Uplay annoys me more, I can't remember why.
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STEAM Announcements & Updates 2013 V - Message Modbot for Good Time 1-800-555-READOP
- Thread starter Grief.exe
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Uplay annoys me more, I can't remember why.
Glass Rebel
Member
Too much money and marketing power behind it to go the way of Brink.
Cyberquake
Member
Nice to read this, although I'm a bit rusty on the security stuff.
The only real annoyance I have with origin is that sometimes it simply does not start. I get a "failed to update" message and it quits, although it is already updated.
Their support is not bad although their technical support phone lines have really long queues. I remember buying a retail copy of The Saboteur really cheap, and the key didn't work. The guy from the chat troubleshoot couldn't help me, he escalated my trouble ticket and gave me an US phone number to dial. Luckily it was a free number so I could endure the 1h long waiting time in the queue. As soon as they picked up my line, the problem was solved in a few minutes.
Atraveller
Banned
I forgot to add, my Origin now does not remember my password, does any of you have this problem?
My experience with Uplay has been fine outside of the server outages and rather slow download speeds. But again, like Origin, it's a solution looking for a problem -- there's no need for either to exist. I'd rather EA and Ubi games were sold on Steam with Steamworks support, with a third-party key provided (as is the case with current Uplay games on Steam), and the matter of activating them on Origin/Uplay was left up the user.
Da DreadLord
Member
It seems to forget this whenever there's an update here.
jediyoshi
Member
I don't think it was the ideas department that people took umbrage against Brink for.
I've installed Uplay just for From Dust and apart from the fact that achievs are only one Uplay and not on Steam (IIRC), it was totally fine.
I mean, it is useless as hell, and it annoys me, and try to solve a non existent problem and everything else, but it just launches when I launch the game from Steam and sits there without doing anything noticeable.
I mean, it is useless as hell, and it annoys me, and try to solve a non existent problem and everything else, but it just launches when I launch the game from Steam and sits there without doing anything noticeable.
Here's one more I run into - if you disable Origin overlay for games that have achievements, each one you receive will alt-tab you out of the game and into the client for... reasons, I guess.
One of these, I don't remember if it was YuPlay (used by Gaijin Entertainment) or uPlay, has the obnoxious quality of circumventing Steam's game updater in favor if its own. Really annoying to install a game via Steam, then find out you have a multi-GB patch to download from the game's own updater. Puppygames is a bad offender here as well, with every single one of its games, just to a less extreme extent.
- My ISP is not particularly fast
- 50MB is a multi-minute download, 1GB is a multi-hour download
- I leave my Steam client running while I'm work so it can download these updates -- when you bypass that process, it's really irritating
All that talk about clients being solutions to non-existent problems fails to take into account that there is indeed a problem to solve, it's just not on the customer's side. Publishers are trying to find a way to sell their games without paying a percentage to a competitor. It's a fair pursuit, imo, and if they can manage to do it without being too annoying or intrusive (which neither Origin nor uPlay really have managed to do yet) then I'd say it's fine for them to have their own clients.
The ideal solution would be a popular, functional publisher-agnostic platform...
The ideal solution would be a popular, functional publisher-agnostic platform...
Talking about Origin or uPlay is Steam-related...
My consumer side says, if you don't give me the option of buying it on Steam, you get $0.00 from me. Your call - 70% or 0%.
Not giving me the ability to use Steam for everything for convenience's sake is annoying and intrusive.
MMBosstones86
Member
It's a long road to Community
It's not that I'm not taking it into account; it's that I don't care. EA and Ubi are both guilty of forgoing Steam releases to rack up PC-side exclusives for their respective clients, both of which launched several years after Steam itself and offer no tangible benefits, so they'll just have to excuse my lack of sympathy.
This seems like a pie-in-the-sky desire, though, especially now that Steam is approaching its 10th birthday. Even Amazon, which runs a DD store, is getting into the game development... game.
But then there would be anyway the need of someone to maintain such platform.
Like servers, bandwidth and stuff like these, just for start.
I don't know anything about cost analysis behind proprietary content delivery platforms, but maybe (and I repeat: maybe) on the short to medium term, it would still be less expensive to just go with Steam.
And while on the long term could be more effective to have a proprietary solution, one should also take into account that it may just fail under competition, and that would mean that all research, development and maintenance would be wasted.
BoosterDuck
Banned
The Origin client's fucking shitty. Always bugs me with the most useless notifications and never wants to work right.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Steam competitors are a far more valid discussion in a Steam thread than the usual topics brought up.
