I have a huge problem with Steam in general. It's nothing against Valve and nothing against the games on Steam store, but hear me out.
Lets say you buy a game on the Steam store. Now lets say that game is so bug-ridden that you can't play it. It's so bad that you can't even run the game. You check online and it's such a big problem that the CTO has publicly apologized. You contact Steam support to ask for a refund. They tell you to forget it, so you contact the publisher. You explain that you have liked their games forever but this game is not playable. You want your money back. The publisher will tell you that you need to get a refund from the retailer you purchased the game from. It's out of their control because they don't have your money.
You contact Steam again, they tell you that they will issue no refund. You threaten to file a charge back from your credit card company. Steam says that they will disable further purchases from the Steam Store if you do so. They actually state that they will not let you purchase any more games from them if you protect yourself as any consumer should be allowed to.
Somehow, I just can't imagine doing business with them anymore.
I know one person who bought the wrong game on Steam by mistake: he couldn't get a refund but he was able to persuade Steam support to add the value of the purchase to his Steam wallet.
Uh, that's never happened to me, nor anyone I know. And Steam Quality Control is good enough that games that bug-ridden will very very rarely make it through.
As someone who released a game on steam, they never checked it. We could have released a game that crashed on start up and they wouldn't have known before hand.
Steam envisions itself more as an open platform than a storefront. I don't have an opinion on whether this is the best choice or not, but that's the direction they have said they are moving in. The GP's complaint seems more like a consequence of that general direction that a consequence of Valve's attitude as a business, as they generally (only generally) have a track record of being relatively consumer friendly. And in the specific industry of games publishers, they are practically saints.
Perhaps you should read the context of a thread before mindlessly posting.
His comment was in response to :
> Uh, that's never happened to me, nor anyone I know. And Steam Quality Control is good enough that games that bug-ridden will very very rarely make it through.
So, uhh, yeah it's their responsibility to check a game because once it is available on Steam they're vouching for its quality in some manner.
As long as they aren't giving you refunds for games that don't, yeah, it's their duty to make sure that games which are technically unreliable don't make it to the store. Either that, or hand out refunds.
In my mind there should be a refund from Steam either way:
- If Steam has a thorough quality control, they (sort of) tell you that the game is OK, no obvious bugs. But there could still exist a serious bug that you can find, and I think they should give you a refund. They said it would work and it didn't.
- If there's no quality control to speak of (i.e. they just sell whatever the developers are shipping) and it turns out to be crap, it's still Steam who has sold it to you. In my mind they should still give you a refund, apologize a bit, and then deal with the developer.
I can't see that it's Steam's responsibility to test the game, but it's in their interest to provide high quality, so they ought to do some smoke tests at the very least. But no testing (from Steam and/or the developer) can guarantee that there's no problem with the software, and if there is, I think it's obvious that Steam should handle the refunds to the customer (since it's Steam's customer), and then Steam should handle it with the developer.
In the iOS App Store, Apple can issue refunds if a user complains about an app. If they do, they'll refund the entire purchase price, but keep their 30% commission.
In other words, it costs developers money for Apple to issue a refund.
It has happened to me. I purchased a game and the multiplayer was completely broken/bugged. Like most people, I thought Steam would refund me without much of a hassle. Turns out steam has a very strict NO REFUND policy. This came as a shock to me after hearing so many good stories about Steam. Note that this was a well documented bug in the steam forums for this game.
I used to feel very safe purchasing from steam, now I don't think it's very safe to purchase any sort of indie game.
The recent Ashes 2013 cricket game was so bug-ridden it was taken off Steam after less than a week. It looks like all refunds were handled by the publisher though:
This bug is easy to reproduce and they even know the issue (lack of physx support on the linux drivers) and even though there's a workaround (Android version doesn't have this issue) the devs still haven't fixed it. They could at the very least stop selling new copies to Linux users on Steam until this is fixed.
