I wouldn’t get to used to that. I think we’re getting there. Once Disney starts sucking the money out of cable, I feel like they’re going to be desperate enough to change that.
I have Charter too, and I don’t like your prophecy.
They’ve been slowly increasing the price and speed. They also rolled out some type of mobile service. Hopefully they are diversifying because they know the demand for cable keeps shrinking.
Yeah but the demand for data really isn’t. If they sent you or me or Kerzain a latter tomorrow that says hey another 10% increase (10% isn’t really that slow of an increase) and by the way you now have a data cap… what can you do. I have no other cable company. Charter has a lot of locations like that. The Spectrum Mobile plan actually isn’t that bad of a deal considering it’s Verizon except… you have to buy the phone from them. You can’t bring your own device.
I hope I am wrong, but I gotta feeling data caps with tiered pricing is how they are going to try and “compete” because they don’t now how to compete anymore.
They are. Charter wants to ultimately get out of cable TV, and just make the internet bill your internet+cable TV bill in terms of price.
They can’t do caps until 2023 at least, and by then hopefully the political environment makes that a non-starter.
Reason #542 I like Steam. Went to load Anno 1404 that I purchased on GamersGate about a decade ago. I wanted to see how it compared against 1800.
Invalid key.
Sigh. Chalk up another lost game to the digital Gods. That can get thrown in the pile with the direct2drive, stardock and a few others that have gone to the digital graveyard.[quote=“JoshL, post:595, topic:131364, full:true”]
Just out of curiosity, were you trying to redeem a key you bought a decade ago, or just download a game you’d bought a decade ago, and were just re-downloading?
There was a period of time when 1404 wasn’t available on Steam. I don’t know if that would have anything to do with it.
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Re-downloading and this did not have a Steam key but some other key. Whatever it was, it did not work. I am sure that I could email GG and get a new key but the download was an attempt to compare 1404 with 1800. That time has passed now so it no longer really matters.
But that is now at least the third digital store where either games have vanished or keys stopped working. Whoops, make that four, I should not forget ViaTech either. So any time I hear that Epic is “just another launcher/store”, that does not have a positive connotation.
Just out of curiosity, were you trying to redeem a key you bought a decade ago, or just download a game you’d bought a decade ago, and were just re-downloading?
There was a period of time when 1404 wasn’t available on Steam. I don’t know if that would have anything to do with it.
Could you even buy Steam games on GamersGate a decade ago?
No, this was some other type of key.
I am sure that I could email GG support and obtain a working key but I wanted to compare 1404 with 1800. That time has passed so there is no purpose now. So now that is three - whoops, cannot forget ViaTech so four - retailers where I have lost access to digital games or keys. Anytime someone says a new store like Epic’s is “just another launcher” actually holds a negative connotation to me.
I also had a gamergate version of 1404, but rebought it on steam on some sale, perhaps he did the same and just forgot to activate it? Thus this isn’t a gamergate issue, but just a generic humble bundle…etc key that didn’t active.
What are the issues with Gamersgate or Direct2Drive? Did stuff go missing? I see a bunch of D2D stuf still, though my GG seems to have all of 3 titles.
It’s entirely possible that the key is correct and that the original publishers of Anno 1404, or whoever it is that runs the key servers, don’t have them up and running any more! :(
I thought it was D2D but perhaps it was someone else. When they were bought out they lost the distribution rights to some games and therefore customers lost the games if they were not downloaded.
Yes, I believe I lost several games from previous D2D ownership changes.
Technically they are still around, but I lost a good amount when they changed ownership and re-branded.
Edit: I just went to the current D2D site and tried to login, and the site indicated that my account is ‘innactive’ so unless I want to fight with customer service it seems like I have lost everything. Not sure if I needed to login in periodically to keep my account active or what happened there.
Thankfully the last few recent purchases I was able to redeem on Steam at the time.
Exactly. So when the Epic fans claim that store is just another store, that is not a selling point. D2D, Impulse, GG and ViaTech were all just other stores and I have lost products from each. But I have over a decade of history and 300+ games with Steam and have not lost one.
Yep. These are platforms, not just stores. And as a platform in which to invest your money, you want something that is fairly monolithic and will stick around. It needs to prove itself over time with long-term commitment. Steam is just such a platform, and there is plenty of competition using Steam as the platform while competing at the seller level, as has been mentioned above.
GOG is another platform, but it’s one I’m far less confident about long-term. Nevertheless, I choose to support GOG because I believe in their stance.
OMG, I totally misinterpreted your original post. I thought you had bought a Steam key from GG, and it wouldn’t redeem, and that when you said “Reason #542 why I like Steam” you were being sarcastic.
Now I gotcha. You actually do like Steam due to its history of reliability. Which I also like!
I’m just less annoyed by other platforms. It sucks, but the same thing is happening in video streaming services too. It’s just where we are now. Of course, I’m mostly only playing games on other platforms that they’re giving me for free (Twitch and Epic especially), so I’m not that invested. I have bought a few things on GOG and UPlay.
Maybe you’ve checked this, but could it be your hard drive that’s slowing everything down? On the download page, the graph has two lines - one for your DL speed (network) and one for the write speed (disk). I know when we finally got a gigabit internet connection, sometimes our downloads would start and stop, but the graph was clearly showing that my older HDD couldn’t write as fast as our internet connection could download.
A good thought, but I have a Samsung SSD so I don’t believe that’s the issue. I won’t rule it out, but it seems unlikely to me.
Yeah, seems unlikely if you’re writing to an SSD. I was not when I was having this issue.