Is Steam still hosed?

[WannaFly]

If I purcahse it on steam, will it take forever t active and crap? Or should i just purchase it from best buy?

 

[blurredvision]

Steam bandwidth. Look at the bottom picture. What you are looking at is the answer to your question, which is yes. If you purchase tonight, you MIGHT be able to play mid-day tomorrow. On any normal Steam day (i.e. pre-HL2), the used bandwidth would be well below 5000Mbps.

 

[Abhoth]

Steam was, and still is, a bad idea. And the 'must get online' for authentication thing is stupid. Folks will buy it sure... me thinks there will be much hate generated over the thing though.

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: Abhoth
Steam was, and still is, a bad idea. And the 'must get online' for authentication thing is stupid. Folks will buy it sure... me thinks there will be much hate generated over the thing though.

Unless you have an enterprise copy of Windows XP, you have to do the online activation thing with Microsoft too. This may just get more common.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: WannaFly
If I purcahse it on steam, will it take forever t active and crap? Or should i just purchase it from best buy?

Activation isn't what takes so long....

you are downloading 4+ gb.....

Originally posted by: Abhoth
Steam was, and still is, a bad idea. And the 'must get online' for authentication thing is stupid. Folks will buy it sure... me thinks there will be much hate generated over the thing though.

What so bad about Steam? It has been flawless for me...

 

[styrafoam]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Steam bandwidth. Look at the bottom picture. What you are looking at is the answer to your question, which is yes. If you purchase tonight, you MIGHT be able to play mid-day tomorrow. On any normal Steam day (i.e. pre-HL2), the used bandwidth would be well below 5000Mbps.

That graph says they are hovering at 10000 used out of 15000 available? I had no issues authenticating. Updates came through at about 300kbps.

 

[WannaFly]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU

Originally posted by: WannaFly
If I purcahse it on steam, will it take forever t active and crap? Or should i just purchase it from best buy?

Activation isn't what takes so long....

you are downloading 4+ gb.....

Yah, I was thinking about stopping at a B&M and buying it so i dont have to download it - but then it doesnt come with CS:S i see

 

[XBoxLPU]

The Retail package which costs $54 comes with Hl2 and CS:S on 5 CDs

The CE which costs $79 comes with Hl2,CS:S and HL:S on one DVD

 

[royaldank]

I downloaded HL1 Source last night. Took roughly 35 minutes to grab the ~800 megs off steam. Not bad at all. It's getting hammered, but they seem to be keeping up fairly well.

 

[DefRef]

It took me 40 minutes to install the retail CDs and get Steam activated, etc. Some people at another forum are reporting 4-6 HOURS to get going. YMMV, big time!

 

[BW86]

steam isnt that bad today, You should have preloaded it 😛

Took me around 4 hours to actually log onto steam yesterday but only around 2 minutes to unlock it.

 

[sswingle]

I preloaded, and it took about 15 min to get online and activate yesterday afternoon.

 

[WannaFly]

Im still debating wether i should buy it on the way home or just order it through steam. 🙁

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: styrafoam

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Steam bandwidth. Look at the bottom picture. What you are looking at is the answer to your question, which is yes. If you purchase tonight, you MIGHT be able to play mid-day tomorrow. On any normal Steam day (i.e. pre-HL2), the used bandwidth would be well below 5000Mbps.

That graph says they are hovering at 10000 used out of 15000 available? I had no issues authenticating. Updates came through at about 300kbps.

When I downloaded HL:S last night, it was going slow on my 3Mbps connection. Must've been on a bogged down server.

 

[gururu]

Originally posted by: DefRef
It took me 40 minutes to install the retail CDs and get Steam activated, etc. Some people at another forum are reporting 4-6 HOURS to get going. YMMV, big time!

so far it's taken me an hour and a half with a retail copy....those bastards

 

[Childs]

I installed off DVD last night and Steam seemed to be working alright. In the time it took to eat my tv dinner the files were unlocked. The transaction (registration) coudln't be processed for a few hours, but I was able to play during that time. I didn't start the process till around 9PM PST, so maybe when the east coasters went to bed Steam worked better.

 

[WannaFly]

Well I gave in and bought it off of steam, its pre-loading now. I'm getting about 200kbps average download, hopefully it'll be done SOMETIME tonight 🙂

 

[erikistired]

steam has never stopped working for me. however there were some activation issues which were addressed by valve. anyone who wants to complain about steam is more than welcome not to buy valve's games, no one is twisting your arm and the only person missing out is you.