So the other day I tried to play TF2 with my friend who really never plays any games. Me being a more experienced gamer, quickly opend steam and started the game, but he who had only used steam to play Football Manager, barely manage to open the game. Then when we finally started playing his game constantly laged and he had to restart the game three times before we just gave up. The next day he started complayning to me about how steam had ruin gaming for people like him who just likes to play games with friends once in a while. I really did not have an responce to this, because i had really never been in his shoes. Am I the only one who as experience this? ande is steam really that bad (I don't think so)?

edit: it should maybe note that he was playing on his macbook (don't know if steam is as good on a mac as on a pc)

Nah, Source engine is just a piece of shit sometimes.

You should've SEEN how long it took me to get Garry's Mod running like, a month ago. I had to uninstall every Source mod game about 3 times, verify the cache, and was about 30 minutes away from seriously considering getting an exorcist.

Some people simply cannot adapt to certain systems. (and sometimes shit happens, and they end up with a crappy situation)

Either way, it's a scape goat. When I used to play Xbox live a ton, people would have trouble sending a voice message, or configuring a setting, and say "Xbox live sucks, Microsoft is ruining online gaming" It's hyperbole, and it's blaming something potentially unrelated.

I see it all the time, You just gotta accept that some people don't like change.

@clstirens: This is unrelated, but Microsoft is totally ruining online gaming by making people pay for it.

I couldn't disagree more, PC gaming used to be far more complicated when it involved CD-keys, installers, configuring options - often through .ini files, requiring you to manuall download patches - which were only available via fansites, etc.

Steam has bad points, but in general, it made everything simpler. Playing games is as easy as clicking on a giant icon now.

Before Steam etc came along I played games alone..

In another story, a friend bought Call of Duty 2 and threw away the box before registering the game. He never figured out the multiplayer.

All these online distribution stuff made things much simpler, but people like to complain anyway.

The chances of his bad experience being Steam's fault are slim to none. Likely, I'd bet that the Macbook he was using simply wasn't powerful enough to adequately play TF2.

@WinterSnowblind said:

I couldn't disagree more, PC gaming used to be far more complicated when it involved CD-keys, installers, configuring options - often through .ini files, requiring you to manuall download patches - which were only available via fansites, etc.

Steam has bad points, but in general, it made everything simpler. Playing games is as easy as clicking on a giant icon now.

This. I don't even have to search for grafic-card drivers anymore cause Steam takes care of that.

I don't even understand how someone can "barely manage to open the game". You click "Play". Same procedure for the football manager so obviously he knows how to read. What exactly did he do?

My father knows how to operate Steam and my father is that type of person who constantly asks me how to copy and paste stuff and what all those weird symbols on his desktop are. (He is referring to the install.exe symbols of some programms)

Yeah, Steam definitely made it a lot easier with accessibility and it all being in one place. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't like it and didn't want to give TF2 a chance. I remember trying Killing Floor with my brother and he was getting really mad at the game because it has a bit of a learning curve. We played for about 2 hours and then he started to enjoy it when he got the hang of it and figured out the shop.

I don't understand how he could have trouble opening up TF2? I know at times I get really annoying bugs with Steam like "This game is currently unavailable" despite it being installed on my hard drive, but closing Steam and starting it back up fixes that. Worst case scenario, just delete the .blob files in your Steam folder and your problems will go away.

@ImHungry: Yeah, despite how it sounds compared to my post, you're probably right.

It's why I'd stopped paying for life a year or so ago.