Run out of steam?[Update 1]

Mike Bantick
Saturday, 16 December 2006 04:50

Opinion and Analysis

Has Valve - the developers behind the genius of Halflife 2 - been counterstriked?  It would seem that the Steam service suffered some major downtime.

A quick check of the Steam servers shows no response.  This gamer polarizing service was a forced part of installing Halflife 2 back in November 2004, and unless you are in "offline mode" is still required to play the game today.

 The Steam forums give the following warning; "There is currently a wide spread power outage in Bellevue/Seattle impacting Steam Server availability. Unfortunately ETA for when the power will be restored is unknown, as the power company will only work on restoring it once the storm has eased and the high winds have died down. Any issues you are experiencing with connecting to Steam are only temporary, as this isn't an end-user issue."

This seems to have been the case for the past six hours at least.   [Update 1] Servers are now back on line, much rejoicing.

As a service Steam provides a trickle feed of code to potential customers machines, which can be activated quickly online.  In recent times, Valve have shown their continued commitment to a quality service by branching out and providing more esoteric games such as Darwinia and The Ship as well as blockbusting titles like Dark Messiah Might and Magic.

Opponents argue that the Steam concept is a form of DRM or even spy ware, and that it can be a system hog.  They also point to the fact that it is required to available along with an Internet connection in order to play games that have previously been installed on the machine.  Reality is that this software in my opinion poses no security threat, and I am yet to see a game that could not be configured to run in "offline" mode without Steam active.

Of course having all the Steam servers down for any length of time tarnishes Valves image.  It will also hit the company's hip pocket to a degree.  Steam is the cornerstone of the developers marketing drive as well as sales, which, via Steam are simple, quick, well priced and enticing to consumers.  Making some brick and mortar video game retailers tremble at how effectively they are bypassed.

Steam introduced episodic content to the masses with Halflife episode 1 and Sin Episodes.  Even though these products are available on shiny disk at retailers as well, the episodic model is so suited to the slick Steam interface; it is hard to see a reason for leaving the keyboard to go to the store.

Microsoft has seen the popularity of this type of delivery mechanism with their excellent Xbox Live offering.  Both systems need to have redundancy and disaster recovery built into their architecture.  In todays online world, competitors are only a click away.