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[MRORANGE]

If I recall:

Steam Holiday Sale 2010: get achievements to win hats + some lucky steam users will get 100 games of there choice.

Portal 2 ARG: unlock portal 2 faster by doing achievements for games related to the portal 2 ARG

Spoiler

(What a total farce that was, I still think it was rigged to this day)

winners got potato icon + valve complete pack

Summer Holiday sale 2011: unlock acheivements to buy raffle tickets which unlocked prizes such as DLC, also the tickets increased your chances of winning the wishlist prize draw.

 

[1-D_FTW]

I was at the "DD has turned the g. industry into anti consumer beast" thread and i heard some of the guys use the back up option.

Exactly how does it works and what advantage do you have by doing a back up?

Out of curiosity, does off line mode work properly for you? In my case terrible, manages to make it work once and never again. That got me to investigate and seems to be a widespread problem.

I don't use the back-up feature because I just have them all on a separate hard drive. Leaves me vulnerable in the event of a hard drive crash (since it's gotten too big to have duplicate files on my other drive), but it makes OS reinstalls painless.

I rarely use offline, but in the few times I have, it's worked flawless for me.

Portal 2 ARG: unlock portal 2 faster by doing achievements for games related to the portal 2 ARG

Spoiler

(What a total farce that was, I still think it was rigged to this day)

winners got potato icon + valve complete pack

Still makes me laugh. I was already burned out by the Holiday raffle and completely avoided that thread with prejudice. Then when I saw guys got Portal 2 for free, was a little sad that I did.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

If you're worried about losing access to your games because DD is the devil, copy your game folders to a fileserver. You don't need to use Steam Backup to move your steamapps directory to another PC, and aside from the executable the game installs are almost always identical to those from a retail disc.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Spoiler

(What a total farce that was, I still think it was rigged to this day)

Spoiler

It was.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Spoiler

It was.

I remember everyone blaming EA because they published the console versions and didn't want the pc people to get it early or something.

I wonder if there was ANY truth to that...

I wouldn't be that surprised really.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I'm assuming there would be. The idea being to cut down on piracy.

 

[MNC]

Portal 2 arg wasn't really rigged in the sense that Valve really did want to release Portal 2 early but some agreement with EA had to be broken/EA disagreed and put a stop to it (somehow) (They are the Xbox version publisher iirc)

 

[Blizzard]

I'm assuming there would be. The idea being to cut down on piracy.

That was exactly my objection to it. I had a weekend to play the game, it could be released early, the console versions had JUST been leaked to pirates so PC buyers could almost play at the same time as console pirates...

...but no, console pirates got to play through, put ending spoilers on youtube, etc. for 3-4 days, while PC people still had to wait. Made me sad. *edit* Just to be clear, I assume it was possible for console users to acquire the game legitimately and play it early, but I seem to recall that the console version WAS leaked to pirates early.

 

[Dog Problems]

That Portal 2 ARG is something else I didn't participate in either. Having the game released early seemed too good to be true, and it was.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Portal 2 arg wasn't really rigged in the sense that Valve really did want to release Portal 2 early but some agreement with EA had to be broken/EA disagreed and put a stop to it (somehow) (They are the Xbox version publisher iirc)

See this is what I remember hearing (see post above) I've just never seen any proof of it.

Was there any statement actually made about it from Valve (or ea I guess)?

 

[Blizzard]

See this is what I remember hearing (see post above) I've just never seen any proof of it.

Was there any statement actually made about it from Valve (or ea I guess)?

Valve pretty much never ever makes explanatory statements for stuff like that, do they? After Crysis 2 disappeared from Steam they finally said something, but even that is rare for them.

 

[Palette Swap]

That Portal 2 ARG was insanely good. The rigged counter at the end was shit but having GLadOS invade all the potato games and winning a Valve complete pack (up to Portal 2) was pretty cool.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Valve pretty much never ever makes explanatory statements for stuff like that, do they? After Crysis 2 disappeared from Steam they finally said something, but even that is rare for them.

Yeah that is why I'm trying to figure out why everyone just accepts it as fact apparently without anyone really knowing.

 

[MNC]

See this is what I remember hearing (see post above) I've just never seen any proof of it.

Was there any statement actually made about it from Valve (or ea I guess)?

