it out of fear of buying an incomplete, buggy mess of game. Take Star Forge for example. The indie community has been pretty excited about it, but I myself don't want to commit any money to the project since so much of the game has yet to be even created. And I'm wondering if they might suddenly "chicken out" and start cutting features for whatever reason.

Because of that, I'm curious to see if any tropers here have already played the game or anything offered on the the service. Or better yet, found an alternate free means of trying some of these games out.

So... any takers?

It's pretty reasonable to be cautious about such things. "Early Access" isn't really anything new. Desura already has something similar (called "Alpha-Funding" for quite a while. And it actually happened to me, that a game I bought through Alpha-Funding, got canceled. I'm not sad about the money lost, though, because it was pretty cheap. It really felt more like I was paying for the game in the state that it already was, not the state it will be (or in this case, never will be). That's what I dislike about many Early Access games (and the reason I stay away from them): They charge way too much for unfinished games.

Anyway, something kind of odd happened to me. Since I got Steam, I tried to redeem the code that I got through the PS 3 version of Portal 2, so I could get it on PC. But that's only possible when I connect my PSN and Steam accounts. That means that I have to activate the Steam overlay in Portal 2, enter my Steam account name and password and let it connect with Steam. The problem is that it never worked. Every time I tried to connect, it failed. In fact, it didn't even let me enter my account information. So, I sent a message to the support and today they answered me. Kind of. Actually they only sent me to the respective page on the FAQ, which I already read, which doesn't says anything I didn't already know and which is completely unhelpful. Feeling rather defeated, I tried again to connect to Steam on my PS 3. And this time, it worked. Like, I have Portal 2 in my library (with all the achievements I got through the PS 3 version) and it's downloading now.

I still wonder why it's working now. Or rather, why it didn't work before. Well, I'm not going to complain. Except about the unhelpfulness of the support.

I think the only difference between diagnosing a computer program bug and a human body disease is that we have the source code which can theoretically tell us the origin of the computer program bug.

Otherwise, for something as complex as Steam having to connect a PS 3 and a computer on the same account, it's often a crapshoot.

^^Umm, point of charging that much is that money will go to development Hence why its "Alpha Funding" on desura

Thread Hop

How long does it normally take for support to get back to a ticket? Cause I'm running on 30 hours without an answer to an issue I keep running into (getting an "unexpected error" everytime I try to purchase anything). Hopefully I get a fix before the sales I was looking into expire...

I think as far as Early Access goes, I think the only game I've bought through it was Drunken Robot Pornography (which I haven't tried yet).

^I have no idea, honestly.

edited 4th May '13 4:42:52 PM by RocketDude

I've got the Half-Life Anthology and Portal on Steam, that's it.

For some time now, Half-Life on Steam has been lagging for me. It may look good (70 - 80 ping) when I first look at the server in the list, but once I actually join, sooner or later it starts skyrocketing to 150+ and making the game unplayable. This didn't use to happen, it seems to be independent of my game settings or which server I play on, and I think it might have something to do with my router. Any suggestions on how to get the lag to stop?

Have you tried checking the Steam Tech Support forums? Yes it's a piss-hive with a ton of redundant complaints and such, I know, but they just might have something for you in one the Official FAQ threads!

Went there first and everyone who solved the problem filed a ticket and waited.

Is it just me, or is completely impossible to download games in Big Picture view?

Steam now has a beta for a Trading Card/leveling system

The idea of customizing your Steam App's background and design sounds cool, but the fact that you're now gonna have to grind and trade to get them by playing games is kinda disappointing. But at least it's happening!

Can't you just download skins?