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So You Want to Compete with Steam

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Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#151

Post by pbhjpbhj »

johnchristopher wrote: post #76
kenhwang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, I wish the Google Play Store/Apple App Store did things half as well as Steam does, like: - Backing up application data in the cloud (game saves) - Update priorities (ASAP, before next launch, before everything else) - Throttling bandwidth use or background updates (because I know you're streaming Youtube and your battery got low and you just want to have enough juice to finish your video, but Google Play Music…

> Update windows (like when the phone is idle in the middle of the night, not when I'm in the middle of using it) No, no, no. That's how I ended up with a laptop burned screen. Or being woken up by whatever music it was playing at that time. Solution: update when I press the button or when I planned it myself.

Just having interruptible updates and an average time to completion would make me hate MS Windows a little less. Like how hard is it too say "your computer needs updating, it takes 20 minutes on average for other users: continue, snooze, or schedule", then have "complete update later" button.

And do their damnedest to get rid of the half-hour wait on reboot whilst it does unknown evil in the background with no indications of action or time to completion ... yes, I've been burnt!

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#152

Post by pbhjpbhj »

JohnStrange wrote: post #115
dataflow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, Steam seems to be the closest thing Windows has to an application/package manager I don't understand this obsession with package managers. You guys really have less trouble with package managers than Windows installers? It was literally just 2-3 days ago I was trying to update Ubuntu and I couldn't, because of some stupid error (I don't remember exactly) along the lines of "libgl1-mesa-glx depends libglapi-…

I'm changing my system soon and I can tell you that I'm very, very happy that most of my games are on Steam. I remember that manual installation from DVD used to take minutes to hours, and I just don't have the time for this any longer. Right now, my biggest nightmare are VST plugins. They are in fact the reason why I didn't upgrade my PC from an i7 920 for years. I estimate it will take me at least a week of full sp…

You need a pretty hefty net connection to download a complete library in a reasonable time. My computer is a little under powered so i look at lighter games, they're all over 6GB, some are 25GB ... there's at least 3 times I've gone to buy a game, following email offers, and thought it was just too large.

I probably need to look into QoS again, but my ISP's router has it locked down.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#153

Post by kbart »

kuschku wrote: post #150
kbart wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, GOG is the only place I buy games from. I don't want to have spyware installed on my PC in a form of DRM or be able to play games only while connected to Internet, so I don't use Steam at all.

Agreed, some DRM solutions are so bad, they’re worse than simple spyware – for example, Sony’s DRM Rootkit in the past.

DRM isn't even worst for me, I can always use a fresh virtual machine for a game and wipe it out afterwards, but constant Internet connection requirement totally kills it, as I don't have time for games often and these rare moments I play something is usually on a laptop when I'm on vacation out of town with no reliable Internet connection. GOG is great, I can buy, own and play a game whenever I want, wherever I want and expect it to be playable many years in future, even when official servers are long dead.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#154

Post by simion314 »

on_and_off wrote: post #92
kenhwang wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine is set to update on WiFi only. And everyday, without fail, the moment I plug my phone into a power source in the evening (could even be to my computer for debugging), it'll start going through and applying all available updates. The performance impact is always noticeable during the duration of the updates. Other common case is when I pull into my driveway/office and happen to be charging my phone in the car and…

Just my anecdotal experience but Windows stopped me while I was doing something by suddenly rebooting the machine. The update took ages, well, more than 30 minutes, still very annoying. In the end, the visible change was the addition of Edge and Cortana .. A good way to make me decide to never use these 2 apps.

Agree, why is Windows taking that much time to apply some updates? And you can't do anything while the updates are in progress.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#155

Post by pbhjpbhj »

watwut wrote: post #95
cptskippy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOG links to your Steam Account and will add games to your library that exist in your Steam Library. It only does this for participating publishers but it's still an effective way to copy your library.

The best thing about GOG is that I am actually able to find interesting games I did not knew they exist before there. Discovery on steam is atrocious.

Discovery seems good on Steam to me - shows games your 'friends' have and are playing, search by tags/keywords, stream of game suggestions you can work through, easy to browse library ... what's it need extra IYO?

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#156

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

mmjaa wrote: post #111
dataflow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, Steam seems to be the closest thing Windows has to an application/package manager I don't understand this obsession with package managers. You guys really have less trouble with package managers than Windows installers? It was literally just 2-3 days ago I was trying to update Ubuntu and I couldn't, because of some stupid error (I don't remember exactly) along the lines of "libgl1-mesa-glx depends libglapi-…

Those package dependency graphs are there to protect you. Having to route around the protection is precisely why you should use a package manger properly - to ensure you don't end up with incompatible/borked installation of key elements. No, I do not think Installers are better than package management. By far, package managers are a key factor in system stability.

Here's a better idea: build the system such that dependency conflicts aren't possible. This is trivial by having a stable base system and otherwise including any application's dependencies in the same directory as the application, which of course means not spreading the application all over the file tree (and thus avoiding another non-existent problem that package managers solve).

I know, that's really hard for Linux Desktop people to understand, because it goes against their nature of making everything as complicated as possible for no reason. It's not rocket science, lots of systems managed it in the past.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#157

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

majewsky wrote: post #121
dataflow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, Steam seems to be the closest thing Windows has to an application/package manager I don't understand this obsession with package managers. You guys really have less trouble with package managers than Windows installers? It was literally just 2-3 days ago I was trying to update Ubuntu and I couldn't, because of some stupid error (I don't remember exactly) along the lines of "libgl1-mesa-glx depends libglapi-…

> You guys really have less trouble with package managers than Windows installers? Hell yeah. I remember when I had to set aside entire weekends to reinstall a Windows machine. These days, when I need to reinstall one of my Linux boxes, I just fire up the Arch installer, and instead of installing the "base" package group as the manual instructs you, I install my configuration package for that machine which pulls in a…

One wonders why you have to rebuild your "better than reinstalling Windows all the time" system so often as to have invested the time creating a metapackage of your configuration.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#158

Post by SolarNet »

qznc wrote: post #145
SolarNet wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were asking to be provided tech support here: > Which of these packages is proprietary? I was doing this in VirtualBox without guest additions installed, and while I used to boot this installation on an NVIDIA system, I don't believe I had any NVIDIA-specific packages on it. Let me know the proprietary package name(s) you think I had and I'll search to see if I had any of them installed. (Also, how would you do t…

I side with dataflow here. It would have been a "perfectly civil response" without the last paragraph, especially the "Fuck off". Likewise, in your last paragraph above you label him "incapable of understanding" and "delusional". That is not "perfectly civil".

No I said he implied that about other people. When he said they weren't reading what he was saying and were instead talking about some other story. If a person wrote a response exactly about his scenario, then saying what he did in response would imply that he thought that person was delusional. Which is what happened. I quoted it.

That was the point I gave up on him being an honest participant.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#159

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cptskippy wrote: post #14
c3534l wrote: post #13

The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn't going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different pla…

GOG links to your Steam Account and will add games to your library that exist in your Steam Library. It only does this for participating publishers but it's still an effective way to copy your library.

But GOG has weird standards for what it will and will not allow on its store. Yatzee had some game he made denied, and Zachtronic's Opus Magnum was also denied.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#160

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

sergiotapia wrote: post #67

Steam has lost that "discovery" aspect to it. It's now mainly weaboo garbage, early access and PUBG clogging up the trending and leaderboards. I feel like I can no longer discover cool titles or great things people are buying on the site.

I really don't feel like there is a better way to handle it than the curators system. I mean, look at Youtube and Amazon recommendations, they're awful.
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