Ubisoft WTF
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As i recently posted, i buy all my games online as direct downloads.
My friend was going off about how awesome Dark Messiah might and magic was. So i go and buy it from tthe ubisoft store.
Ok so it's around a... huge friggin zip file. i don't recall the exact size (other than it was obnoxious, i wanna say around 3.4 gigs)
So you get this huge chunk of a zip file after 2 or 3 hours. Then you have to extract it. that's another three and a half gigs taken up. But that's not the game. Oh no. that's the contents of the DVD, if you bought it in the store. now you get to run setup.exe and install the game. which extracts to some ungodly four+ gig installed game. we're sitting at over ten gigs, and i haven't even played the game yet!
I go to update the game, and it's saying it wants to install steam. So i figure, eh, what's the worse that could happen?
It needs to redownload the steam version of the game so i can play the multiplayer version.
As if that wasn't enough of a slap in the face, it decided it needed to download the single player version again.
Game cache of 4.5 or so gigs, plus the other install... Almost 16 gigs... and i still hadn't played it!
Let the buyer beware.
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So why not just buy the game on dvd? :)
The download site says it's a 7.04 Gb (!) file, so that shouldn't have been much of a surprise (though, i'm a bit surprised it's a zip file at that size...)
-cw
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Heh, after your story, I found this gem on the download page and had to laugh.
Before you know it you'll be playing your new Dark Messiah of Might and Magic download!
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@CodeWhisperer said:
So why not just buy the game on dvd? :)
The download site says it's a 7.04 Gb (!) file, so that shouldn't have been much of a surprise (though, i'm a bit surprised it's a zip file at that size...)
-cw
In that case i was off by a factor of two, or whatever. Multiply everything i said by 2. Now it is even worse. haha.
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I *hate* Steam. I even went out of my way to buy and old xbox so that I could play some Steam games (like Half-Life 2) without having to cripple my computer.
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I have alread encountered that kind of installation pattern several time. Usually for some sharewares.
It goes like this :
1) download a zip file
2) extract the installer from the zip file
3)the "installer" merely copy it's content into a temporary directory (into an .msi for example)
4)the real installer (.msi) finally installs the crappy software (into program files).
In the end you have four copy, originaly coming from a single file, spread out all over your machine.
I bet no-one at Ubisoft ever bothered to test the full process from buying to playing. What often happen with games is that the installation is an afterthought that is done at the last moment right before the manufacturing of the DVD.
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I think the concept of Steam is pretty good. A little shop+game archive online. The benefits are the same as buying from Amazon or iTunes.
It's just a fucked up + braindead implementation.
- poorly scans for presence of games: it tried to download HL2:EP1, even though I installed it off the DVD (mangaged to fix that, though.)
- crashed very, very, very often. Sometimes, the PROGRESS BAR CRASHED.
- forces you to log in and be online whenever I play a steampowered game. The fuck!
- Insane downloads and not even a hint of an attempt at adressing, or some creative solution to, this real issue.
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For me, Steam was the reason not to buy HL2, though I really liked HL.
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Actually, HL2 is worth it. :3
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@dhromed said:
Actually, HL2 is worth it. :3
Probably, but as long as there are other good games without Steam or similar annoyances, HL2 will be the last one in the queue for me. For me, it's even annoying when a game requires the original CD resp. DVD in the drive to be able to run it. That's why I prefer to use the Linux ports when available, since they usually do not include that check. (e.g. UT2004, NWN, D3, Q4 etc.)
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@ammoQ said:
@dhromed said:
Actually, HL2 is worth it. :3
Probably, but as long as there are other good games without Steam or similar annoyances, HL2 will be the last one in the queue for me. For me, it's even annoying when a game requires the original CD resp. DVD in the drive to be able to run it. That's why I prefer to use the Linux ports when available, since they usually do not include that check. (e.g. UT2004, NWN, D3, Q4 etc.)
battlefield 2142 and battlefield 2 play nicely if you download them online... and even if you bought them in the store, they have mini-images (the ones that are like 3 gig images that you flag as "compressed" in the OS and they're only 1.4 megs... and then you load them on daemon-tools or alcohol or clonecd, or whatever you have.
Mini-cd images are my favorite thing in the whole world, other than just being able to play without jumping through silly hoops. in the past 7 years i don't think i've ever bought a game that didn't have either a mini-cd or a no-cd patch that let me archive the original somewhere where i never had to touch it.
I'm notorious for scratching, losing, abusing, throwing, etc Game and audio cds, so i always make sure before i buy a physical disc that i can no-cd/dvd patch or mini-image it... if i can't, then i won't get the game until there is one (the sims 2 is a classic example of a game that i'd love to own, but there is no efficient patch for it to be no-cd)
My least favorite purchase of the past ten years was Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition... in all it's DVDMovie-case shiny-ness. Thankfully i've only had to take it out of said case 2 times since i bought it. :-D
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@Albatross said:
I hate Steam. I even went out of my way to buy and old xbox so that I could play some Steam games (like Half-Life 2) without having to cripple my computer.
I hope you do realise that you only need to run steam, when your playing the games, not ALL the time.
Steam is an excellent concept, however they do have to stop adding new features and get down to fixing the current bugs.
In my job i deal with the cyber cafe licence for steam, and with the latest version there are a hellova lot more bugs that aren't seen in the standard version that cause us a lot of pain
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@GeneWitch said:
@ammoQ said:
@dhromed said:
Actually, HL2 is worth it. :3
Probably, but as long as there are other good games without Steam or similar annoyances, HL2 will be the last one in the queue for me. For me, it's even annoying when a game requires the original CD resp. DVD in the drive to be able to run it. That's why I prefer to use the Linux ports when available, since they usually do not include that check. (e.g. UT2004, NWN, D3, Q4 etc.)
Mini-cd images are my favorite thing in the whole world, other than just being able to play without jumping through silly hoops. in the past 7 years i don't think i've ever bought a game that didn't have either a mini-cd or a no-cd patch that let me archive the original somewhere where i never had to touch it.
Yeah, the first thing that I usually do after buying a game cd/dvd is to make an image out of it, so I won't be bothered with games that require the cd/dvd to play...
And yes, HL2 is a very nice game...
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@dhromed said:
Actually, HL2 is worth it. :3
Sure is. I have it on Xbox for reasons mentioned in this thread. It would be better with a mouse and keyboard, but at least I don't have to suffer steam burns.
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Heh, since we've revived an old thread again, I'll note that a copy of this game on DVD came free with my Nvidia 8800 GTS. This one also had to download the large multi-player from steam, as well as about an hour's worth of updates for the single player. No one's safe!
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@Some Idiot said:
@dhromed said:
Actually, HL2 is worth it. :3
Sure is. I have it on Xbox for reasons mentioned in this thread. It would be better with a mouse and keyboard, but at least I don't have to suffer steam burns.
EP2 is supposedly out now. I recently moved, and am looking for a shop that sells games. Or maybe I should get it through other means -- but I have no creditcard.
