ryang
Premium
join:2001-04-01
Chicago, IL
| Their fault not ours
Steam/Valve should have known the masses would eat up this thing. The Steam installer was leaked a few hours before the official release time. The same exact strain would have happened at that set time. That's what happens when you update a free mod,used by hundreds of thousands. I see Steam charging a fee in the future.
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-=AIM=-My Pbase Pics |
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Hiryuu
join:2003-01-17
San Jose, CA
| Exactly. When it was released a couple of hours early, techs were claiming the servers werent set up, yet STEAM was working - albeit slowly - so the servers were up, just not able to handle the masses.
I managed to install STEAM, CS1.6 beta, and have played on servers. I didnt get a single error during all the installing/downloading so I consider myself lucky.
~Hiryuu |
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Karl Bode
News Guy
join:2000-03-02
Host:
Road Runner
PC gaming GAMES
PC gaming Tech
| reply to ryang
Keep in mind though that probably 30% or more CS players bought the game....so they do make a profit....in addition to selling Half-Life itself....so we're not talking a good will operation here. They are in it to make cash in a wide variety of ways.
In this age of watching MMORPG after MMORPG collapse because of a lack of bandwidth, there's NO EXCUSE that I can think of for them not to be prepared with a wide pipe, even if this was the beta. They know better than anyone just how popular that mod is.... |
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EasyNetwork$
Vip
Premium
join:2002-09-01
Brooklyn, NY | reply to Hiryuu
i find it funny thought, what the f*ck were those guys thinking!
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»e-network.us game give away! |
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tklown
join:2000-09-17
Sayreville, NJ | sigh
They were out of their mind to be the only source of the installer. Sheer stupidity |
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MrMaster
What If
Premium
join:2000-12-16
Austin, TX
clubs:
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| Who works there? Monkeys?
You have to be pretty damn dumb to max out your bandwidth even before going live with a beta. The person in charge of this, who the hell did he/she screw to get their job?
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Do you want to feel smart? Ask George Bush a question. |
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Alphy
join:2001-12-31
Troy, MI | Wanna take a guess at what the costs are to lease a 500mbit line and for it to through out oh, say maybe 10TB (since the international CS community will ALL be scrambling to get a 40mb patch). Lemme fill you in, its alot. |
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EasyNetwork$
Vip
Premium
join:2002-09-01
Brooklyn, NY | Well... speakeasy may come and save them!!! /me crosses fingers
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»e-network.us game give away! |
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Jaime
Premium
join:2001-06-03
Huntington Beach, CA
 ·Verizon FIOS
·Charter Pipeline
| Took a day
I had to wait a day to get beta 1.6 running. Because,as the article says, they couldn't hold up to the pounding of 100,000 people downloading at the same time. It's also amazing that within a few hours a 500mb line would be totally useless. They better find some hefty content backbones when the retail 1.6 is released and everyone starts downloading it.
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The secret of joining the BBR CS/UT2k3 clans
The secret of joining the BBR BF1942 clan |
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drew
Reformation
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs:
·wavebroadband
| valve = morons
if a leaked version could cause the crowding, then theres no way the official release could have been handled.
/me slaps idiots that made Steam.
i have yet to actually be able to even get into a game of 1.6beta.
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Jesus Christ, why don't you come save my life. Open my eyes and blind me with your light and your lies. |
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jekler
join:2000-11-23
Cincinnati, OH
clubs:
|  Poor planning is our motto
It seems the motto for the entire infancy of the internet is "We weren't ready for that yet." Every game, server, and online service repeatedly sings the "We weren't ready yet" song. Battle.net has been unable to keep their servers up for more than a 48 hour stretch since the release of Diablo II, and that was 2 and a half years ago. They've used every excuse from incompetent hosts (Even though they've switched hosts a couple times), blame it on the hackers "We're continually being attacked. Someone has spent 30 months initiating a DoS attack, day and night, and we haven't been able to track them down yet", faulty hardware, faulty software, not enough bandwidth...
Battle.net isn't alone in the game. Every game service that requires a company-hosted game server is a complete failure. Simutronics, which is arguably the largest MUD company, can barely keep servers up to run a text-based game. If the state of the internet doesn't even allow us to reliably host a text-based game, a vision like Steam is a few decades away.
The story with Steam is nothing new and doesn't surprise me. What would surprise me is if someone actually built a service that worked and didn't need an on-staff PR consultant to deliver excuses. It seems like gaming companies have stopped trying to make things work and just plan to be complete and utter failures.