Recently found out that you can switch off the cloud saves on the Mac, then purge some config stuff and play it offline. You won't get your progress from the PC side but at least you won't destroy it either.
I've owned L.A. Noire for over a year and I've never been able to play it because of a rare and enduring "synchronizing bug." I've probably spent 16 hours researching, twiddling and reinstalling to try to get it to work.
The only good news is I got it on deep deep discount during last year's Christmas sale.
As other's have pointed out that Godus is an alpha game much of it has not been written yet. It is probably over a year from being a good game. The issue is this is not communicated well enough to people purchasing, as illustrated by the above comment. If Hooch expected Godus to be a bug ridden when purchasing their wouldn't be any surprise when he discover it was bug ridden. One idea I could see would be for Steam to require developers to list a sample of issues the game currently has in the promotional video. Introversion does this well with their game Prison Architect http://youtu.be/KDDzSOS0vzc?t=1m6s . I see this serving a similar purpose to the Risks & Challenges section on Kickstarter, warning the customer that they are not buying a game with the typical protections and warranties they are used to.
I expect to be able to actually run the game instead of it crashing as soon as I double click on the icon. I'd probably have no issue with it, if I could actually get it to run. Then there is the whole no refund issue with Steam.
Hmm, as someone who also sells a digital product, I have to disagree. I'm very generous with refunds. I figure a reputation for great customer service more than makes up for the small amount it costs me.
Sure, there's nothing, literally nothing, stopping someone from downloading my entire 40-hour+ back catalog, unsubscribing, and asking for a refund. They could also sign up for the free trial, download everything, and unsubscribe.
Or they could just pirate everything. And there's nothing I can do to stop it.
So who would I hurt by refusing to offer refunds: The freeloaders? Or the legitimate customers who gave my product a try and found that it didn't fit? Maybe I'm naïve, but I think that positive word-of-mouth a friendly and prompt refund will benefit me more in the long term.
I know that if I got a non-functional product and couldn't get a refund, I'd be livid. I'd execute a chargeback so fast their head would spin, and I would badmouth the company involved for months.
How's your business going with this approach? I actually suspect your reasoning here is correct, but I'm always curious to find out how a business is faring using this customer-friendly approach.
Almost all the refunds I process are due to people getting busy, no longer using my service [1], and forgetting to cancel their subscription. When somebody sends me a cancellation request right after they've been billed, I volunteer to refund the payment. Perhaps half of them take me up on it.
Even with this proactive approach, my refund rate is only about 1%. It's not affecting my profitability in any significant way.
The benefit is harder to measure. I typically get a warm thank you from offering and, as I said, about half decide to stay subscribed for the remaining month. I've also had people tell me how much they appreciate my "no DRM" policy. So I'd say that my general attitude of trusting and respecting my customers pays off, but it's impossible to say how much.
>> "As someone who sells a digital product, I completely understand the No Refund policy."
I don't. There games are DRM'd and when I FINALLY got a 'refund' (best I could get was store credit) they disabled the game anyway so it's not like I could get my money back and still have the game.
You have an account per game? Because otherwise steam will revoke your access to the rest of your games if you try this approach. In general, teh better approach is to read reviews and watch gameplay videos.
In which case they'd find themselves sued if they pulled that on me, and that's the approach everyone should take to that kind of customer hostility.
Small claims courts / magistrate court filings are cheap pretty much everywhere, and does not require a lawyer. But it would tie up some exec and someone at their law firm for enough time that it'd be a loss for them whether they in or lose.
And in the EU at least they'd also face a near guaranteed loss in most countries if they tried to punish a customer for taking advantage of their rights to return a product that did not work as advertised.
Anecdotally, I bought Dark Souls not knowing it required a Microsoft game profile to save your game at all -- no local saves whatever. I wrote a (really bitchy) email to Steam and was promptly offered some sort of "special circumstance" refund.
Incidentally I didn't even follow through with it, though I never played the game even once...
