What's the point of developers releasing their older titles on Steam if they aren't going to fix old bugs?

[Sureshot324]

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: Locut0s
So the other day I discovered that Titan's Quest was available on Steam. This is great I said to myself! I bought the game in a bargain bin about a year ago and loved playing the first act until the game started to crash. I did some research and it turns out the problem was the game's age. When it was programmed multiple cores were not around yet so obviously they didn't take that into account. Now it turns out you can get around this problem by assigning the game to one core. However it appears that the graphics card I have also causes the game problems, again too new. Anyway the combo of the two makes the game repeatedly crash to the desktop and renders it unplayable. Well that's that I though not much I can do about it now since the developer stopped support for the game. Then I see that they are re releasing it on Steam. Great I thought surely this is an updated version of the game then made to run on more modern hardware! Well a quick trip to the Steam forums for the game puts that hope to rest. There are a number of posters there with the same issues. Why the fuck would you re release a game years latter and not fix bugs with the game that prevent it from running on many of the systems that exist now!?

uh, what? are we talking about Titan Quest, the game that's like Diablo but set in ancient Greek or Roman times that was made by Iron Lore?

the game runs fine on multi-core cpus, at least on dual core anyway. and how "new" of a video card do you have? I have a hard time believing it's your "new' hardware that is causing the problem if we're talking about the same game.

Yes Titan Quest.
Early versions of the game had problems with multicore systems. I know because I moved from a single to dual core while I was playing it. You have to uncheck 1 CPU in your Task Manager to get it working right.
BUT, with patches or the expansion, the game should be OK with any system.
Most video cards should not have any incompatibilities provided they meet the system requirements and you have the latest drivers.
And "latest" isnt too important because ATI and Nvidia should have fixed most of the issues years ago.

Doesn't Steam install those patches?

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
I think thats the real grip here. Valve has no problem making a profit off a game that cant be fixed anymore.

I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people in this thread don't have a problem with getting paid on days where they spend part of their time posting on internet forums either.

 

[shortylickens]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7

Originally posted by: shortylickens
I think thats the real grip here. Valve has no problem making a profit off a game that cant be fixed anymore.

I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people in this thread don't have a problem with getting paid on days where they spend part of their time posting on internet forums either.

Perhaps, but if I were their boss I'd fire them.
And if I purchase a game I expect it to work or for the company who made money off it to try and get it working better. New features and maps and items and such I can understand them asking for more money.

 

[tokie]

I couldn't even open Unreal 2 after purchasing it on Steam. Gave some audio errors which apparently tons of other people get too which were supposed to be fixed in the last patch.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7
I replayed through TQ and the expansion last month with an i7 and a GTX 295. I had a couple of crashes over 20+ hours, but no more than it crashed on me when I first got it. It's just a buggy game IMO. It would be nice added value if Valve would go through everything and troubleshoot bugs in Vista/Win7 but it's slightly unreasonable to expect them to be patching other developers code. Setting up DOSBox for XCOM is more in line with my expectations for their support of legacy games.

I really can't criticize Valve for trying to earn money, if only because that's how they pay their employees and I happen to be an employee who likes getting paid. It would feel kinda funny trying to hold a software developer to a higher set of priorities then my own, but I guess that's just me.

Valve/Steam is just acting as an Outlet in these situations. The Developer/Publisher/whomever Released on Steam is who should be fixing those problems.

As was already pointed out, the people who made Titan Quest went out of business.

I think thats the real gripe here. Valve has no problem making a profit off a game that cant be fixed anymore.

Whoever currently Owns the Game and/or put it on Steam is Responsible. If it's Valve, then there you go.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Perhaps, but if I were their boss I'd fire them.
And if I purchase a game I expect it to work or for the company who made money off it to try and get it working better. New features and maps and items and such I can understand them asking for more money.

Then to further the analogy, workers choose not to surf the internet all day because of incentives (not being fired) rather than through their own benevolence to the company that's hiring them.

Similarly, if Valve is making older games available online then the customers provide incentive in the form of either buying the games or not, and complaining all over the internet about them or not. The fact that Steam is trying to make money means that they are forced to be responsive to customers and is a fairly silly thing to criticize them for.

Originally posted by: sandoriski
Whoever currently Owns the Game and/or put it on Steam is Responsible. If it's Valve, then there you go.

I don't agree with that at all. If you bought a copy of Tie-Fighter off Ebay, or the AT forums you would never expect the seller to help you get it working under Vista as part of the condition of the sale. This thread isn't even about that, however, but about fixing bugs in the original game. Why does the exchange medium suddenly obligate the seller to wade through 3rd party bugs?

 

[stephengillie]

Originally posted by: pontifex

uh, what? are we talking about Titan Quest, the game that's like Diablo but set in ancient Greek or Roman times that was made by Iron Lore?

the game runs fine on multi-core cpus, at least on dual core anyway. and how "new" of a video card do you have? I have a hard time believing it's your "new' hardware that is causing the problem if we're talking about the same game.

I agree. It runs on my HP tx2500 laptop (2.1ghz turion, ati 3200hd, 4gb ddr2, vista 64).

I haven't had it crash once. I have to run it on minimum settings but my only problem is the character management (if you reinstall the game, your old character files are still there, but the game won't use them)

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Perhaps, but if I were their boss I'd fire them.
And if I purchase a game I expect it to work or for the company who made money off it to try and get it working better. New features and maps and items and such I can understand them asking for more money.

Then to further the analogy, workers choose not to surf the internet all day because of incentives (not being fired) rather than through their own benevolence to the company that's hiring them.

Similarly, if Valve is making older games available online then the customers provide incentive in the form of either buying the games or not, and complaining all over the internet about them or not. The fact that Steam is trying to make money means that they are forced to be responsive to customers and is a fairly silly thing to criticize them for.

Originally posted by: sandoriski
Whoever currently Owns the Game and/or put it on Steam is Responsible. If it's Valve, then there you go.

I don't agree with that at all. If you bought a copy of Tie-Fighter off Ebay, or the AT forums you would never expect the seller to help you get it working under Vista as part of the condition of the sale. This thread isn't even about that, however, but about fixing bugs in the original game. Why does the exchange medium suddenly obligate the seller to wade through 3rd party bugs?

You misread my post.

 

[shortylickens]

Originally posted by: tokie
I couldn't even open Unreal 2 after purchasing it on Steam. Gave some audio errors which apparently tons of other people get too which were supposed to be fixed in the last patch.

I got the collectors DVD with Unreal, UT, UT2004 and Unreal 2.
All games worked fine for me out of the box.

Either your system has issues, or the Steam version is messed up somehow.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: sandorski
You misread my post.

The developer (Iron Lore) closed shop last year but the publisher (THQ) is still around. I doubt they'd be interested in spending development resources on an old game though, they're probably too busy trying to figure out how to milk their WWE license.

 

[CountZero]

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7

Originally posted by: shortylickens
I think thats the real grip here. Valve has no problem making a profit off a game that cant be fixed anymore.

I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people in this thread don't have a problem with getting paid on days where they spend part of their time posting on internet forums either.

Perhaps, but if I were their boss I'd fire them.
And if I purchase a game I expect it to work or for the company who made money off it to try and get it working better. New features and maps and items and such I can understand them asking for more money.

That's like expecting gamestop to fix a buggy game. They made money on it so they should fix it? Now THQ as the publisher would be a fair target, they decided to release an 'old' game through Steam and as such if you have a complaint about a buggy game it falls at their feet, not Valve.

Just because the distribution system (Steam) is run by a company with developers (Valve) does not mean they suddenly need to do bug fixes for every game they distribute.

 

[BFG10K]

HL Opposing Force still has the "getting stuck on top of platforms" bug. But for a buck sixty eight, I'll jump in the air to get around it.

 

[Jumpem]

It's expected.

Developers don't have the resources to fix bugs as they are found forever. It is too costly to make absolutely bug free software. You have a list of known bugs, and determine which have a highest impact and should be fixed. The rest, even though they are known, remain.

 

[Chaotic42]

Try playing Commandos on Steam.