Tried looking for it to back up the statements, but couldn't find any :/

 

[Dog Problems]

That Portal 2 ARG was insanely good. The rigged counter at the end was shit but having GLadOS invade all the potato games and winning a Valve complete pack (up to Portal 2) was pretty cool.

Yeah, having the stuff in the games was cool and I checked them out to see it all. I just didn't put any effort in to contributing to having it release early. I still remember the dozens of updates every day.

 

[Blizzard]

Yeah that is why I'm trying to figure out why everyone just accepts it as fact apparently without anyone really knowing.

Well the potato thing was pretty obviously rigged in the timing of when it finished, how things sped up near the end, or whatnot.

But otherwise it's not like we'll ever know the reason, Mr. Winwood, so we have to make up SOME sort of facts to accept! This is the internet!

 

[Dog Problems]

Well the potato thing was pretty obviously rigged in the timing of when it finished, how things sped up near the end, or whatnot.

But otherwise it's not like we'll ever know the reason, Mr. Winwood, so we have to make up SOME sort of facts to accept! This is the internet!

Plus, it's fun to blame EA whenever something goes wrong that's related to gaming.

 

[SteveWinwood]

FUCK EA

 

[Dog Problems]

No Episode 3? Because of EA.

No more LucasArts remakes? ^

 

[xenoflux2113]

Plus, it's fun to blame EA whenever something goes wrong that's related to gaming.

I just thought that was standard practice, regardless of where the fault lie. Hell even in real life I blame EA. Kid fell down and skinned his knee? DAMN YOU EA!

 

[Boss Doggie]

I wonder if someone in gaf had won any steam raffle

 

[Drkirby]

God damn, I have one of those stupid hats sitting around and I don't even play TF2...

I wonder if it grows in value over time.

Unless you have a Bills Hat, an Earbud, or a Max Head, your hats aren't worth more then $1 a piece at the best.

 

[Sinatar]

Unless you have a Bills Hat, an Earbud, or a Max Head, your hats aren't worth more then $1 a piece at the best.

No I mean I have the squid of wealth and fame or whatever it's called. The one you get for completing all the challenges in that treasure hunt sale.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Unless you have a Bills Hat, an Earbud, or a Max Head, your hats aren't worth more then $1 a piece at the best.

A HOUWAR is still worth alot, what you talkin' 'bout Dr?

 

[MRORANGE]

No I mean I have the squid of wealth and fame or whatever it's called. The one you get for completing all the challenges in that treasure hunt sale.

to bad no one at SPUF understands that logic. I've seen users trying to flog off normal items for double there price.

 

[Dog Problems]

I just thought that was standard practice, regardless of where the fault lie. Hell even in real life I blame EA. Kid fell down and skinned his knee? DAMN YOU EA!

Yeah, they're my scapegoat for everything.

 

[SteveWinwood]

to bad no one at SPUF understands that logic. I've seen users trying to flog off normal items for double there price.

I don't understand why anyone visits that cesspool. It amazes me that something as amazing as steam has forums so so so terrible.

 

[Togglesworlh]

Yeah that is why I'm trying to figure out why everyone just accepts it as fact apparently without anyone really knowing.

Same reason everyone accepts as fact that if Steam(/Valve) ever goes out of business, they will give all their users DRM-free versions of all the games they own. Or something.

 

[Blizzard]

Same reason everyone accepts as fact that if Steam(/Valve) ever goes out of business, they will give all their users DRM-free versions of all the games they own. Or something.

It's like the Wizard's First Rule!

 

[SteveWinwood]

Same reason everyone accepts as fact that if Steam(/Valve) ever goes out of business, they will give all their users DRM-free versions of all the games they own. Or something.

I don't think that valve will do it (outside of their own games).

I think others will make it fairly easy for anyone to do it if you already have all your games downloaded.

 

[wolfmat]

Valve cannot serve games when they go out of business. Bandwidth is not free; they'd have to somehow re-instate their business, get the money required to pay the bandwidth, and then they could serve.
All they could ever do is zap their DRM, but to do that, they'd have to undermine contracts they made with developers and publishers.

They won't even be able to uphold the user database stuff.

Meaning that when Valve goes down, the games are gone.

Note: When, not if. All companies die eventually.

 

[Togglesworlh]

It's like the Wizard's First Rule!

i fucking hate that series (assuming that's what you're referring to)

 

[Eusis]

All they could ever do is zap their DRM, but to do that, they'd have to undermine contracts they made with developers and publishers.