I'm currently playing Dark Souls under Windows (I bought it during a Steam sale some days ago), and don't understand this. When the game launches it needs and account in "Games for Windows Live". I created an offline (local) profile without any trouble. Honestly, I don't know if my saved games are going to the cloud or not, but the game is working and I didn't have to sign up for any service or give an email address.
Here's a short (less than one minute) video on how to create a local profile:
Seems like a valid complaint against Steam, but with not much to do with Steam OS. The whole point is that this OS is in some ways irreversibly open. No single company ever has the power to control the platform entirely- if Valve have bad policies, you at least have the option to install another marketplace.
Um, yes, it's possible. SteamOS is an open-source Debian fork. The only thing proprietary in the whole package is the Steam client itself, which you aren't at all required to leave installed.
You could install wine on it and use it to run photoshop if you wanted whie mining bitcoins and running an apache webserver. It is a linux box on pc hardware. Never mind install, you could develop another store on it.
I went through this. Spent a total of two weeks trying to get the game to work -- even went it and bought new hardware. I went out of my way to show record bench marking results. It's not my card, it's not my power supply, it's the buggy game.
2weeks of being jerked around by steam, doing every. Single. One. Of their suggestion AND logging that I did them. No result. The end result could be boiled down to "sucks for you. We don't give refund."
In the end, I ate the $60. I wasn't going to risk my entire game library over one game.
I must say though, the events certainly "raised my consciousness" to the fact that owning digital things is in a really crappy place right now. What other company do we allow the right to reach into our house and pull back things that we have rightfully purchased? It's really quite absurd.
It's not a purchase, it's a rental with the entire rent paid up front. You know it's a rental because you enter into a continuing contract with them, which causes the games to be returned when either party breaks the contract. You have to map your mental model to view it that way, and put a matching value on things. It's why i only 'buy' games on steam when they're steeply discounted because that's the only time they're fairly priced.
Anyway, at some point this is going to get regulated, especially in the EU. They won't be allowed to use terms like 'purchase' and 'buy' without a specific legal consequence (like the right of resale). Until then we can only hope they get onerous enough to get on the radar of lawmakers.
They won't be allowed to use terms like 'purchase' and 'buy' without a specific legal consequence (like the right of resale).
I really like this idea. Make sure that words that if you want to claim to 'sell' something, you actually have to fulfill criteria that guarantee buyers' rights. It makes a lot of sense and would eliminate a lot of bullshit in digital distribution.
That's true. And also why I don't buy from them anymore. I'm doing the best I can to vote with my wallet. Which means pretty much the only place I purchase ebooks from anymore is OReilly, as they give plain old, drm free pdfs.
I'm sure it's in their Terms of Service. The question that needs answered though is who is liable for non working software? It seems remarkably anti-consumer that every software purchase should be a risk.
If I meet the minimum requirements, if I can show bench marks, "prove" system stability, and run every other game in my library with the exception of this specific game, who is liable? Is it my fault that their game doesn't run on my system? That's an honest question, cause I don't know. I know that as a developer, if something I've written doesn't run on a computer that I consider it a fault in my software. Or, can at least recognize that an external force (i.e. a Bit Locker or something) will prevent that software from ever running due to permission issues, at which point a refund would be in order. I just can't wrap my head around not being viable for a broken product.
"The question that needs answered though is who is liable for non working software?"
Valve are. As a matter of law, any seller is responsible for selling a working product. If Valve claim otherwise, they're lying, and probably breaking the law in doing so.
I've heard of this actually happening. I think it is to prevent people from buying games, playing them, then trying to file a chargeback so they play the game for free.
I guess the fine line from Valve is, there isn't really any way to differentiate people legitimately having problems vs. people trying to scam the system, so their default policy is if you file a chargeback your account is going to be suspended.
