October 12, 2011 - 4:18 pm

Steam is awful - and getting worse

Steam: it's like iTunes for computer games... or it should be, anyway. A standard that allows you to find out about games, pay for them, download and enjoy them with friends.

At least, that's the idea. Millions of people have tried it.

Unfortunately, everybody I have discussed it with agrees that Steam is getting worse with each 'update'. Several times a month, a game will be unavailable, pending 'update'. Your bandwidth is hogged until the update is complete.

Sometimes the update is flawed. The (usually undetectable) 'improvement' that it brings actually stops the game from running. Worse yet, the damn thing won't revert to the previous, working version... no, that would be too simple. It just says "updating..." and nothing happens.

That's bad. A seemingly random event that occurs with no warning that an 'update' was planned. Your plan to play the game that evening (or even that week) is wiped out because you're forced to download the 'update' before it can be played again. Even though you didn't want your game - that you paid for - changed. You have no choice.

But wait: there's worse. Steam sometimes (equally, without warning) decides that the game environment itself needs an update... and starts downloading.

Everything else in the house that uses the Internet grinds to a near-halt as greedy Steam hogs all the data. What that must do to a household that pays for data by the megabyte, I shudder to think.

So Steam starts updating. In the middle of a game, the software suddenly decides it needs to get updates. The latest one is 37Mb. So I'm playing with my friends, and suddenly I have six seconds of lag. Playing a video game with a 6-second disconnect between inputs and results is... retarded. Impossible.

Just like Steam.

But OK... I'll say my goodbyes. "Steam is being retarded. See you in half an hour..." Surely, when I come back, the update will be complete?

No. Because the update fails. It downloads the whole file, and changes nothing. Normal service is resumed. Steam doesn't restart, or anything.

Twenty minutes later, it decides that it needs an update... and starts the process again. The update (six times today, so far, which is twice as many times as most days) is exactly the same size, every time. Which leads me to suspect it's exactly the same file. So why does ANY computer program need to download the same data, time after time?

Because there's a bug.

The old version used to work: the new version doesn't. But I'm not allowed to use the old version: because that is the old version... and must be 'updated'.

Again, and again, and again.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tommorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day. Man's but a walking shadow; a poor fool who struts and frets his hour upon the stage... and Steam is shit.

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