I think they may've worked in a "if we completely die" provision into their contracts so that won't be an issue, it's probably why some of these games have Securom and whatnot; it's not JUST paranoid publishers, but publishers who want to be ensured their game has DRM still should Steam die spontaneously.

And while it's unreasonable to expect them to live FOREVER, I don't think it's unreasonable to hope they'll be around for at least several decades, preferable around until we're long dead. Normally this is when I could be apathetic about whether our children can/can't access these games, but as long as something doesn't get completely FUBAR'd with copyright I imagine great-grandchildren at least would have a legitimate shot at just downloading these games as public domain works. Even if they'd probably be more interested in newer works much like how most people are probably more interested in newer literature than the public domain stuff.

 

[MRORANGE]

I think a few people wanted to know who the steam wishlist winners were, well this thread will tell you what was in there wishlist: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2267716

 

[Scythian]

Please people, this is just speculation.
Companies simply do not vanish over night; as Gabe said, if Valve's got serious trouble going on, we'll know it long before something major happens, weeks, months, years.
And in the slim chance that Valve does go bankrupt, someone will want to acquire Steam, it's too valuable to go down.

 

[Eusis]

A more probable bad scenario isn't Valve shutting down, so much as Valve shutting down Steam because it's no longer practical. And currently it would look more likely for Valve to step out of game development than for them to shut down Steam, and both are really far fetched.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Valve cannot serve games when they go out of business. Bandwidth is not free; they'd have to somehow re-instate their business, get the money required to pay the bandwidth, and then they could serve.
All they could ever do is zap their DRM, but to do that, they'd have to undermine contracts they made with developers and publishers.

They won't even be able to uphold the user database stuff.

Meaning that when Valve goes down, the games are gone.

Note: When, not if. All companies die eventually.

So we agree.

I think a few people wanted to know who the steam wishlist winners were, well this thread will tell you what was in there wishlist: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2267716

Interesting that Crysis 2 was won...

 

[Syphon Filter]

TF2 doesn't stay on my list when uninstalled,fuuuuuuuuuuu.

 

[MRORANGE]

TF2 doesn't stay on my list when uninstalled,fuuuuuuuuuuu.

tried getting a orange box key or buying a store item?

 

[Oreoleo]

Interesting that Crysis 2 was won...

 

[Syphon Filter]

tried getting a orange box key or buying a store item?

There is a server that didn't let me in because i don't have a "premium" account. How do i get an account?

 

[MRORANGE]

There is a server that didn't let me in because i don't have a "premium" account. How do i get an account?

they must be using a a script that is blocking F2P accounts from joining, you could try and get a orange box retail key (which has tf2) or buy a item, which would let you go into these servers.

 

[Drkirby]

A HOUWAR is still worth alot, what you talkin' 'bout Dr?

I assumed he didn't have that one, only like 5 people on gaf have it.

 

[Syphon Filter]

they must be using a a script that is blocking F2P accounts from joining, you could try and get a orange box retail key (which has tf2) or buy a item, which would let you go into these servers.

What is the cheapest item available?

 

[Dog Problems]

What is the cheapest item available?

.50 cent Sticky Jumper

 

[Drkirby]

$.49 Rocket Jumper and Sticky Jumper, they don't do damage to you or you enemies, so you can dick around. There are also $.99 "Start Packs", which have a few weapons and a hat for a specific class.

Just a note, you have to put at least $5 in your Steam Wallet. The other $4.51 can be used for anything on steam though.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

they must be using a a script that is blocking F2P accounts from joining

That's so incredibly petty. But we all saw it coming.

 

[vall03]

fuuuuu! just saw the latest list of games won and I got 9 out of 10!! The game I'm missing is Darksiders II, but do they really give unreleased games for free with these kind of promotions?

 

[balladofwindfishes]

Between the Rocket Jumper and Sticky Jumper, get the Sticky Jumper. The Sjer is actually useful in-game, while the Rocket Jumper hasn't quite been balanced yet and is still severely crippled by an experiment that Valve did that didn't work. They fixed the Sticky Jumper, but not the Rocket Jumper

 

[Blizzard]

i fucking hate that series (assuming that's what you're referring to)

You're welcome to hate them (and yes I read all the books), but I was referring specifically to the Wizard's First Rule, out of all the wizard rules in those books.

It says that people will believe almost anything, provided they either want to believe it's true, or are afraid that it's true.