Steam Leaving Gamers Steaming Mad

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Steam Leaving Gamers Steaming Mad

Submitted by Mike Koss on September 18, 2009 – 9:41 am6 Comments

So it seems that Steam quietly removed the Half-Life 2 64-bit version support. While for new players this may be a great relief since that version was known to be buggier than a motel in New York City, it has unleashed every gamers worst fear: lost saved games. While this is no great surprise, 64-bit software usually writes things with 64-bits in mind and as such are incompatible w/ 32-bit software, the fact remains that it was clandestinely performed and now the owners are left empty-handed. As a thread popped up on Steam’s forums, Steam’s support stepped in and provided the advice of using a cheat code to return near to the last place they were in the story. I’m sorry but that’s about useful as a publisher advocating the use of a crack to play their game. Now, Blues News has obtained word from Valve that the 64-bit version will return, but no timetable was given to placate the current players who have been stranded. Is it too much to ask for a saved game converter to allow the old saves to be used?

The bigger fear here has come true: digital distribution does not mean you own anything. As a consumer, when you plunk down your paper and coin for a ware, you are purchasing the rights to something and you expect those rights to be maintained for the agreed upon time. The worst nightmare is to find out that all your hard work has been for naught. We all know that online capabilities will probably cease to function at some point in the future, but losing your offline game casts serious doubt on this architecture. What do you think? Should Valve being doing more for the owners mired in this mess? Or, should the players just suck it up that their 4 year old game still plays?

Tags: 64-bit, digital distribution, half life 2, saved games, steam

http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

I read about this the other day, and it made me wonder if there was an issue with Half Life 2 64 and Windows 7, as we are getting ever so close to its release. Maybe something came up with people that were using the 64 bit version of Win7. They do have access to the 32 bit version, which is good, and to be honest, I am not sure how many people are affected by this change.

To be honest, I did not realize they even had a 64 bit version of Half Life 2.

I do agree that not giving any notice to this change is a bit of a slap in the face to Steam users, and it seems to be the second in a series of missteps if you look at the complaints surrounding the lack of meaningful DLC for Left 4 Dead.
morphiend

Well, it gets even WORSE for Steam this week since the just released Star Wars Dark Forces/Jedi Knight compilation is incomplete and ~50% playable. Maybe Steam has become too big for its britches and can't handle all of the growth?

BTW the 64-bit extension was added to the game in Dec 2005 and lauded by Gabe “I ate the dev team” Newell as a step forward for the Source engine. Too bad HL2 never completely ran properly with it, and early benchmarks showed no improvement, contrary to Gabe's announcement. Which I think is scary, because to be honest I have issues with 32-bit apps on 64-bit Vista, so I'd choose a native 64-bit over 32-bit any day.
william745

how has digital distribution made it a truth that you don't actually own your games read that fancy EULA that comes with your boxed copy it will say the same thing.but i never even knew of the 64-bit version either i just clicked buy and it went so i'm assuming i probally have it since i have the 64-bit v ersion of vista.but maby it is just that game i played through the first one with out any problems at all and that game is old as dirt.ok i am ranting.
morphiend

When a purchase is made, a commodity changes hands. Over time, that commodity has been diminished from an actual product (“The Game”) to a License for said game that can be revoked at any time. While this clause has been around in EULA's for most time, it was normally looked at as a formality than an one that would be exercised.

It has also been taken to mean other things such as you owning that version of the game, and not, say, “Game of the Year edition” or Gold/Platinum/etc. It appears that the clause has now been exercised in a way that most have feared since the emergence of digital distribution, with DRM. And now it seems that “any time” has become a shorter period than any of us have imagined. If someone told me I couldn't still play my PS2 games that are in my possession because it has been revoked, which are older that title on display here, I would be outraged to say the least.

While the game itself has not been revoked, it has been definitely affected. And the bigger worry here wasn't that it did come to pass, but that it came to pass without notifying the users, or were the users made aware of the outcome: your 64-bit saved games would become unusable.

If this had been a boxed game, without crazy online-based DRM, Valve would have been unable to affect my gameplay in any way. It has happened in the past many times where a patch breaks previous save game data, but its been up to the user to upgrade on their own, not when the developer decides to push a debilitating patch.
william745

how has digital distribution made it a truth that you don't actually own your games read that fancy EULA that comes with your boxed copy it will say the same thing.but i never even knew of the 64-bit version either i just clicked buy and it went so i'm assuming i probally have it since i have the 64-bit v ersion of vista.but maby it is just that game i played through the first one with out any problems at all and that game is old as dirt.ok i am ranting.
morphiend

When a purchase is made, a commodity changes hands. Over time, that commodity has been diminished from an actual product (“The Game”) to a License for said game that can be revoked at any time. While this clause has been around in EULA's for most time, it was normally looked at as a formality than an one that would be exercised.

It has also been taken to mean other things such as you owning that version of the game, and not, say, “Game of the Year edition” or Gold/Platinum/etc. It appears that the clause has now been exercised in a way that most have feared since the emergence of digital distribution, with DRM. And now it seems that “any time” has become a shorter period than any of us have imagined. If someone told me I couldn't still play my PS2 games that are in my possession because it has been revoked, which are older that title on display here, I would be outraged to say the least.

While the game itself has not been revoked, it has been definitely affected. And the bigger worry here wasn't that it did come to pass, but that it came to pass without notifying the users, or were the users made aware of the outcome: your 64-bit saved games would become unusable.

If this had been a boxed game, without crazy online-based DRM, Valve would have been unable to affect my gameplay in any way. It has happened in the past many times where a patch breaks previous save game data, but its been up to the user to upgrade on their own, not when the developer decides to push a debilitating patch.