Getting fed up with buggy steam games!

My lack of access to a credit card is by choice, I hate dealing with bills, and the temptation to buy things on credit. Besides, lack of a credit card is not that uncommon in my country.

If there is anything worse than bills, it is cash. Well, either that or having to buy things in stores because you don’t have any way to buy them online.

Do a web search for prepaid Visa cards.

Yep, i think he should give up pc gaming altogether and play Fallout New Vegas in console.

:P

So if I buy grand theft auto 4 retail, I will keep getting a message that the game is not available? This is a steam problem, not a disc problem.

As for far cry 2, I ask the same. Would a retail copy remove dialogue and lock you in the starting room with a guy blocking you in a doorway.

So far , crysis works fine, at least until a couple hours in when my screen reduced in size and I had a low memory problem. 4 gigs is not enough for this game?

That’s one out of three that work.

The first one does sound Steam-related (there are some common causes for that error, poke around a bit for more info), but the Far Cry 2 one still doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Steam. “Would a retail copy remove dialogue and lock you in the starting room with a guy blocking you in a doorway?” Um, yes? Games have bugs even when they’re not on Steam…

Yea I’m going to have to agree with Fugitive here spatzi, your being a bit of an idiot.

Far Cry 2 is a pretty good port and has no significant bugs of which I am aware. Sounds like you suck at computers as much as you suck at the internet.

All I know is that I downloaded Steam and then the next day I stubbed my toe and my doctor told me I should watch my cholestrol! Then when I went to the grocery store they didn’t have my favorite kind of bread and now I’m at work and everyone forgot my birthday!

Fuck you, Steam!

Sorry, you are clearly beyond help.
Just stop slandering Steam and go back to using an abacus or something more appropriate.

The abacus is too asian for spatzi.

Spatzi is clearly a viral marketer for Valve. They want to spread the idea that anyone who has a beef with Steam is basically an idiot. They want to turn the attention away from any legitimate problems Steam might have by having people like spatzi focus on things that Steam can’t be blamed for.

But I thought steam was perfect? Some of you act like it’s your mother. So sorry to insult mama steam.

Yes, I agree. I suck at computers because steam tells me the game is not available. I tried all the tricks to get around this but none worked. Still, I will send a formal apology to your mother.

A lot of these responses show remarkable dipshitery. If you can’t stand seeing steam, far cry 2 or grand theft auto 4 insulted, move on.

Have you played the same games on your computer using retail copies, to see if Steam really is the problem, or if the problem is actually something else like the game itself or your computer? If not, why are you making a ridiculous jump to this conclusion and rageposting about it here? To be frank, you come across as an idiot. And no, I could care less if steam, far cry or grand theft auto are insulted.

You guy laugh all you want, but spatzi is on point with this one.

One time when it was hot, I was eating an ice cream cone when my cell phone rang. When I turned my hand to get my phone out of my pocket, the ice cream on my cone fell off!

Fuck Steam!

What you likely have is a pebkac problem.

I just want to say that this is a pretty great setup and I’d like to think spazi for sharing it with us.

PS You should, she was hella disappointed.

PPS What? If anything your mother should be sending an apology to me!

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t try either a) verifying the local game content or b) reinstalling.

Who ever claimed Steam was perfect? Steam was notorious for being riddled with problems early on in its life, and it’s only within the last few years that it’s reached a level of tolerability. But that doesn’t mean that every problem is automatically Steam’s fault.

Really, there are multiple issues at play here:

  1. Problems with Steam

As mentioned, Steam isn’t perfect and still has ongoing issues, like the wonkiness with automatic updates (weird starting and stopping, occasionally missing files and requiring verification), the overlay not working well with some games, unclear offline mode behaviour, etc.

  1. Problems with Games

Games still have their own bugs completely independent of Steam though. If you run Mass Effect 2 and your character gets stuck on a railing as you’re moving around, that’s almost certainly Mass Effect 2’s problem, not Steam’s. It would be unrealistic to expect Steam to do technical support and fixes for all of the third-party games on the service; they’re just a distributor/retailer here, not the publisher or developer. Game bugginess is an ongoing PC gaming problem in general, not really a Steam one.

  1. Policies for handling ‘bad’ games

If you really try and can’t get a game to work, what should you be able to do? You’d reasonably expect to be able to get a refund, and it’s a valid criticism of Steam that you can’t do so; their policy is that all sales are final and no refunds ever. But that’s not a Steam-specific problem either, as it’s difficult to get a refund for games from anybody. It’s something that can definitely be improved, though.

So, you really have to find out where your true problems lie. GTA4 not launching might be a Steam problem, or might not be. That “unavailable” error occurs when Steam launches a game, but it hasn’t seen the game process successfully running after a certain timeout period. Could be because Steam didn’t set something up properly, could be because the game itself crashed or exited immediately because of its own problems, could be because it was intercepted by an antivirus program (some AV programs gave false positives on some Steam games), could be because of OS issues like compatibility modes or privilege levels, could be a lot of different things. Get some advice, go through tech support, and if they still can’t help you (it’s still not necessarily Steam’s fault, but it doesn’t really matter to the end user), then you can legitimately bitch about the refund issue.

But the Far Cry 2 issue sounds purely like the second case, in which case Steam is irrelevant.

spatzi,

Have you tried verifying the game cache for GTA4 and Far Cry 2? Instructions for doing this are here.

Also, I’ve seen people on the Steam forums mention that they had trouble with Far Cry 2 that was related to the version of video driver (probably Nvidia) they were using, and they updating their drivers from the NVida website solved their problems. Have you tried new drivers? Have you also tried playing around with the configuration options for audio and video for the game? What you describe sounds to me like something is wrong with either the video or audio (possibly both) setup for the game.

Steam also has tech support you could try contacting, especially for the GTA4 issue since it’s not so much a playability thing as an access problem (and thus likely Steam related).

Note that all of the above assume you’re still interested in giving Steam a chance. I understand your frustration, but it sounds like you may have just been unlucky enough to have a Steam related issue (GTA4) and a flakey game related issue (Far Cry 2) on your first purchase.