Steam - is it always this bad?

I really detest Steam, personally. I've never been a huge fan of it, in general. Ubisoft released DLC for Far Cry 2, unfortunately it looks like it's a Steam only release. I own only the retail version. I know this isn't exactly Steam's fault, but Steam DOES offer a way to import games into itself, supposedly. I tried that, and still can't get the DLC to download. It'll be winter in Hell when I decide to re-buy FC2 just for the chance to play the DLC.

This is how they get you....

 

I'm not a fan of Steam either. Have had bad experiences

 

But you can have your steam\steamapps directory any where, on any disk/partion, though the games have to be in there too. I move my HDD (and now SSD copy) with my Steam install, to other comps i use no problem, i just click the Steam.exe and it starts the verification and puts the needed ok in some MS apps/ user folder, but the main Steam is always separate from my System/C: Disk. My uninstall option in " Programs Features" is only 1.3MB.

 

i am not sure? I keep my Steam\steamapps in my games, i dont have Steam separate from my steamapps, or have Steam in my programs. You can copy paste the whole Steam folder from your Programs to anywhere, then uninstall Steam. Remove the Steam Folder from Programs. Go to your Copy ( rename ) Click on the Steam.exe, and your new Steam folder will be default. I do not see a reason to have them separate, Steam in programs and steamapps in games.

 

Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, what is your damage BZB?

 

This may be of use...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link

I tried the following:

- moved c:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps to d:\
- cd to c:\Program Files\Steam
- mklink/d .\steamapps d:\steamapps

and as far as I can tell that's done what I want, which is put the contents of steamapps on my d: drive

 

and what if your games are on several drives
can I have a steamapps on d: , e: , f: and g: ?

 

well i see it as just like any other "update" prog that is in any game...
I never let Steam load up unless i want it to. As for the cool NTFS link, i think that only works in Vista, Biz and up?

 

You can also mount partitions onto NTFS folders, but to be honest I've never ever ever used it.

 

I already said you could try mounting a partition in the place of SteamApps.

I've been thinking about this & well Steam is not separate from the games.

Steam games don't have stand alone executables.
They require Steam to be running & the load comes from Steam -> the games are essentially part of the Steam application or vice versa.

It must be nice from the support side of things to be 100% sure where the data/code has been put.
A bunch of troubleshooting is much simplified by that.

 

Edit: Removed rant about the news/update popup thingies because as noted by Kyyla below, this is indeed able to be turned off in the settings

 

I've used Steam since it was released and it has never shown an pop-up advert after it has logged into the network. Maybe you lost your connection and after Steam logged back in, it showed the daily advert?

 

I've never had that happen and I've been a Steam user for a long time and used to leave it running for days on end..

 

You can turn it off in settings.

 

You don't get pop ups if you disabled it, unless if you're playing a demo or a "free weekend" game.