Be Excellent To Each Other

Trying to uninstall a game today I was waiting forever for the uninstaller to come up. Turns out it was one I'd got via steam and steam was trying to run and failing. Tried running steam normally by itself and it wouldn't. Uninstalled steam. Now all my games are uninstalled as well.

Is there no way I can play my stuff without this crapware on my machine? I'd sooner run warez versions than go via steam again.

Games bought via Steam run through Steam, that's how it works. Steams sorts out patching and uninstalling and all that stuff.

I never tried to manage Steam-purchased games any other way than through Steam.

What's the problem with Steam anyway? I've pretty much had it installed since 2003.

Well, I didn't want it in the first place. I was forced to use it because having bought Football Manager in a shop I wasn't allowed to play my game any other way. Then it started taking up to a minute to begin booting a game, where without steam I'd just click the icon and it would begin loading. Fuck knows what steam was doing for that minute. Then it began updating my games, which I didn't want it to do. With football manager, there are lots of third party programs one can use alongside the main app. I use about three. Every time the game updates, those programs, which I've also paid for, stop working until the one guy who wrote each of them can get an update out. Obviously, I don't want to update until my other apps are ready, so I disable automatic updates. Steam ignores me. Add to that how steam takes a hundred years to do anything, even browsing games is painful.

All I had on it were FM and a load of stuff I bought through Humble Bundles. It shouldn't be deleting those at all, seeing as they are supposed to be DRM free.

tl;dr - I decide what my computer does and when, not Gabe Newell, whose software is as fat and annoying as he is.

Nah, the direct downloads are DRM free. Download through Steam & it's always gonna need Steam

Just right-click on the game in your Steam Library, go to the 'UPDATES' tab and select 'Do not automatically update this game' from the drop-down menu (which consists of only two options, which are basically YES or NO).

Gabe Newell will never mess with it again.

There is a lot to hate in the world of games, but Steam is up there with the best 'gaming things' ever created IMO.

Steam does take a ludicrously long time to startup even though it's not really doing much. Also, during a normal update to the client, the install of it on my laptop did fuck up spectacularly last month to the point that I had to email their support guys who (a week later) got back to me with a solution that didn't work; and it took another week after that to finally get it sorted. I don't use it all that much on the laptop so I wasn't really bothered but if I did all my gaming on the PC through Steam I'd have been fucking livid.

That aside though, I've never had any hassle with it over the years and quite like it. I remember resenting it when it first came out because I didn't want a needless programme taking up system resources when I was playing games (or whatever nonsense I worried about at the time) but in these days where RAM is cheap and the ability to easily download your games to a new machine is a blessing I don't really mind it any more.

I just tested this.

After a reboot of my PC (i.e. nothing cached in RAM), I clicked on the Steam icon at the same time as clicking on the START button on my phone's stopwatch.

I was into my Steam Library at 13 seconds and had Borderlands 2 launching at 15 seconds.

What's 'ludicrously long' about that?

And my PC ain't no ninja bastard either, it's distinctly mid-range by current standards.

It takes longer than that on my machine. It's always taken longer than that on all the machine I've ever owned.

I did that. It still pushed certain updates. I would boot the game, wait half an hour for it to update before I could play it, then check the settings and "do not automatically update this game" would be set. Hence Football Manager was always knacked. I've looked for solution on forums and with steam themselves, everyone always says the same as you.

Have you tried running the entire Steam client in 'offline mode'? That should stop it from ever going online for anything; not client updates or patches to individual games.

Stick an SSD in, it's the single most amazing upgrade you can make to any PC or laptop, and they're stupidly cheap now.

128GB should do you for a main OS/apps/games drive.

Has always taken a minute at least on my machine, more than one install. Nothing else has the same problem. I get that it performs well for some people but it was foisted on my, is an ungainly mess and makes everything slower, so just no, really.

Yes, that led to various other problems that stopped me getting on with playing my games. It pisses and moans about being offline, too.

Fair enough, I only had to do it once years ago for a reason I can't remember now and it was fine but it wasn't for a long period of time or anything.

Huh, that's a bugger that it's not working right. Like AE, Steam has been consistently well-behaved for me. Do you have the product code for Football Manager? If so you could download it from some unsavoury website and then use your code to play it.

You're not the only person I've heard this from, although I've never wanted to disable updates myself. People in the Crusader Kings II forums also report that they have received game updates even after specifically telling Steam not to update the game, although no-one seems to know why, and it doesn't seem to be consistent i.e. it works for some people. From memory, people were going so far as to physically disconnect their computer before loading the game. But you're not imagining it.

It's worth noting that many games on Steam don't need Steam to be running at all, although it's mostly indie games.

They seemingly need it to be installed, though. I think I can redownload elsewhere with my humble coupons or something though.

I'm curious as to how much of a performance impact Steam running has on games. Probably not much.

I am reliably informed that going into Windows Control Panel, then Internet Options, then the Connections tab, then the LAN Settings and unticking 'Automatically detect settings' can do much for Steam slowness whilst having no impact on anything else on your PC. I haven't tried it myself owning to the fact that good relations with my other half seem to preclude extensive gaming time on my PC, but at least give it a shot. Worst case scenario: internet stops working. In which case: panic, swear profusely, then put the tick back in that 'Automatically detect settings' box.

That option isn't ticked on any of my machines and it's not something I've ever fiddled with (aside from trying to bypass a filtered fucking proxy server at work of course).

I use static IPs anyway, so does that still affect me? Without having to reboot into Windoze and check?

That option grabs any proxy settings set on your dhcp server, which is your router. Unless you've actually set any settings, and it's very unlikely there will be any, so highly doubtful that setting will do anything whatsoever.

Indeed. The theory being that Windows takes it's sweet time querying your router for information it will never receive if the option is ticked. Like I say, I've not tried it myself but I've seen numerous positive reports around t'interwebs.

Having a static IP has no impact on this setting, as it relates to - as Craster points out - your proxy settings. You almost certainly won't have any proxy settings to worry about at home.