Steam - your views

[Etiko]

Modern Warfare 2’s migrating hosts? Yeah, that’s IWNet, not Steam.

Not 100% true. MW2 for the PC uses a lot of Steam dll files for its connection management. A couple of patches ago there was a bug that made MW2 multiplayer crash on every second map when you are the host. It was the fault of a buggy Steam dll.

So it is safe to say that games are starting to "merge" with Steam a lot more and if Steam is unstable, there's a good chance the game will be as well.

Now getting back to the original topic - I love Steam. It is great. I have bought 42 games off of Steam and it has by far been the easiest way I've ever shopped for games.

The friends and group lists are also miles ahead of anything that MS and Sony have to offer.

Steam is great. The only issue I have is if they ever go belly up... Or if they just decide to ban your account for some arb reason... Bye bye games It's important to note that on Steam you aren't actually buying a game, you are buying a license to play the game. Thus, they can decide to stop this license at any time and thus you can't play the game anymore. With physical media, it is a lot harder (maybe even impossible?) to do this...

[Azimuth]

Not 100% true. MW2 for the PC uses a lot of Steam dll files for its connection management. A couple of patches ago there was a bug that made MW2 multiplayer crash on every second map when you are the host. It was the fault of a buggy Steam dll.

So it is safe to say that games are starting to "merge" with Steam a lot more and if Steam is unstable, there's a good chance the game will be as well.

Now getting back to the original topic - I love Steam. It is great. I have bought 42 games off of Steam and it has by far been the easiest way I've ever shopped for games.

The friends and group lists are also miles ahead of anything that MS and Sony have to offer.

Steam is great. The only issue I have is if they ever go belly up... Or if they just decide to ban your account for some arb reason... Bye bye games It's important to note that on Steam you aren't actually buying a game, you are buying a license to play the game. Thus, they can decide to stop this license at any time and thus you can't play the game anymore. With physical media, it is a lot harder (maybe even impossible?) to do this...

Yeah, but that was a short term problem that's been fixed. The main reason host migration occurs is because - drumroll! - the host has abandoned the game, forcing IWNet to transfer the game to someone else. People quit the game. Sometimes that's the host. It happens on console all the time too.

It's a no-win situation, isn't it? Everybody complained about the game dropping back to the lobby in the first Modern Warfare. So IWNet implements host migration, and everybody complains about that instead. Being a developer is just about the most thankless job in the universe.

[tpex]

Yeah, but that was a short term problem that's been fixed. The main reason host migration occurs is because - drumroll! - the host has abandoned the game, forcing IWNet to transfer the game to someone else. People quit the game. Sometimes that's the host. It happens on console all the time too.

It's a no-win situation, isn't it? Everybody complained about the game dropping back to the lobby in the first Modern Warfare. So IWNet implements host migration, and everybody complains about that instead. Being a developer is just about the most thankless job in the universe.

LOL there is an easy way to fix it... I don't have to say it