I like the ad's that say "Buy this awesome game for £5" though
Ah'm Un-Instawllin' Steeeem.
- Thread starter Ralph Vargr
- Start date
I like the ad's that say "Buy this awesome game for £5" though
He's blowing steam out of his backside. Steam doesn't have any hidden processes.
There are very few. One thing not to ignore is the speed of updates. Steam servers typically downloads major patches to my system at thirty to fifty times the rate of Frontier direct downloads when everyone and their dog are downloading them.
Steam also does this automatically and does not require you manually start the process. On my PC, Steam would be one of the last programs I would remove. 100MB of RAM use is nothing, but I do have 32GB currently.
Instead of killing processes run MSCONFIG and turn off the Apple stuff (and Google and others) from starting. Also, go into services tab and turn off any unneeded non-Microsoft tasks.
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Oh, I quite agree on the downloads. It may be unique to my PC. But, then, speaking of unique, I have hemorrhoids from pulling G's IRL, unlike many of the White Knights.
The DRM may benefit others, but the ease of use, centralised library and ability to purchase games without having to leave the house and go hunting around shops, hoping somewhere has a copy of the game I want far outweighs any negatives. I can understand why people don't like DRM but I also understand why publishers don't like piracy. What I don't understand is why people dislike steam, just because. Maybe it's just the cool thing to do these days, I don't know.
What advertisements? If you open the store page then yes, you'll see advertisements for games because, well, it's the store. Never seen an advertisement on Steam. Been a user for over a decade.
For what it's worth, I don't dislike Steam. I've bought a few hundred games there and use it regularly.
I just don't see any reason to get Valve involved in games I can buy direct from the developer, or at least from another retailer like GOG which doesn't insist I run their software whenever I want to play my games.
I have to ask. If you have 15-20% of your 16GB system RAM committed, hell let's go high and call it 20%, what exactly are you doing that means about 12.8GB of RAM available for applications isn't enough?
I have 16GB in mine which is about 4 years and 3 months old, it's an i7 3770 running Win 7 Pro. Right now I'm using about 2.8GB (your top end estimate of 20% is about 3.2GB) and I haven't hit a moment where I considered uninstalling stuff due to performance issues since the day I built it. Probably fair to point out that I have hardly anything running on startup intentionally, although I do have Steam running on startup and indeed all the time, with no attempt by me to configure it in a particularly efficient way. Isn't the issue more likely to be a huge volume of fundamentally unnecessary crap running in the background like the vast majority of PCs I see rather than specifically Steam or any associated processes?
Likewise, the only time I usually buy a game on Steam is if they have it on an outrageous offer in a sale or if it's the only distribution platform available.
Dislike would be too strong a word but in general I don't consider monopolies to be healthy and Steam has been working hard to become one since its inception.
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I never understood the point of stream, still don't.
Frontier Support finally got back to me, and yes, I can run both my main, and alt accounts from the standard Elite folder.
Steam, like my NPC crew, is eating my resources, and returning very little.
Will report later, after validating files.
I miss my DX2 66
[video=youtube;tRxcSNaVCPA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRxcSNaVCPA[/video]
I also like the convenience of having most of my games in a single place, the screenshot manager and the social tools.
Steam is currently using 75.5mb of my miniscule 16GB; RAM hogger of note!
I wouldn't say they've been working hard to become a monopoly. It's not like they're trying to sue Origin or UPlay or GOG. They've been working hard to provide a better and better service, without a doubt. Also, a lot of peoples favourite games from now defunct publishers, like Company of Heroes from THQ for example, are still online playable because Steam are providing servers for them and in a lot of cases, if you already owned the CD/DVD version of the game you could activate it on Steam simply by typing in the cd key off the box, meaning that you could take advantage of the Steam servers for the game without actually giving Valve any money.
All in all I would say Steam was probably the most consumer friendly digital distribution system there is. They're number 1 because they just do it better than everyone else, not because they're doing everything they can to shut the competition down.
steam uses little resources but in return allows you to chat with friends, broadcast your game for them to watch (either to tempt them to buy the game or to show them how to defeat a boss or something). you can trigger a FPS counter and make it high vis colour and pick the corner you want it in and it isnt cm high numbers but 3 or 4mm high so its unobtrusive, plus it tells you when updates are available and downloads them with elite and you dont need to run the launcher for that, tho you could do that from the launcher. steam also tells me how many hours i have played and if i go to a community hub for a game how many players are INGAME right that second i went to the hub. with elite it tells you how many people have launched elite launcher from steam technically having the launcher open - so it doesnt necessarily show they are in game, they may be reading the launcher news items. it cant tell you how many non steam versions are running of games. plus the store has a lot of games for sale. one yesterday was FREE and not one of the normally free to play it was an offer.