So, why don't they just have a policy that you have 24 hours to get a refund, like the original Android Market policy? Sure, I suppose if you are really dedicated you could play through a game in those 24 hours and get a refund to play for free, but that's a marginal enough case that it's probably not worth worrying about.
Or they could just limit the number of refunds you can get, to say 1 out of 10 games that you buy, and no more than one per month.
Or they could just refund you any time you want. Yeah, sure, a few people will scam them that way, but it's not like they have a huge per-unit cost for delivering the games to you. If it'll make users like the above more happy and more willing to buy from Steam, it's probably worth it in the long run.
Sure, I suppose if you are really dedicated you could play through a game in those 24 hours and get a refund to play for free, but that's a marginal enough case that it's probably not worth worrying about.
I think your underestimating the number of gamers who would pull all-nighters to play through a game as fast as possible in order to play games for free. Heck, plenty of people already do that without the ability to get a refund once they are finished.
Hell, if I was still in college I would seriously consider doing it as a broke student.
Allowing for refunds within 24 hours is effectively a free 24 game rental for any game in the library.
This kind of thing has happened to several people. Steam used to disable your access to all your games if you did a charge back, so things have got a little better.
Most recent case when big release flopped and guys behind it were apologising that I can remember is X: Rebirth from few weeks ago. Many people asked for refund but nobody got it.
That's not true. I was one of the idiots who bought it on release day but I eventually got a (Steam credit) refund after a lot of back and forth. And there were several other people on the Egosoft forums who got a refund as well.
When did something like this ever happen? Per Steam's policies, whenever a game like this exists (The War Z for example), Steam will pull it from their store.
Plus, with all the Steam sales how do you not want to do business with them? I have so many games from Steam that I just have but have yet to play.
Also, why would you buy a game without first reading reviews?
War Z is the only one I heard of. The game in question is Rome Total War II. It is from a more reputable publisher even though they apologized for the bugs and I waited for the first patch to solve this very well known issue.
Yes it does. It's worth bringing up. If you go through the trouble of installing an OS whose existence is based on this policy, you should know if your rights as a consumer will be ignored.
Er, maybe not when an update comes out, but about iOS in general? I've sure heard and read plenty of discussions about the app store. The iTunes / App stores is specifically the reason I do not want an iPhone (again).
In this case, I get that its linux, but its Valve's branded linux. Complaints about Steam, the impetus behind the distro, are completely relevant.
The Steam Store has been around longer than the iOS App Store. I guess that's why I was hoping for a discussion about the OS that came out today. I guess we can just talk about the OS some other time.
Discussion of the Steam store's implications for SteamOS does not preclude simultaneous conversation about SteamOS. You can find such alternative conversation by scrolling down past this first thread. I can heartily recommend doing this! I'm sure you'll enjoy it more than focusing on the fact that there's an entire one thread of people not as bored with the topic of the steam store as you appear to be.
Get your credit card company on the phone. Explain the situation clearly and back up your claims. They may ask you to call the retailer with the credit card company representative listening in (you'll get instructions on what to do). How the conversion goes from that point could be very different from you working on your own.
I've had this happen with me- I preordered Leviathan: Warships, and upon launch was completely unable to access multiplayer through their buggy account system. The publisher acknowledged my issue but declined to answer further support requests. Valve issued credit to my account in exchange for removing my game from the library within hours of asking for it.
I paid $49 for Unreal III, it still sits in my drawer unused and unopened. Why? Because Epic promised to have a Linux port soon after release like they did with UT 2004. That had been the 3rd game I bought from them. I've bought none from them since.
I have not had a single negative experience with Valve. I started with them on Windows years ago and when they came out with Steam for Linux last year I installed it and got all my games (that ran on Linux and more since that have been ported) in the same UI, better experience, faster, I have zero complaints with Valve and Steam.
I had almost the exact same thing happened. I bought Super Meat Boy for Mac. Checked the specs and I was above them. The game worked once or twice but then crashed every time I entered the level screen. I contact Steam who told me to contact the developer. The developer said that it was a problem on the latest version os OS X and wouldn't be fixed soon. They said I can get a refund but it has to come from Steam.
