Valve cheats people out of money
polycounter lvl 18
Just something interesting I saw on another forum.
http://www.infinity-zero.net/articles/articles.php?showtopic=22
Good thing I didnt buy silver/gold editions. Any of you get blind-sided by them?
oh btw, off topic, whats the deal with polycount putting up information for that dracten mod? Didn't a guy come from there several times posing a "contest" for our modelers to model a rediculously high poly model? (just had to ask :P )
http://www.infinity-zero.net/articles/articles.php?showtopic=22
Good thing I didnt buy silver/gold editions. Any of you get blind-sided by them?
oh btw, off topic, whats the deal with polycount putting up information for that dracten mod? Didn't a guy come from there several times posing a "contest" for our modelers to model a rediculously high poly model? (just had to ask :P )
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oh btw, off topic, whats the deal with polycount putting up information for that dracten mod? Didn't a guy come from there several times posing a "contest" for our modelers to model a rediculously high poly model? (just had to ask :P )
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Lol, I could answer a long way with this question but I won't, don't forget that he begged others to "finish his dragon model" while it was nothing but a drawing :P Most of the polycounters, especially Jon Jones, know all about that desperate furry.
Besides, he has enough artists on his team anyway, just wants more to add to the ego.
Same as you can charge money for makeing a custom model for a game (you get the money for your time not for the model) but cant sell the model. (in case you didnt know its illegal to sell mods for most games)
Least thats what i think how it works.
that was abit of my fault. We met in an IRC room a friend told me to join and he told me about his mod and tried to recruit me. I declined seeing as I could tell he's flipping mental. But I thought I'd might aswell help him so I told him that polycount had alot of up and coming artists that might be interested. I linked him to the request forum and well... the rest is just forgotten history on the old boards.
though, thanks for the heads up, I'm finally getting hl2 next week. Though I don't have a current steam account because some jerk already registered my hl key.
Beware it takes 3 weeks to get a ticket from Valve/steam for any trouble related to registered CDKEYS
HL2 was enjoyable but nothing more.
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I played Halflife 2 non-stop for a week but after a while i simply was tired of the repetive gameplay, there is just that little something that Halflife 1 had that got me to play it for 6 years. Maybe combine vs rebel deathmatch are highly repetive or the fact that there's only 2 default maps. The engine is way better but without the fun factor.
I hope from the bottom of my heart that those valve suckers will have to close down one day and starve
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That's exaclty why they steam exists.
Heaven forbid a game developer wants to make money off their creation, rather than have MuRd3rD3AThKi1169 or some other douchebag hacker crack it so that the hard working artists and engineers dont get the revenue they deserve.
More power to steam, and any hinderance to the piracy of games.
But at what price?
The theory is good, but in reality steam is used to screw the rightful customer, and isn't really hurting the "pirate" in any way at all.
Just like a lot of other stupid copy protection methods recently, but at least they don't steal basic customer rights like steam does.
Leck mich am Arsch. When I pay for a game I don't want to be bothered by ten layers of copy protection. The game will be pirated anyway and the pirates (at least the end users) won't have to deal with those copy protection mechanisms. You don't need more copy protection than some ancient Safedisk mechanism, just enough so you can invoke the DMCA without causing all those incompatibilities modern CP systems cause. It won't make a difference to the pirates but it'll make one hell of a difference to the paying customer.
In other words: If they want to protect their profits that's fine by me as long as it doesn't interfere with my user experience which Steam does. Having a program to do all the patching and downloading extras is fine, forcing me to use some goddamn DRM software that connects to Big Brother on every start (always-on internet connection, can't tell Steam not o connect when there's a possible connection) is NOT. And $DEITY have mercy upon the poor souls who buy an EA game after they start using a similar system.
The so-called offline mode only being accessible when it attempts to connect/login and fails doesn't appear to be very respectful to the customer.
I used steam since the first day it came out, and since it took me about a week to get the newest version of CS when it was first released, I just thought I'd wait.
There's no getting around it, every game will get pirated, no matter what you do... so save the customers the trouble.
At least Valve recently took out the safedisk protection - having to have the disk in the drive AND have steam running made me feel like a second class citizen compared to those who pre-loaded the game, and therefore didn't have/need a disk.
Other publishers will follow suit - I just hope I have a broadband connection by then.
without causing all those incompatibilities modern CP systems cause. It won't make a difference to the pirates but it'll make one hell of a difference to the paying customer.
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I wholeheartedly agree, but I'm not sure if this is really something to say against Steam? I'll admit I have absolutely no experience with Steam, but from what I've heard, it's actually moving copy protection back to the software side, and away from the real problems (CP that is incompatable with hardware). I could be wrong though.
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(always-on internet connection, can't tell Steam not o connect when there's a possible connection) is NOT.
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Two things you can do: Download a (free) software firewall program such as Zonealarm or Sygate Personal Firewall. These should let you disalow programs from accessing the net. I suggest them regardless of whether or not you want Steam to connect to the net.
Second, you can, well, turn off your net connection. It can be done fairly easily. In either 2k or XP, you can just go to Start -> Network Connections -> (Your Connection). Then simply click Disable. Of course, it's a heavy handed method, and less useful than a Software Firewall, but I just mention it to say that there are options.