now if it bothers you, all you need to do is NOT RUN STEAM. i dont have it set to launch when i turn on the laptop. so i could technically just not launch steam, go into the steam folder where elite is installed and find the frontier launcher and run that, and run elite from that - and you can do that without using the shortcut on desktop (which will launch steam) or running steam - i have done this, and i have player elite directly by running the elite launcher exe from the folder. and that way i can still buy games on steam with paypal and see all my activation keys if i need a lot easier.
now if it bothers you, all you need to do is NOT RUN STEAM. i dont have it set to launch when i turn on the laptop. so i could technically just not launch steam, go into the steam folder where elite is installed and find the frontier launcher and run that, and run elite from that - and you can do that without using the shortcut on desktop (which will launch steam) or running steam - i have done this, and i have player elite directly by running the elite launcher exe from the folder. and that way i can still buy games on steam with paypal and see all my activation keys if i need a lot easier.
Steam is set to not launch with Windows in my PC and laptop.
Mainly because my girlfriend doesn't like me playing games, so I've sneakily hidden it. And it popping up unannounced would sort of ruin that. Lol
And partly because my PC is a bit of a slow starter. (Standard 7200rpm HDD).
And partly to prevent any updates hogging my already slow internet, while we're trying to watch Netflix. Lol
Other than that, I have far more demanding apps running in the background. And I only have 8Gb of DDR3. Still never gets full.
I would install another 8Gb of the same stuff, but I foolishly fell for the "awesome heat fins" on my RAM, but alas, they don't fit under my CPU cooler, and I don't fancy cutting anything up. Yet.
Plus I desperately need that £55 towards a new GPU. Which I've been "saving" for, for over two years. I have £10 saved.
Steam is incredibly handy. I have 108~ games. And I don't need to have a room full of DVD sized boxes like I used too. No swapping discs. And I get 10% off steam wallet gift cards where I work.
Only thing I can't do is sell the ones I don't use. But then selling them is a faff anyway.
Oh, and the interface is very 1990s. Lol
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Mainly because my girlfriend doesn't like me playing games, so I've sneakily hidden it. And it popping up unannounced would sort of ruin that. Lol
And partly because my PC is a bit of a slow starter. (Standard 7200rpm HDD).
And partly to prevent any updates hogging my already slow internet, while we're trying to watch Netflix. Lol
Other than that, I have far more demanding apps running in the background. And I only have 8Gb of DDR3. Still never gets full.
I would install another 8Gb of the same stuff, but I foolishly fell for the "awesome heat fins" on my RAM, but alas, they don't fit under my CPU cooler, and I don't fancy cutting anything up. Yet.
Plus I desperately need that £55 towards a new GPU. Which I've been "saving" for, for over two years. I have £10 saved.
Steam is incredibly handy. I have 108~ games. And I don't need to have a room full of DVD sized boxes like I used too. No swapping discs. And I get 10% off steam wallet gift cards where I work.
Only thing I can't do is sell the ones I don't use. But then selling them is a faff anyway.
Oh, and the interface is very 1990s. Lol
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
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I'm sorry to break this news to you, but you really need a new girlfriend.
I'm sorry to break this news to you, but you really need a new girlfriend.
I do, but I've come to like my current one.
I just need to sway her to the dark side!
I got my hopes up the other day, she'd been hanging out with her work friends, and her friends boyfriend was playing a PS4 game that she liked the look of.
She later said "if you could have a console again, what would it be?"... But I kinda blurted out "Why do I need a console when my PC is still capable? Consoles are crap!" and kinda ended the dream with my PC-master-race mindset. Lol
(In my defense, my last console died at the most inconvenient time! Damn Xbox...)
I shoulda just said PS4. Lol even though I know what game he was playing, and I hate it. Lol
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I do, but I've come to like my current one.
I just need to sway her to the dark side!
I got my hopes up the other day, she'd been hanging out with her work friends, and her friends boyfriend was playing a PS4 game that she liked the look of.
She later said "if you could have a console again, what would it be?"... But I kinda blurted out "Why do I need a console when my PC is still capable? Consoles are crap!" and kinda ended the dream with my PC-master-race mindset. Lol
(In my defense, my last console died at the most inconvenient time! Damn Xbox...)
I shoulda just said PS4. Lol even though I know what game he was playing, and I hate it. Lol
Mrs Stigbob used to hate games until I bought her plants versus zombies.