I actually showed Steam my email from them and still had to fight for it. In the end all they would give me was credit for the Steam store, they wouldn't refund me.
I thought this might have been a one-off (maybe I just got a bad customer service person) but apparently not. If I were a game developer I'd be pretty worried that the blame fell back on me for bad customer service like this.
I had a similar issue, except it was with their Steam client (on Mac). It started hanging and crashing on every launch. I sent them crash traces and tried to get help figuring out what was wrong. However, their customer support is one of the worst I've ever dealt with. I got no help at all, just a canned reply after canned reply that told me to follow the steps I had explicitly told them I had already followed.
After trying to get it to work for weeks, I finally told them that their product is faulty and they're not doing anything to fix it so I would like my money back. Of course they refused over and over. Since I only had a handful of cheap games bought at sales, I decided to write the whole thing off as a loss and uninstall it.
This happened to me with Batman: Arkham Asylum. Not saying that the game was bug-ridden, but I couldn't get it to run on my computer.
I had previously spent thousands of dollars through Steam, and after they wouldn't refund a $5 sale, I quit buying games through them. I even mailed a letter to Gabe Newell at their corporate headquarters, and while this has worked successfully with other companies, I never received a reply.
I also won't buy games that require Steam activation, which sucks sometimes. Shadowrun Returns was one such game, but it looks like they now have it on GoG, so I have something to play this weekend.
I'd start doing business with them again for a $5 store credit and an apology, but I have little hope that will ever happen.
The problem is, that if you tried to take a PC game back for being faulty at a GAME/Gamestop brick and mortar shop, more often than not, they will only give you a replacement game of the same title. If it's faulty because of software bugs, probably the BEST you could get is store credit, and only after you've shouted at everyone for a while.
It is GAME's policy in the UK to NEVER refund/allow returns of PC games after they've been opened because of piracy, and quite frankly, is exactly the same reason Steam have their own similar policies in place.
Or drag them in front of a magistrate and watch them try to explain why they think it is acceptable to scam people by selling a product that does not work as expected.
The reason they have these policies in the first place is because so few people stand up for themselves in these situations.
If I go out to check the mail, there is a chance I may be hit by a bus. I still walk outside my door.
Purchasing from Steam has risks and benefits, just as purchasing from any other store does. You highlight one risk, and it is a real risk, but you don't really indicate why it outweighs everything else.
Let's assume that Steam games are generally 20% cheaper than boxed games from my local game store (actually, they're much cheaper than that, in this part of the world). Let's assume that one game in ten is a dud (actually, much less than that, in my experience). So we have two options:
Buy 10 games for X locally, get a refund on one game, ending with 9 good games for 0.9X.
Buy 10 games for 0.8X locally, get no refund, ending with 9 good games for 0.8X.
Obviously, option 2 is better. Same games, less money, even AFTER the refund. Plus I didn't have to go outside to be hit by a bus. :) (Plus, my local game store has a poor selection.) Your argument seems to be "hey, options 2 is so terrible I will never use Steam", but I don't see what's terrible about it; it sounds like a great deal to me. Plus, many brick and mortar stores will quibble over refunds; many will absolutely refuse to give a refund if the box has been opened. How is this better?
"Steam isn't perfect" isn't a good argument. "Steam isn't the best option" is a good argument, but you might struggle to make it. :)
The only thing that matters is that it's against the law to sell a broken product and not give any kind of refund. You can't say that because it may be relatively cheaper to buy from Steam that we as consumers should just metaphorically take it in the arse.
Happened to me with one of the Mass Effect games I bought through Steam. Crashed on me too frequently to play. Never had any problems with any other game I'd ever purchased.
