I own Ostfront and will pay another 25.00 for a version of Ostfront sans Steam

[BobCobb]

What donkey forgets is that consumers are mindless media-whores, and soon forgo the usual ethics in favor of their next great, cheap, or "necessary" media purchase.

And thus the free-market system falls apart, corporations with the most money and power take over, corrupt the government, and we are living in a theocratic oligarchical nightmare where our every movement is under watch. Noone dares oppose the new order, because freedom to dissent was abolished long ago.

But we can still get great prices on DRMed electronics at Wal-Mart.

 

[Helmut_AUT]

So I can see none of you are lawyers, legally trained or functionally literate.

When I buy digital content, I am buying a license. EULA's have been held both in the USA and the rest of the world to be legally binding.

Not from what I've seen.

Also, as a general update to this thread: If you look in the tech support forum, you'll find my rant on how STEAM started, for no reason at all, to make RO "currently unavalable" to me yesterday evening. Sometimes it launches, sometimes it doesn't.

I have read the FAQs now two or three times, and nothing in there applys to my system. No Firewall software, no virus scanner etc.

So, the logical next way was to try and sign up for their support forums. But before I can post my problem there, my account needs to be activated by a human. It's now 12 hours later but so far no activation.

So, STEAM basically takes the liberty to just "disable" a game I already paid for, without me changing anything on my system configuration. When I try to get support from Tripwire, I'm redirected to the Steam Website. When I try to get support there, I'm not allowed to post my problems in the forum immediatly and have to wait for someone to graciously activate my account.

When I send in a standard "support email" I get back a standard text covering the FAQ topics I already have checked.

So, in other words - STEAM can take away your game from you, and their support isn't on the ball.

Now you know, plain and clear, why I don't want any 3rd party application between me and my paid-for software.

 

[The_Countess]

helmut : its a most likely software glitsh, not some steam admin who disabled your game on purpose. i've been playing for a while now and never had a game not available, the same with everybody else in my clan, nor are there masses of people posting about it here.
you got unlucky!

your steam even generated a BSOD, so you might want to consider something being wrong in there.

and im sorry to say this but there is a 3rd party programe between you and MOST of your software allready.
things like starforce, C-Dilla and other security programes.
the biggest difference is that steam is open about what it dus, unlike most of those other programes.
nor dus steam bury itself into your windows, again unlike most of those others.

Ya know, I never trust offical press releases. Too much marketing involved.
*snip*
Okay, in that regard you may be correct that Tripwire is not the traditional dev-team slave laboring under a money-greedy publisher, but it still is not really a result of using Steam. They likely could have found someone else to distribute the game online once they had an usabe and stable game with a clearly viable market.

hey this is tripwire we're talking about, why not trust their official release?

and had they gone to ANYBODY else their market would have been a whole lot smaller most likely, and the profit per game lower, as they would have needed to set up the administration and support for the payments themselfs

why steam is also a copy protection programe is obvious, they need to protect themselfs and their customers (meaning the other developers) from fraud and illigal downloads, aspecialy from illigal downloads using steam.

 

[donkey]

Need case cites for EULA's then ?

 

[-MM!!-Lazarus]

Need case cites for EULA's then ?

EULA

 

[Helmut_AUT]

helmut : its a most likely software glitsh, not some steam admin who disabled your game on purpose. i've been playing for a while now and never had a game not available, the same with everybody else in my clan, nor are there masses of people posting about it here.
you got unlucky!

Of course it's a software glitch, I don't think that there's some evil STEAM admin that disabled it on purpose.

But it's an annoying software glitch, and in a software that is NOT actually required to run games. It's not part of the OS, the graphics drivers, the game content etc. RO could run just as well without STEAM; STEAM is just an addition that creates more potential for problems.

Furthermore, Software glitches happen, okay; But not having a fast, pain-less, easy-to-use support system on Valve's side is a major oversight. A tech-support forum, meant for many thousand of STEAM users, that requires manual activation of every single account? And everone else just sends you to standard FAQs? It's been 14 hours now since I signed up onto their support forum, yet I still aren't allowed to actually post about my problem.

So yes, I guess I'm unlucky. Like the many other people who had this problem if you look here into the Tech Support section. And I guess we're double unlucky because Valve's tech support sucks and Tripwire can't support STEAM.

Do you really think this is an acceptable way of running a business? Do you really think it's acceptable that people can not play the game they paid for, because of a third party software that creates random software errors and then is not properly supported from Valve? Talking about this topic yesterday on another website, I found another guy who's HL2 copy gathers dust on the shelf because he has the very same error, but never got enough support to actually have it fixed. What a waste of money.

your steam even generated a BSOD, so you might want to consider something being wrong in there.

and im sorry to say this but there is a 3rd party programe between you and MOST of your software allready.
things like starforce, C-Dilla and other security programes.
the biggest difference is that steam is open about what it dus, unlike most of those other programes.
nor dus steam bury itself into your windows, again unlike most of those others.

Please, leave me alone with the "you got BSOD, so something must be wrong on your maschine" story. The people with ZA Firewall get BSODs all day long with STEAM. Many other people get BSODs with STEAM, or system reboots (which is just the result of XP being set to autimatically reboot after a BSOD you never see).

STEAM works on a very low system level - obviously it loads a file system driver so the operating system can access the file structure hidden in the .gcf files. File System drivers are by their nature a low-level system component, and any failure with them is likely to create a BSOD. That doesn't have anything to do with errors on the User Maschine, it just means a program operating so deep within Windows is more likely to create a Blue Screen.

The other stuff you mentioned - yes, can be an annoyance too, but at least that kind of software (Starforce being the worst) runs locally. It isn't dependend on a server network, it isn't dependend on an internet connection, it doesn't randomly update itself or change configurations. Working around a Safedisk/Securom problem is much simpler since there are much less variables involved than with a software that "phones home online".

Reading trough the FAQs on the STEAM support site, what kind of "professional software" has problems like that? STEAM can have problems with virus scanners, with wide-spread firewalls (ZA, Kerio), with users running on limited (non-admin) accounts. It can have problems when the system has been infected with Spyware or Adware (which is very common and can happen to everyone very fast if you're not running a totally tight system). STEAM even has problems with certain types of hardware routers.

You see, the problem is that the need for DRM is high in the eyes of these companys - but at the same time the costs need to be low, so instead of spending a whole lot on developing a stable, fail-safe, idiot-proof system with a working support line we have STEAM or Starforce.

I can accept errors in the software I'm actually trying to run. I know games are hard to program and have gotten very complicated in the last years.
But to have errors in third-party software that isn't actually needed (from a technical point) to provide the user with his entertainment, that is unacceptable.

At the end of the day I now have an RO installation that worked flawless for about 11 days - and now suddenly, without me having changed anything on my system configuration, may or may not run. I can no longer count on the fact that when I get home after a busy day at work, I can just sit down and play half an hour of RO.

And why? Not because my computer is crap, or because my system is screwed up - but because there's a "moody" third-party software sitting between my legitimate paid-for game and me.

Oh brave new world.

 

[donkey]

Scandanvia wouldn't suprise me, although in most common law jursidictions, for I am a common lawyer, certain parts of consumer protection legislation will over ride some terms.

The unfair contracts jurisdiction, where developed (thankfully not widespread) may also become involved, but regardless, I think you'd find they are binding in Australia, NZ, UK, Canada and USA. Not sure about the rest of the common law world, but there you go.