I Hate Steam

[Acorncomputer]

I am sorry to be so forthright but at the moment I am furious.

I have been transferring over my routes from Rail Simulator to RailWorks, setting up the Spa Valley Route and so far there have been no problems. The latest update to RailWorks seems to have fixed a lot of problems and I can honestly say that I have had no crashes or error messages. Although I have not pushed the program much, for me it is working very well.

I Love RailWorks

I have recently purchased an expensive notebook computer with a view to demonstrating RailWorks and my routes at various locations. I plan to join the UKTS team at Letchworth in November and I also want to visit the Spa Valley Railway to demonstrate their railway at one of their member events or at a public open day. For this I need a good quality computer that will demonstrate RailWorks at its best, and I think I have the right computer and RailWorks is getting to be a much more stable and impressive program.

So far so good until I start up my notebook computer and find that I cannot run RailWorks as Steam requires me to go online before it will let me run RailWorks. THERE IS NO WAY I CAN RUN THE PROGRAM WITHOUT GOING ONLINE.

If I had travelled a long distance to an event where a RailWorks demonstration was essential and found that could not run the program due to Steam asking to go online and there was no facility to do this, I would be even more furious than I am now. I will not go into detail but I expect the reader can imagine their own picture of the situation.

I do not know why I have to enter my username and password again to get permission to run RailWorks, I do not really care, all I know is that I cannot run the program without connecting to Steam again.

This is not acceptable to me and this dependence on Steam will be a major factor in my involvement with RailWorks in the future. I cannot see why we MUST use Steam, why cannot it be optional? Why is it necessary to have Steam dictate when and how you can use the program.

I hate Steam

I might feel better in the morning but I am NOT HAPPY.

[Trainguy76]

Sorry to hear that but, why not just set up steam to run in offline mode or on my setup steam starts in the background on start-up and I don't need to login because i clicked the "remember my password" option. Maybe you could try that?

[AndyM77]

Read this topic as it's very similar and I don't want to repeat myself - http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 14&t=99581

[smarty2]

I will copy it for you mate

You need to make sure that you first choose "offline" mode whilst your connected...

So open Steam, connect and then goto "File", choose Go "Offline", confirm and then Steam will ask you to restart Steam in 'Offline Mode' - Steam will restart and you'll be surprise, surprise in "Offline" mode.

You only have to do this once, subsequent times you won't have to do this procedure.

[smarty2]

I hate steam too Goeff, but not for the same reasons! I hate it because i keep spending money on new games!!!

[bab7000]

Monkey Island Tales 1-5

[Acorncomputer]

I hate steam too Goeff, but not for the same reasons! I hate it because i keep spending money on ruddy new games!!!

Steam is a great system if you are interested in other games but when I re-connect to Steam, the first thing it tells me is that a new game or update is available in which I am entirely disinterested.

I know all about operating offline but this is clearly not reliable. My objection is not particularly to using Steam as a means of updating Railworks or obtaining new content, It is that fact that Steam can control whether the game runs or not which in turn means that I cannot gain acces to MY work unless Steam approves. This parasitical 'bouncer' guards the door to my content and I do not like it.

The set up should be that RailWorks can run any time, anywhere, and it should be the users choice as to when Steam is started and used.

[ashgray]

Railworks WILL run anytime, anywhere, reliably - the only proviso, as has already been said, is that you select "offline" mode whilst you are connected. You should not need to go online again, unless of course you choose to update RW through Steam.

Ash

[CaptScarlet]

Railworks WILL run anytime, anywhere, reliably - the only proviso, as has already been said, is that you select "offline" mode whilst you are connected. You should not need to go online again, unless of course you choose to update RW through Steam.

Ash

I would also mention that if you don't want the advertising you need to change that in the steam settings as well as connecting to the steam community. Also turning off steam starting up at system boot time is a good thing if you are not connected all the time. But the really important thing is to confirm that railworks and steam works in offline mode before taking it actually offline.

John

Edit - another suggestion is to keep a backup of the steam folder once you have offline mode working in case something goes wrong. It is possible to copy back the folder and to fix whatever problem steam had and carry on in offline mode ( I tested this to see if it worked and it did even with a older client version ).

[Acorncomputer]

Thanks to all of you for your comments.

I have calmed down a bit now but the bottom line is that for whatever reason, Steam prevented me from running the program when I wanted to.

[AndyM77]

I hate steam too Goeff, but not for the same reasons! I hate it because i keep spending money on new games!!!

True! - Offtopic the new Machinarium demo is quite fun, it may be programmed in Flash but it seems to be quite an enjoyable little puzzler / adventure game... That's another £11 gone on preorder

[growler37]

Hi
I sympathise with you Geoff,i am becoming very uneasy about steam.
yesterday i wanted to carry out some work on my route, clicked on RW icon as usual, and a message appears telling me to please login to steam,ok,clicked on steam icon up comes steam with a friendly,"hello Growler37,so i go to my games and select RW, yes you guessed it ,please login to steam But i am already logged in to steam! tried again same result!The only way i could rectify the fault was to shutdown and reboot, now call me old fashioned, but when you buy a game,i would have thought it was up to me to choose when i can play it,not some big brother controling system,ah i hear you say just set it to offline mode,yes thats fine,but i would rather steam had less control on when and were i choose to use RW.
Regards
Kevin

[Basherz]

There was a "Windows" update just recently, and that selectively blanked cookies for Steam, this site, and a couple of others, so was nothing to do with Steam at all.

[growler37]

There was a "Windows" update just recently, and that selectively blanked cookies for Steam, this site, and a couple of others, so was nothing to do with Steam at all.

Hi
Only problem is i dont automaticly update windows,i am selective, so i would doubt that was the cause, plus, it happened earlier today,and as Steam recognised me as logged in but still refused me access to my own software,ie; Railworks i would guess the balls in there court,i have contacted there support people, who are i must say! very helpfull.
Regards
Kevin

[Paul_Boland]

Steam sucks!!! Down with Steam!!!!!!!

Turns out even folks in the gaming industry don't like Steam, here's the news link:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... 7&site=cvg