So Ive finished Half-Life 2 Ep1, its a pretty good game, about a third to a half the length of HL2 Id say. The AI of friendlies seems to be slightly improved and the graphics options now include HDR which looks to me like everythings glowing but Im assured that it actually improves the graphics and makes them more realistic.
Steam however is crap. I dont know when it became standard to harass your customers in this way, but Steam (for those who dont know) seems to be some sort of portal into certain games you might buy and install or download from Steam. Well, this wouldnt be so bad If all it did was let you launch and update games or if you could indeed ignore it completely and launch the game directly.
But no, it insists on sitting in that draw thing down the bottom right, doing God knows what whilst Im not using a game, aside from apparently hassling and harassing me with ads. I really dont appreciate software Ive legitimately paid for acting this way.
These sort of actions by software developers upon their customers can only encourage those making no-CD hacks or serial cracks to do more.
I emplore you, stop it before its too late!
By having steam run in the background it can seamlessly update your games, will inform you of new titles and is generally a pretty safe application to have running.
Feel free to exit from steam, however you will need to start it again to actually run your steam-powered games - since it handles your steam account as well.
Steam isn’t perfect - but it’s pretty much harmless.
I run steam in the background a lot, and I’ve never had the ads problem you’re talking about. It just tells me once in a while if updates are going, but other than that it’s completely unobtrusive.
What kind of ads are you talking about?
Theres been a few adverts for both Sin and HL2 Ep1. Whilst I can see the benefits of downloading updates in the background, I would perefer it if I were in control of that really and it didnt sit there nagging me. After all, these are just game updates, not critical system updates.
Go to settings, click the Messages tab and uncheck both boxes. That will get rid of the adverts.
Thank you, ive removed it now Ive finished HL2 Ep1, but Ill keep this in mind.