steam suck

[webster63]

What spyware? Honestly, don't you think that Symantec or the other major antivirus and security companies would have issued some kind of warnings if they found out that steam.exe secretly installs some kind of spyware?

 

Oh right, they're of course part of the massive conspiracy orchestrated by Valve that aims to bring on the New World Order and install Gabe Newell as the supreme, unquestionable ruler of the world. :rolleyes:

 

 

oh, right they just use majic to know exactly where you've been and what sights you visit and somehow just happen to coincidentally advertise the exact things you've been looking at.

 

continue to live in your bubble and believe nobody is watching you, the goverment is your friend and politicians never lie to you

 

and just FYI antivirus programs do NOT identify and prevent spyware, they are for virus protection, antispyware programs do but NOT if you have any programs that are "allowed" to do there own thing such as steam which wether you know it or not in order to use you must give it permission to overide certain protections and settings to do what they do in the background so as to go undetected and spyware isnt any good at doing its job if it is easy to detect.

 

yes steam is no more harmfull then the nosey busybody neighbor next door but i can close the curtains when the nosey neighbor is looking in my windows, with steam you cant

Edited April 24, 2011 by webster63

[falloutperson416]

Because of legall restrictions, playing Fallout: New Vegas through Steam is required.

[Deagroth]

I don't think this thread is going anywhere beneficial to anyone.

[ita]

oh, right they just use majic to know exactly where you've been and what sights you visit and somehow just happen to coincidentally advertise the exact things you've been looking at.

 

continue to live in your bubble and believe nobody is watching you, the goverment is your friend and politicians never lie to you

 

and just FYI antivirus programs do NOT identify and prevent spyware, they are for virus protection, antispyware programs do but NOT if you have any programs that are "allowed" to do there own thing such as steam which wether you know it or not in order to use you must give it permission to overide certain protections and settings to do what they do in the background so as to go undetected and spyware isnt any good at doing its job if it is easy to detect.

 

yes steam is no more harmfull then the nosey busybody neighbor next door but i can close the curtains when the nosey neighbor is looking in my windows, with steam you cant

 

I don't know about you but after ~5 years of using Steam, I have yet to see the Steam client throw advertising popups in my face about anything unrelated to games or other products for sale on Steam. In fact, it has never bothered me with any popups that steal focus from other applications at all. Just minimize the client if the ads in the Steam client window are offensive to your eyes. And anyone who doesn't block cookies and use adblockers and NoScript in their web browsers along with a firewall should stick to using telegraphs and smoke signals.

 

I didn't explicitly state that antivirus programs protect against spyware, but many antivirus retailers offer anti-spyware solutions in their product packages and "antivirus and security companies" refers of course both to antivirus companies and providers of purely anti-spyware software. Didn't think that I'd have to spell it out verbatim.

As for certain programs needing permission and exceptions to work, any security program worth its salt still scans for suspicious activities even if a program is on the "allowed" list.

[Nihilisaurus]

oh, right they just use majic to know exactly where you've been and what sights you visit and somehow just happen to coincidentally advertise the exact things you've been looking at.

This strikes me as odd. I have for a number of years frequented sites related to the game franchise "command and conquer" in a regular and frequent manner. Never once have I been advertised any games in this series. And before you call it a coincidence there's not anything more obvious they could market at me except S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky (bought CoP and SoC IRL, added to steam games to allow overlay usage). Guess what hasn't been advertised to me?

continue to live in your bubble and believe nobody is watching you, the government is your friend and politicians never lie to you

You are an utter moron. I am quite unsure as to why you are allowed access to technology. Steam isn't spying on you. Your ISP might, your secret service might. But steam? f*** off mate, Gabe isn't willing to incur the 'industrial scale consumer espionage' overheads, there's not enough profit in it.

 

Also, believing in the integrity of steam's 'we aren't spying on you' claims is a very poor indicator of what people think of the integrity of their governments. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess you're from the United States. In which case your countrys institutions are a shitpile, with a promising constitution, founding ideals and early history swept aside by a tide of xenophobia,ignorance and apathy in the following two centuries. Your electoral system is flawed and your general population remains alarmingly ignorant as to important issues, you're more likely to be killed by falling out of your chair than terrorism but your nation kissed goodbye to a barrowload of rights to protect themselves from the terrorists. There was a "Patriot act" to clamp down on terrorists, but no "stability act" to prevent wobbly chairs, despite the far more worrying effects of the latter issue...

 

And all this doesn't change the overarching argument that the idea of steam spying on everyone is absurd. Calling those arguing against you sheep by insinuating them to be compliant simpletons blindly following political rhetoric and ignoring your supposed truth is a non-argument, an ad hominem. I would almost venture to call it a straw man in the way you extrapolate trust of steam to unswerving faith in national officials.

 

Thank you for providing a ridiculous argument for me to assess, if you could do it more often I'd be much obliged.

 

I don't think this thread is going anywhere beneficial to anyone.

Except for me. I love pointing out the inconsistencies in the arguments of people who don't hold their beliefs up to rational inquiry.

Edited April 24, 2011 by Lt Albrecht

[longprong]

Well; Lt Albrecht, I take it that you do not agree with GenocideLolita then........

A bit off topic, but at least you have been able to vent off some STEAM !!!!!

Thanks both of you for the laughs.

[Nihilisaurus]

With GenocideLolita? No, not really. Steam has an advert window it brings up on startup if you don't turn it off in options, so it does advertise things. However it always advertises things on promotion or newly released, and if you see these as targeted at you (as webster63 does) then you have a very pedestrian and wide-ranging interest in videogames...

 

"I don't know about you but after ~5 years of using Steam, I have yet to see the Steam client throw advertising popups in my face about anything unrelated to games or other products for sale on Steam. In fact, it has never bothered me with any popups that steal focus from other applications at all."

 

"This strikes me as odd. I have for a number of years frequented sites related to the game franchise "command and conquer" in a regular and frequent manner. Never once have I been advertised any games in this series. And before you call it a coincidence there's not anything more obvious they could market at me except S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky (bought CoP and SoC IRL, added to steam games to allow overlay usage). Guess what hasn't been advertised to me?"

 

We hold roughly the same position on this issue, it is webster63 who was the subject of my post. Some people won't listen to reason, they will stick to their views no matter how much is put before them which shows their falsehood. In the end all you can do with these people is make your arguments in a proper manner, then throw in what you hope others will see as humour to show the farcical nature of an argument where one side ignores all the points save its own and buries its head in the sand when these are called into question.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Lt Albrecht

[Acebris]

Shouldn't "this game developed by Obsidian" and "this game requires Steam to install" have been red flags to Bethesda?

 

Okay...mostly "this game developed by Obsidian"...

Edited April 26, 2011 by Acebris

[FlyingHigh10000000]

The only place this thread is going is under the watchful eyes of the moderators. I love seeing people denouncing Steam, when it obviously won't change, and makes you sound like a pirate anyway. So, you know, have fun acting like you don't use Steam, and getting people to think you're using an illegal copy of the game.

[Acebris]

FlyingHigh10000000,

 

For me, it's an issue with the requirements imposed by Steam (auto-update for example) which, by the way, have caused the current round of issues with the GECK which isn't about a hypothetical issue, but an actual widespread problem. Yes, you can uncheck the "auto update" feature...but that may or may not work.

 

I feel as if the "this game requires program x to run" only causes more issues with updates, DLC, or other small headaches. I just wish there was a better method...one that didn't involve a second program to (essentially) run your game.