Is the end in sight for Steam bandwidth woes?

[Joolz]

Just a few days after Cyber X Games organizers blamed Steam problems for scuttling its Counter-Strike tournament, Valve has announced it upgrading its online delivery service. Helping out the Half-Life 2 developer is Limelight Networks, a Tempe, Arizona-based digital network provider.

According to a joint release from the company, Limelight will host Valve's Steam platform servers and help distribute its online content via its digital network. Currently, Limelight provides digital content delivery service to BuyMusic.com, Musicmatch, Real Networks, and--of all things--Jimmy Buffett's Radio Margaritaville. "We selected Limelight Networks as one of our first hosting partners because they have a proven ability to deliver heavy media files quickly, inexpensively and with guaranteed reliability," said Valve founder Gabe Newell.

Though Valve did not reveal when Limelight would begin hosting Steam, it's a safe bet it will be soon. "With our current games generating more Internet usage each month than Italy's total online traffic, we know we have demanding customers. As we approach the [April] release of Half-Life 2, we are anticipating increased usage," said Newell.


Source: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/news_6086459.html

[Mouse_On_Mars]

So then you'll be able to get patches at more than 3k/s, but it'll still be a bloated pile of poorly coded pap that falls over constantly. woo hoo :rolleyes:

nb, I am not flaming CS, in fact I used to play it a lot until Steam came along.

[BatWick]

Steam is not such a bad system, i just don't think there is enough in it for us, the users. You can see why valve want, and like it. YOu can see a marginal advantage for us, but that soon disappears when you have to reinstall, and the fact you don't have anything physical for you money, no manual, no CDs ad not much of a cheaper price. I personally think prices through steam should be a lot less that retail, and extra content should be offered for users, then people would be pleased to ue it, rather than use it because it's the only way.

btw Limelight networks host my old website host lol, nearlyfreespeech.net so it looks like a big improvementfrom whatever it is they have now!

Ant

[afty]

Hmmm, It seems that the ineptness that is Valve thinks throwing some bandwidth at the problem can help.

It's like building a car that only drives backwards, then believing that alot more petrol can make everything OK.

[zhardoum]

on a completely different note, yesterday the extra copies of HL Generations arrived that I had ordered, today I started installing them.

Of 10 copies, 3 installed first time, 2 couldnt verify correctly, but still connected anyway, the last 5... well the last 5 copies, all new out of the shrink wrap all said SERIAL NUMBER IN USE. PLEASE CONTACT STEAM...

Im not impressed, this is Easter weekend, I ordered the extra copies to have installed on my new machines ready for this weekend.

I cannot believe that 50% of my order has been used by keygens'R'us.

I am hoping, really hoping that this is a Steam issue, that hopefully will allow me to install the game tomorrow. If not, I will be annoyed.

5 out of 10 Copies Serial in use!! WTF. I mean in a batch of 40 cds you may expect 1 or two to be in use, but 5 out of 10.. thats appaling.

Whats more appling is, that getting help out of steam is a joke, fortunately vivendi Universal Publishing arent such a PITA about this as Steam are, and for me as a cyber cafe owner, will act as a go between on my behalf.

Even though I have legit copies, steam treat me like dirt, the second you speak to steam all they want is copies of your licences, reciepts of purchase, proof of payment, proof of my company ID, and all this before they even look at an issue.

Last time I had this issue, i ran into mike dunkle, who after copious emails and faxes eventually helped me out, well sort of, after I had proved I had all my licences, he CBA to do anything, and just ignored my request, only thign he-Steam wanted was proof of my cyber licences, soon as I had managed to prove those, they just couldnt give a toss.

Steam -- Some sort of an anagram for CRAP CUSTOMER SERVICE.

[afty]

I'd be interested to see the results of legal action against Valve or the publisher for this.

You purchase a product to be resold in your cyber cafe.
They prevent you playing it (their security system will not let you play) - as a DIRECT RESULT of their security systems actions you lose a significant amount of revenue.

Sounds like it could be actionable to me.