I told Steam about it. They said, "no refunds". It's not that I made some kind of vow to never use Steam again, but basically that was the disappointment that pushed me over to using my PS3 for all new games and I haven't bought another Steam game since. That was a few years ago.
This exact scenario happened to me with the second Penny Arcade game.
But I don't care. I'm disappointed, sure. On the other hand it's a generally very rare occurrence, mainly limited to indy titles, and it's very likely most games will get fixed and patched. The deployment of fixes is a major benefit to Steam in general.
If you think there's a retailer on earth who won't give you some edge case runaround in a similar way you're naive.
Just posting to confirm that this is indeed the case. Paid like £7 for an indie game that doesn't work on Mavericks and never even had a chance to open it.
I have a hard time believing this happened to you, as I have had interactions with Steam customer service for similar issues and they usually gave me credit. If you really think Steam's return policy is bad, let me know how Best Buy or Gamestop treats after you bought and played a game and want a refund.
I heard that one guy had his steam account closed so he couldn't access or play any of the games he had bought after processing a chargeback! Small Claims court can be the consumers only friend in these situations.
I think this depends where you live and your consumer protection laws. While I've never requested a refund I know several people in Europe who have had successful refunds.
Please use http://repo.steampowered.com[2] for downloading
repo.steampowered.com goes through the CDN and will spread the load. The steamstatic link people are passing around is not behind a CDN.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395787298909/[3]
For those using the unofficial torrent to download, can verify it with official MD5 or SHA512.
I'm pretty excited to see, at least from the steam FAQ, this is going to be a pretty straight forward layer on top of Debian with some back ported changes. I've seen so many crazy rumors about completely custom audio stacks, replacements for X and who knows what else. This is assuming the vague mention of an "updated graphics stack" doesn't mean anything crazy...
Unverified sha1 - 1e4dae83371ba704d5d89e1828068ef0c4151e32 but it seems to match chunks from the HTTP source (using the torrent & HTTP source together)
It does not state on what drivers/other stuff they are contributing. It sounds they work together with the vendors to improve the proprietary drivers, I think. That would be zero benefit for GNU/Linux environment. Also current state of Steam OS is just a standard Debian with proprietary components added. And those components are what really matters in this field. I do not expect that Valve make their Steam Client open source, but at least not relying solely on closed stuff for the relevant parts. In the current state this doesn't improve anything or makes somehow the "ecosystem" better.
There was some recent quote about Gabe saying something along the lines of "open source is the future of gaming". I wouldn't be one bit surprised if that were bull though. In fact a less literal but more likely interpretation of that is "in the future we'll exploit (more) open source for our own benefit."
What isn't clear to me from that post is whether they're giving something for the open source community, or for a part of the Linux community that runs proprietary drivers, distribution platforms, games, etcetra on top of some open source?
Can anyone please explain to me how this is supposed to work with the majority of games out there that happen to be only for Windows? Short of a handful of indie games, what exactly are you supposed to play with this?
Many major AAA titles have performance issues on Windows these days, and that's with nVidia and AMD doing their best to optimize their drivers, so please don't try to convince me that you can run the latest Assassin's Creed through Wine or something.
It's a console OS. It's based on Linux, and can run any game that is available on Steam for Linux, as well as any other Linux game or application if you flick a checkbox. Frankly, it's also in a better place than the two traditional consoles that have just been released, as far as game choice goes. There are, having a quick look, 684 games available through Steam for Linux.
SteamOS is being advertised as part of Valve's SteamMachines initiative, whereby hardware manufacturers will build PC-based console devices running SteamOS.
Where are they making it look like it's a desktop OS?
It technically is a full blown OS, just centered around gaming. There are currently 100 or so games available for Steam on Linux. The OS as far as I can tell, is currently in Beta. It's released now so Valve can get feedback and tune it so it works better when the actual steam machines is released.
What I'm interested in is the streaming portion. Imagine a setup where a VMware server with a gaming VM streaming to a RaspberryPi in the family room or Mac.
