Is Starmade ready for Steam?

[Ithirahad]

Honestly? Who cares?
I for one avoid Steam and anything like it at all costs. I unhook any games I have that try to use Steam from it first thing, and all around do my damndest to not even let it launch under any circumstance.

...Why? I never really use Steam by choice, but it something happens to be running on or hooked into Steam, I just let it run...

 

[Jananton]

I'm no Steam fan either, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I remember it started some eight or nine years ago when computer games were still widely available in shops over here and when you came home with a new DVD you bought all of a sudden it needed Steam to be activated. I remember that happened with Deus Ex, Civilisation V, Skyrim and a few others I forgot at the moment.

Steam of course started as a cheap remedy against piracy of creations from small independent game software houses, but has since then grown in quite a big Moloch like institution. As far as I can see their 'recommendations' for games are mostly based on earnings although sometimes there can be a hidden gem in there.

Personally when I have the choice I rather buy from the source, like with StarMade, Minecraft and the Kerbal Space Program for instance, but that's not always possible.

Also, people seem to have forgotten that before Steam many if not all games required the original CD or DVD in the Rom drive to play them for verifying originality reasons, there definitely are two sides to the coin here.

Greets,

Jan

 

[Megacrafter127]

Also, people seem to have forgotten that before Steam many if not all games required the original CD or DVD in the Rom drive to play them for verifying originality reasons, there definitely are two sides to the coin here.

I never forgot that, but that's mostly because I knew how to make a virtual drive of the CD/DVD-rom, so I could have my real drive free for other stuff.

 

[Edymnion]

...Why? I never really use Steam by choice, but it something happens to be running on or hooked into Steam, I just let it run...

When I play an offline game, its usually because there's a storm outside that is killing my internet connection. Which generally means if I'm playing a single player PC game, I can't log into an online disguised DRM system. When I want to play a single player game, I want to play the game. Not wait for Steam to update, then wait for it to do an automatic update of the game, etc etc etc. And even though I keep it in Offline mode for games that I absolutely have to launch through Steam, it still manages to reset to regular mode every so often.

So yeah, when I see "Powered by Steam" on a game box, I typically put it back unless its something REALLY good that I can't afford not to play (like an Elder Scrolls game, or Civilization), and even then I replace the Steam shortcut with one directly to the game executable so that Steam never gets a chance to launch.

I hate Steam, I hate Origin, I hate all of these online DRM systems that require online connectivity for a single player game.

And thats without even getting into the potential privacy concerns about having a commercial third party application that wants to run silently in the background at all times that is capable of scanning everything you do on your computer and sending it all back to corporate and just trusting that they won't abuse that power (EA says Hi, btw).

 

[Reilly Reese]

When I play an offline game, its usually because there's a storm outside that is killing my internet connection. Which generally means if I'm playing a single player PC game, I can't log into an online disguised DRM system. When I want to play a single player game, I want to play the game. Not wait for Steam to update, then wait for it to do an automatic update of the game, etc etc etc. And even though I keep it in Offline mode for games that I absolutely have to launch through Steam, it still manages to reset to regular mode every so often.

So yeah, when I see "Powered by Steam" on a game box, I typically put it back unless its something REALLY good that I can't afford not to play (like an Elder Scrolls game, or Civilization), and even then I replace the Steam shortcut with one directly to the game executable so that Steam never gets a chance to launch.

I hate Steam, I hate Origin, I hate all of these online DRM systems that require online connectivity for a single player game.

And thats without even getting into the potential privacy concerns about having a commercial third party application that wants to run silently in the background at all times that is capable of scanning everything you do on your computer and sending it all back to corporate and just trusting that they won't abuse that power (EA says Hi, btw).

Punkbuster is most obvious of the bullshit things here.


Fortunately Skyrim has SKSE and fortunately nearly everyone with a good mod has SKSE.

 

[Winterhome]

I was able to play my Steam games without an internet connection for over a year and a half, not sure what you guys are on about.

 

[CyberTao]

I was able to play my Steam games without an internet connection for over a year and a half, not sure what you guys are on about.

Lucky you. I can barely go a week before steam decides "I need to connect now". That doesn't go well when I have no internet what so ever.

 

[Winterhome]

Lucky you. I can barely go a week before steam decides "I need to connect now". That doesn't go well when I have no internet what so ever.

It *does* seem to be a bit buggy, at the very best. Apparently there's some sort of order of operations you have to take to get it to accept that you're intentionally going without internet or something. Getting kicked offline by external factors doesn't go so well for the system they have in place, it seems. Pretty ridiculous - apparently it "loses" your login details every so often.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Steam tries to connect and whn I have no connection it asks if I want offline mode. Click it and everything is fine.

 

[CyberTao]

Steam tries to connect and whn I have no connection it asks if I want offline mode. Click it and everything is fine.

That only lasts as long as Steam saves your log in data. If it derps and loses that, it does not allow you to use Offline mode, because the DRM that it is can not verify that you own these games (since they are tied to the lost account data).

So fun times.

 

[Reilly Reese]

I've never had it lose my data on either of my computers.


Guess i'm lucky or your unlucky.

 

[Winterhome]

That only lasts as long as Steam saves your log in data. If it derps and loses that, it does not allow you to use Offline mode, because the DRM that it is can not verify that you own these games (since they are tied to the lost account data).

So fun times.

Yeah, that very rarely happens when you're kicked off of internet for a long time without actually telling Steam that you're going offline. Pretty sure you have to tell it to go offline when you're already logged in or something - either way, it's bugged, from what I understand. One of the big lines that Valve has always liked is claiming that they're not trying to stop people from playing games offline, and I honestly don't think that the problem is intentional... just very low on the "fix this" list.

 

[CyberTao]

just very low on the "fix this" list.

Wait, they have a list of things to do? That doesn't involved farming cash in some way?

 

[Winterhome]

Wait, they have a list of things to do? That doesn't involved farming cash in some way?

Everyone has a bug fix list lying around. That particular bug is just on the "conveniently forget it exists when asked" list.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Fucking up mod communities is much much higher