The Steam Review

Steam bypasses only a few of the activation issues with Bioshock retail.

You may be forgiven for feeling a touch of déjà vu this week. A cutting-edge single-player game hailed as the greatest ever made has been released on an unprepared online authentication system that insists on downloading updates as well as authentication data before making the game available, and buyers confounded by technical issues and server failures are complaining furiously.

Adding to Bioshock’s woes is an unadvertised two-instance install limit (now up to five) which requires users to uninstall the game while connected to the internet to release each so-called “installation key”. Make the mistake of wiping or throwing away a drive before uninstalling Bioshock twice, and like Windows’ activation scheme you need to ask a human for additional licenses.

I’m not gloating about all this: 2K risked their incredibly important release with an unbaptised activation system for the same reasons they had to artificially price the game higher on Steam than in shops, and most of the authentication system is also present in Steam copies of the game. I’m instead asking why Steam is not being used, even without being present in retail copies, to ease the deactivation issue.

A Proposal

SecuROM‘s authentication technology should allow Steam buyers to activate or deactivate their computers not to play Bioshock, but to play it offline. The same technology that detects when the game is installed and uninstalled can surely detect when it is launched and closed, and combined with Steam’s persistent connection has the capability to limit the need to take an installation key to those who want to play without a connection.

Done right this introduces no lapses in security, and hopefully keeps retailers happy (not that they can do anything about it). It’s an ideal solution that requires only for SecuROM to integrate their activation technology into the Steam client, but will it happen? I think both Valve and 2K have every reason to build such a system at the first chance they had, leaving to my mind any scheme a question purely of SecuROM’s dedication to clients and customers.

The Community beta’s Downloads page, with the P2P controls enabled.

It seems like this gets at least one mention every month. It’s a bit of relief to see that it still exists! The Steam Community’s voice chat is carried over Steam’s new BitTorrent-based P2P network, and the separation of the binaries that work that little bit of magic (into bin/p2pcore.dll and bin/p2pvoice.dll) strongly suggests that we’ll be seeing more applications of the technology at a later date.

Some further findings from Steam’s new files:

• Use the VGUI Editor (Ctrl+Alt+B) on the Downloads page in Settings and you’ll CSubPanelOptionsP2P. Use the ‘Select Control’ combo box to select and make visible the P2P controls it contains.
• A #Steam_P2P_SharingColumnLabel_hidden label for the current Media tab is to be found in config/dialogconfig.vdf. For sharing mod trailers, right?
• The public/P2PDetailPage.res dialogue includes a tracker field. Could refer either to community trackers for mod content, or official regional trackers that can be switched between.
• “VST” appears in public\P2PMetaDataPage.res‘s CP2PVstKeyValuesListPanel. Sitting alongside VMT, VDF, VCD and other keyvalue-based Valve file formats, it somehow seems unlikely that this three-letter acronym starting with V has anything to do with Virtual Studio Technology. “Valve Sharing Tracker” perhaps? (Better suggestion from the comments: Valve Steam Torrent.)

Are the trio of characters a cheeky dig at Xbox Live, or just the most effective tool for the job? Perhaps a bit of both.

If you read this site you’ve probably been using the Steam Community for longer than me, so I’m assuming prior knowledge of what it is and does for this post. If you’ve not used it yet, you’ll find it easier to get the beta, join a few groups (if you can find them) and add some non-Steam games before continuing. We’re going to talk about why the Community is on track not only to succeed but to surge past both GFWL and the GameSpy/Xfire models and become the most successful network of its kind, and I don’t want anyone left behind.

Thirteen million reasons

The Steam Community will succeed because of Steam’s popularity, as already established with Counter-Strike, Half-Life 2, and the snowballing library expansion since. Unlike the untethered Xfire-like solutions of the past, joining groups, browsing the network, using voice chat, using group chat and tracking events will be immediately availability to thirteen million active players. There’s no need to entice a single one of them to sign up or install additional software, or have them worry about whether their friends will ever make it to the same network. The Community “just works”.

Only creating a public profile or a group requires input beyond clicking a confirmation box, and most of usual stumbling blocks are passed over when creating a Steam account itself. In fact when someone is already using the immediately available Community features, I’d go so far as to call it completely certain that unless the person actively prefers anonymity they settle into a SteamID before long. Which makes them accessible to others, which makes the network more valuable and more of a success. Which moves us on…

Non-Steam games

The Community stands to dominate because any game that uses OpenGL or DirectX can benefit from it every bit as much as those distributed natively. Adding this to the immense user base leaves no doubt in my mind that Steam’s network will very quickly if not immediately reach the critical mass needed to become a very large part of the PC’s answer to Xbox Live’s “Plug and Play” gaming. It’s the second killer advantage — the one that GFWL’s built-in and non-resident technology does not have.

Who’s going to pay for voice in Halo 2 now?

Non-Steam support is good for everybody. Without lifting a finger developers suddenly receive a robust and popular community system, which is likely to already be in use by the majority if not all of their players and is accessible to the rest for free. They can schedule tournaments and other promotional events almost as easily, and quite possibly without having to pay through the nose for the privilege. It’s good for players for the same reasons; particularly purveyors of older multiplayer games who currently rely on untethered and typically obscure fansites to schedule matches. If the game has an existing release on Steam, all the better for both groups!

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The Steam Community is due to enter beta next week – and unfortunately I’ll be in deepest darkest Norfolk when it happens. Not dead, at least I hope not, but nowhere near an internet connection.

While we’re all waiting, there might be some early screens floating around somewhere…

A guest article from reader Andy Simpson.

Valve recently announced that Steam has over 13 million active accounts, excluding those that haven’t been used for a month. Even if some users actively use more than one account, this is still a fearsome number of users and seems to confirm the position of Steam as the market leader for digital distribution, but there are other services vying for position in the market.

Gamespy/IGN are in the game with Direct2Drive, Turner with Gametap, EA with EA Link, GAME with a new on demand service powered by Metaboli, and probably a couple of others. Xfire is bringing gamers IM capabilities and server browsing, Gamespy have Comrade and Microsoft is trying to bring gaming under one umbrella with Games For Windows Live.

All these services fit into slightly overlapping areas, and it’s only a matter of time before an almighty competition breaks out between them, and so I would say that we’re at, or close to, a turning point in the history of gaming on the PC platform and I think now is probably a good time to examine the origins and long-forgotten promise of Steam.

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The control panel (top), and part of a clan page.

Gabe Newell gave a presentation at the Showdown LAN event the other day (thanks Greg), which seems to have focused on the Steam Community. Fortunately for us someone had a camera, but don’t get too excited: there’s nothing particularly remarkable yet. There are surprises, like global voice support handled by Steam itself and support for external games, but otherwise it’s what you might expect from a post-Xbox Live community system.

Gabe’s release estimate is this summer July, before the launch of Team Fortress 2 and the Orange Box.

Gabe’s slides

The “Steam Identity”

Create Profile and Home page

Preferences

Affiliation

Statistics

Control Panel

Public versus private

Schedule

Real-time status

Revamped all the communications function to make it easier to play with your friends

Find a friend

See who’s online or playing

Invite Friends to chat or play

Join a friend’s game

“Communications”

Instant Messaging, integrated voice (finally), and chat rooms

Works with non-Steam games

“Affiliation”

Join or create new groups

Scheduling/Organizing tournaments and matches