Well I'm not a luddite. I've been gaming since...early 90s? Yet I'm perfectly happy to have all of the new bells and whistles that come along with modern gaming.
So that includes not having to manually patch things, having cloud saves so I don't have to worry about backing up save files before I reformat, seeing what other people are playing. And achievements more than anything.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Seeing as how probably 50% of my gaming is with friends, yes? We even turn singleplayer games into a community sport.
Hrm, wish I hadn't read that. H:UD was one of the unsung gems that should have received more praise.
I was planning on renting it for the console. I don't need another game to buy
Felix Lighter
Member
The biggest issue with Origin is EA can't be trusted to maintain a DD service long term. They are notorious for abandoning services and games whenever they change focus. I enjoy the Battlefield games, and I will be buying BF4 but it's with the expectation that it will be a game I will not be able to play someday in the future when some EA service that the game relies on, is shutdown.
It's 3, but crazier.
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
A lot of discussion unrelated to yerba mate, too. People need to take their shit elsewhere.
Isn't the 2 the one that's considered one of the worst PC ports of all time? If that ranking is based on the console versions, that's another story.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
2 is also a massive open world turd. 3 destroys it and is a million times more fun to play co-op in compared to 2 where they tend to screw the second player.
Yeah, I agree, their 'solutions' so far have been lackluster and just plain annoying. But my point was that they're not doing this just to spite customers, even if that's all they've managed to to do up until now. Maybe at some point in the future one of them will come up with a way to let us buy/launch games in a way that's not annoying and doesn't involve giving money to Valve.
(Again, I don't mind giving my money to Valve)
Yeah, it's totally wishful thinking. There is money to make though, clearly - if GAME or GameStop or another pure retailer had reacted earlier, they could have had a chance. Amazon has enough power to make a splash, if big publishers like EA and Ubi are more willing to sell games through their software rather than through Steam. But then again Valve are pretty awesome and what has allowed them to dominate so thoroughly is, paradoxically maybe, their apparent desire to not be abusive money-grabbing assholes, which isn't something I'd expect from many companies...
Nymphae
Banned
Everyone is going crazy for that game, but I can't bring myself to pay that price for what looks like a mod. I loved 3 and I know I would have fun with this, but I was expecting a little more I guess for what they're asking.
If EA or Ubisoft want to sell Steam keys for their game, Humble Store-style, where they keep all of the money, that's fine with me. I have no "stock" in Valve Corporation, so it's not really my concern what their cut is, I just care that I get what I want. Humble Store and Amazon seem to have some sort of mysterious business arrangement that bypasses giving Valve a cut on Steam keys.
Sportbilly
Member
Hmm- anybody got an idea what the new 258meg Dishonored update is? I've had to change my download region to the UK as it was really slow (plus the kids are home from school soon and I want to play the damn thing).
PandaPedinte
Member
I think Amazon acquire the keys directly from the publishers/developers.
Or they buy from tf2outpost
This is something Ubi, at the very least, should be exploring. The 2 for $10 deal currently underway at GetGames would be vastly more popular if Ubi had bothered to get from Valve Steam keys for the other games.
Steam doesn't get a cut from keys AFAIK, if a game uses steamworks, the publisher can generate as many steam keys as he wants for no fee from steam (I read that somewhere, someone correct me if i am wrong). I thought it was one of the upsides of using steamworks.
Atraveller
Banned
It has evolved from a piece of shit software to a reliable yet boring, meaningless mandatory launcher.
I played the first 2 on consoles but I heard that 2 was fixed by the mid community.
It's mentioned on the Steamworks landing page:
Edit: I should also note that key generation isn't limited to just Steamworks games -- this is how Amazon is able to sell Steam keys for AssCreed 3 and Far Cry 3, for example. (I wonder how hard Tony had to fight to have Ubi cough them up.)
Well in any case, if the argument were as simple as "we want 100% of the money, they want Steam keys", the solution to both would be seem to be obvious, and the only stipulation would be that they would not be sold/featured on the Steam storefront as a consequence of wanting to keep all of the profits. So they actually want more than that -- they want a share of the overall DD market, not just for their own games.I think Amazon acquire the keys directly from the publishers/developers.
Or they buy from tf2outpost
As far as anyone knows, Valve only takes a cut of Steam keys sold directly from steampowered.com, right.
Sentenza
Member
You are not wrong, but I think that's exactly what he was saying as well.
PandaPedinte
Member
Yes the community fixed the SR2 PC version, the mod is called Gentleman of Row or something like that.
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