How much bandwidth would that require at 1080p with compression? Well, if we assume 16:1 compression ratio, that's 1920x1080x3/(16x1024) KB per frame, times 24 fps = 9.11MB per second. So a 73Mbit wifi connection would be required. Can the RPi push that?
Or perhaps we could assume a 32:1 compression ratio on 720p content -- that's about 10 megabits per second. I don't know if the Pi could even do that with sufficiently low latency (the server's specs will probably be more important anyway) but if we're going to give a flea computer a task, at least make it vaguely feasible.
The Pi will choke. It's LAN adapter is on the USB bus, and peak real-world throughput was something like 1-2Mbps.
Normally not a problem with prerendered video, because they have high compression ratios, but live streaming can't offer the same level of compression.
24fps is movie framerates. It's the lowest fps which humans find tolerable.
16:1 compression ratio is based on DXT compression, which looks like ass, but is able to be done in realtime if the server is beefy enough. 8:1 would be better.
32:1 would look so terrible that I'm not sure anyone would be willing to sit through it.
Wifi is a requirement to make it go mainstream. Most people aren't willing to run physical cable through their living spaces, either due to lack of patience or equipment.
YouTube can stream from outside of my WiFi network at 720p or 1080p, streaming within it shouldn't be a problem. Pushing the codec pieces far enough down the stack that they're done by hardware will be the bottleneck.
DXT is extremely lightweight compression designed to be decompressed in parallel during the rendering process. 10mbps is plenty if you're using a video codec, and the Pi has hardware H.264 support.
Are you sure about that? As I understand it you usually don't want to have more than 4-5 B-frames in a row. And if you use baseline profile you eliminate B-frames and can cut the latency to be less than a frame.
Can somebody post screenshots if they got it running?
I am mostly interested in design. Their release announcements were amazing so I am curious what they pulled off.
nope this is entirely legit. Valve confirmed that when they shipped the 300 steam boxes today to beta testers they'd also push live Steam OS Beta. Check the github and steamstatic.com files.
This doesn't mean that downloads from steamdb.info or steamstatic.com are legit. Tread carefully, I'll wait until there's a link from an official site.
wget -c will look for a partial file (so when it bombs out you can just start it again). Sometimes it makes sense to force a file name, that one looks like it will work fine.
Use another VM or nix install to grab the zip, extract it to a path and run the following:
genisoimage -o test2.iso -r -J steamos/
(assuming you extracted the zip to steamos/)
I've edited this post to remove most of what I said, the installer as it stands now is designed to work on UEFI compatible systems only and VirtualBox isn't compatible enough.
I'm not sure I can be bothered fixing it as the SteamOS TOS forbids distribution of modified versions.
Yes, installing an ISO created like that will work, but the way X is configured breaks all of the ttys in VirtualBox. I've got a virtual serial port ready to debug the issue but booting in recovery would work too.
Along these lines, does anyone know the best way to boot from the downloaded zip file in VirtualBox? I'm currently trying to convert the contents to a bootable .iso, but I'm not sure if that'll work.
I got it running under Virtualbox fairly easily. It's not that exciting, just Gnome 3 with a few extra desktop icons. You can choose to login to big picture mode directly from Gdm.
VirtualBox emulates a generic VESA adapter, with some extensions to pass OpenGL commands to the host (and includes a fork of Wine's Direct3D-on-OpenGL implementation to provide some degree of acceleration for Windows guests).
Using a real NVidia GPU from within a VM is possible, but not with VirtualBox, and not with most gaming systems (due to either having necessary hardware features disabled on overclockable Intel CPUs, or AMD systems lacking a second GPU for the host).
installed SteamOS on my labtop. Essentially just Debian 7 Gnome (with special steam repository) plus Steam client and all necessary drivers (ie Nvidia) automatically installed. Easy automatic install...just extract SteamOS.zip to usb, boot usb with UEFI enabled, and will install to first disk (just make sure your first disk is unused, as the auto install will not prompt the user for anything). Went ahead and enabled all the debian repos (so can install any debian program, so can function as a desktop workstation or server). So now it is basically like I've had in the past with Debian 7 plus steam client. And of course only the steam linux games work, although you're one "sudo apt-get install wine" instruction away from running most windows programs...
Whoa, this comment ruins the page layout. If you can still edit it, can you throw two spaces in front of it? (That'll render it in a fixed-width <code> block.)
I was hoping that it would have a "streaming only" mode, with much lower hardware requirements. I have a decent spec gaming machine in the study, and a low spec HTPC in the living room that I was hoping I could just stick Steam OS on and stream from the study machine.
Hopefully they make the backported eglibc .deb packages available. I'm betting they'll have an updated version of the graphics driver and possibly mesa too.
On Debian this has been a headache for me, so I'm hoping they'll make these things available :)
> given that USB sticks are such an obvious security hazard
What? What's less secure about booting some random code you've downloaded from the internet from an usb stick vs booting it from a cd you've burned at home?
If you burn a disk, it stays put. The disk will never be changed. Every time you use that burnt DVD, you get the same results, unless it gets scratched.
On the other hand, let's say you have a USB stick.
1. Download installer package.
2. Create bootable USB stick.
... maybe leave the stick plugged in, and surf the internet.
3. You boot, successfully install a clean system, then:
...leave the stick plugged in, and surf the internet.
or
...leave the stick unattended, and in the physical presence of an enemy.
4. Fall victim to malware which goes undetected:
...specially crafted malware corrupts the USB stick, and includes a malicious payload as part of the *NEXT* install.
or
...someone builds an evil corrupted debian package and slips it into the installer, so that it piggybacks into the *NEXT* install.
5. Now, you have a corrupted installer spreading its hazards to every installation thereafter. You have no idea whether the installer's integrity has been compromised, because the USB stick remains writable.
With a DVD ISO, there is only one chance to attack, and it's during the download. This is easily mitigated if Valve tells us the exact size in bytes and what SHA-256 hash of the downloaded file is (over an SSL connection), so that we can verify the integrity of the download by matching hashes. If that matches, and we burn the disk, we know the disk remains secure and tamper resistant (more so than a USB stick), so long as it is not damaged or scratched or anything.
After install it didn't boot correctly on my Macbook Pro 7,1. Booted to grub but then black screen. Also note (as now stated in the official documentation) it wipes your hard drive for the initial install.
Steam for windows allows you to launch non-steam games (or applications) from Steam by creating a shortcut(iirc you even get the steam overlay when you press shift+tab). I would be surprised if they removed this functionality from SteamOS.
I don't believe that's the point she is making. Obviously the distributor should be compensated. I believe her point is will 3rd parties that are NOT green lit on steam still be downloadable similar to Android's install from unknown sources.
My initial thought would be they allow 3rd party / not affiliated with steam. They seem pretty open with everything about SteamOS and I would think it would only hurt their chances of adoption if they were to lock it down. Even if they do lock that down I'm sure someone would easily find a work around as it is Linux after all.
Lets say you buy a game on the Steam store. Now lets say that game is so bug-ridden that you can't play it. It's so bad that you can't even run the game. You check online and it's such a big problem that the CTO has publicly apologized. You contact Steam support to ask for a refund. They tell you to forget it, so you contact the publisher. You explain that you have liked their games forever but this game is not playable. You want your money back. The publisher will tell you that you need to get a refund from the retailer you purchased the game from. It's out of their control because they don't have your money.
You contact Steam again, they tell you that they will issue no refund. You threaten to file a charge back from your credit card company. Steam says that they will disable further purchases from the Steam Store if you do so. They actually state that they will not let you purchase any more games from them if you protect yourself as any consumer should be allowed to.
Somehow, I just can't imagine doing business with them anymore.