Jekler |
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Beowoulf
Wut?
join:2002-02-12
Humble, TX | it was just a test not a official release, they just wanted to test if the servers can handle all the traffic, i for one signed up the next day after the suspension. |
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GeneStarwind
join:2001-12-13
Fairfax, VA
| All I have to say is: Why?
It took about 15 minutes to register the account, and now takes almost 5 minutes to login each time. The CS download took approx 100 minutes, but it didn't seem like it installed. There's a thin line between ambition and stupidity, but I think this leans more towards the latter. I've always hated download management software, but why the made this the only means of acquiring the updates is completely beyond me. I speak for myself only, but I'd rather have a multitude sources to download a large update from (let's say, once every 5 months), rather than use some crappy, buggy software to download minor updates from an extremely congested server on an almost daily basis.
[text was edited by author 2003-01-18 15:41:05] |
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insomniac84
join:2002-01-03
Schererville, IN | It seems to work fine now.
It only took 20 minutes to install. |
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vrangel
join:2000-08-11
Spring Valley, NY
|  Not so bad
It worked pretty good for me. Took about 20 min to update 'platform.dll'.
After that updating cs itself took only 10 min. Played some and the only problem is frequent disconnects.
After disconnect I check the server again and it shows huge latency.
Not sure where the problem is. |
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MightyPez
join:2002-05-01
Saint Paul, MN
·Comcast
| Not only was it a shoddy release...
But there are already cheats for it available. I suspected someone ina server cheating because as soon as he rounded a corner his gun would snap up and get 3 head shots in a row (that's 3 seperate kills folks). I went to a well known cheating clan site and confirmed my suspicions that cheats were already working. |
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soulburner
join:2002-09-23
Pahrump, NV
| reply to jekler
Re: Poor planning is our motto
said by jekler  :
It seems the motto for the entire infancy of the internet is "We weren't ready for that yet." Every game, server, and online service repeatedly sings the "We weren't ready yet" song. Battle.net has been unable to keep their servers up for more than a 48 hour stretch since the release of Diablo II, and that was 2 and a half years ago.
Hey, do you remember when blizzard ran the D2 stress test? It was the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. The idea was to stress the servers (hence the term "stress test") to see if they could handle the flood of people. Now, here's the funny thing:
The released the stress test in waves. Their reason for doing so, was so that the sudden flood of people didn't totally kill their servers. They knew that they were doomed long before they even released something, and like you said, they haven't recovered from it yet. |
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GeneStarwind
join:2001-12-13
Fairfax, VA | reply to MightyPez
Re: Not only was it a shoddy release...
Only the update system changed, the rest is the same. LTFX and other swiss knife hacks detect player entities, not color aim or something of that nature, so they're bound to work until VAC module is able to detect them. |
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ryanjms
join:2001-05-05
Beachwood, OH
·Time Warner Cable
| reply to Alphy
Re: Who works there? Monkeys?
Yes, but if Valve feels that they can create a content delivery system of the future, capable of updating millions of pieces of software, they should have mapped out ahead of time how much the bandwidth would cost them.
500mbit line when thousands of people with 1mbit+ cable and dsl lines are trying to download is completely retarded. It should have been multi-sourced throughout the country with a ton of OC3s and T3s etc... They'd need well over 2-3gbits to serve people with any type of speed. |
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Combat Chuck
Too Many Cannibals
Premium
join:2001-11-29
Erie, PA
| the key word is beta
What everyone needs to keep in mind is that this was a beta release; it was meant to test steam and see what it could take BEFORE they try to sell it to anyone. They found a flaw and it will be fixed. And remember that most game companies do little or no beta testing, barely support the the program when it comes out, and then only patch it to eliminate it's most blatently obvious problems (which are sometimes "fixed" by excising the malfunctioning features ala: Echelon and multiplayer support).
Valve has never hidden the fact that Steam will eventually be used as a money maker. The fairly obvious intent being software distribution on an annual subscription basis. Valve has also stated that they will continue support for their cd based products after steam is released as a retail product.
As for the CS patch it will be released as a standalone patch as well. And those of you who are mad because you can't update to cs 1.6 now, what does it matter, unless I missed something, the steam based servers aren't compatible with the cd based servers. And there are considerably less steam cs servers.
Valve's biggest problem is that they're too open about what they're doing. If they would've kept their collective mouths shut no one would be upset about this and the myriad other things they announced way before they were anywhere near completion.
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The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. -Churchill |
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