to Steam, or not to Steam

(coolstory) #121

vac > sh’ty punkbuster.

Plus steam has lot of useful things.

(Nail) #122

oh goody, another shed load of ports to open for Steam

(Nail) #123

[QUOTE=Voxie;224041]Speaking from personal experience, the Steam uptime is very close to 100% and the service itself isn’t going away anytime soon; believing anything else would be borderline paranoia and cynicism.

And in the highly unlikely event that Steam would go under, Gabe Newell has stated that the authorization part of Steam would be removed.[/QUOTE]

“According to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, Steam’s availability is not guaranteed and Valve is under no legal obligation to release an update disabling the authentication system in the event that Steam becomes permanently unavailable.”

"Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve, said in a post on the Steam User Forums that “Unless there was some situation I don’t understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available.”

unless, of course Activision buys it, then all bets are off

(AnthonyDa) #124

[quote=Voxie;224047]While you might be correct about Brink selling a few more copies if it was available on every method of distribution under the sun, the true reason that Brink will be on Steam is because that means Splash Damage won’t have to program their own solution for anti-cheat, achievements, matchmaking, friendlists, et cetera. The Steamwork API allows them to cut corners while at the same time exposing them to a wealth of potential customers who cares about the features that the Steam suite allows as well as advertisement on the Steam client and weekend deals.

Remember that not just sales matter, development and marketing cost does too. Using Steam was a very calculated move, you don’t have to be a genius to grasp that. :slight_smile:
[/quote]
Fail more plz ?
ET:QW have anti-cheat, achievements and friendlist, it shouldn’t be that hard to port this to BRINK PC version. And matchmaking is part of the game, not STEAM (unless steam knows that “xp =skill”?). Also you forgot to talk about the VOIP that STEAM might bring, but again, it’s already part of the QW engine.

Also, we all LOVE the STEAM advertisement, as it’s free, so why not taking them ? :stroggbanana: I wish I could have ingame ads too for other STEAM game if possible !

About VAC vs Punkbuster, just use Google to see how bad is VAC. I’m not saying that Punkbuster is blocking 100% of cheater, but at least I don’t get randomly kicked from a server for “connection to steam lost” and punkbuster isn’t using a delayed ban (so the cheater breaks your nuts during a whole party then get kicked 1 month after with VAC …). Moreover, PB allows you to get client screenshots, which VAC doesn’t allows you to do, so you can’t spot someone using a wallhack or equivalent, VAC is just useless. MW2 (the best game of the universe right ? Because it was the most sold game of the whole time) proved it, it’s even worst than W:ET.

(murka) #125

Indeed, Vac is worse than pb even though they aren’t both very good at catching cheaters. Vac has 0-tolerance, delayed ban and no global banlist streaming. I’d rather trust a community banlist than a trigger happy anti-cheat system.

(brbrbr) #126

PB is okay, IMO, but point is, wrong to make any system - mandatory.
let server owner/renter choose anti-cheating system.
beye, vac[for steam users], pb, whatever.

(Voxie) #127

[QUOTE=AnthonyDa;224054]Fail more plz ?
[More text - scroll up a few posts to read][/QUOTE]

The fact remains that SD/Beth themselves have chosen Steam above their own solutions, likely partly due to the reasons mentioned in my previous posts. Steam hasn’t been chosen to spite you, but to maximize profits and relieve unnecessary workload. While non of us have the specifics, it’s not rocket science to draw logical conclusions. You can see that, can’t you?

Basiley (hope I got the name right - or should I just call you brbrbr?) - No one has said that VAC will be mandatory for Brink, right?

And whoever is responsible for those tags: come on, there’s a stickied thread addressing just that.

(Senethro) #128

Clans should run their own dedi servers and you shouldn’t use the matchmaking to set up a clan war. Your own fault.

(Paul) #129

As long as I can play the game offline it’s fine for me

(AnthonyDa) #130

L4D allows you to start a limbo and go on your own server when pressing the “start the game” button. Thing is that sometimes it didn’t find it, even worst, it didn’t find any server, and after waiting for loooooong minutes you’ll finally dropped on a party where everybody have +200ping, so you go back to limbo and start again. And FYI, connecting directly to server isn’t resetting the campaign correctly, you have to pass through limbo to (re)set the current campaign.

Try to be informed first next time before posting.

(Nail) #131

“No one has said that VAC will be mandatory for Brink, right?”

wrong

"Mr Cyberpunk: What Anti-Cheat measures are you taking and what is your feeling towards cheating and anti-cheat systems?
Richard Ham: As we’re a Steam game, we will be using VAC. "

(DarkangelUK) #132

I thought you could get non-VAC enabled servers the same way you get non-PB servers?

(Senethro) #133

You can in TF2 and other VAC protected games with dedicated servers. However its difficult to get outraged at a feature you can turn off so I can see how they would neglect to mention it.

(Voxie) #134

Oh come on, Nail. That quote is in no way definitive proof that you won’t be able to host a server with VAC disabled. Every game using VAC (with the exception of MW2, which is P2P only) allows you to host servers without VAC protection.

(murka) #135

So we again become a small fraction of a community using non-vac and a community-run banlist. So it not only requires promod, but anticheat too.

(Voxie) #136

Or you could just, you know, actually use VAC in conjunction with a third-party community banlist, like most servers running Source engine games do.

Does anyone here have first-hand anecdotes of severe problems with VAC? I’ve played on VAC enabled servers for the better part of seven years and I’ve yet to run into any problems at all. Granted, it’s far from perfect, but it’s relatively unobtrusive and false positives are far in between.

(Nail) #137

we want it optional, why do some people tell us to suck it up, I don’t want nor will I use Steam

(Voxie) #138

Because Steam support is already set in stone. I’m sorry that you’ve got such a strong grudge against Steam, Nail, but you and everyone else here who share your mindset will either have to bite the Steam-shaped bullet or simply reject Brink altogether.

(Senethro) #139

I think we know already what he’ll do.

(Nail) #140

yep, I’ll vote with my wallet, and my mass e-mail buttons on the forums I admin

and pardon me while I bombard all the open ports

:stroggbanana: