Unless you have the worst internet on the planet you're exaggerating or something is wrong with your computer, not Steam. What is your bandwidth?

There are nut jobs afraid to use Steam because the government is out to get them, it's a virus, it's communism, it causes cancer, blah blah I have heard it all. You didn't word it in a joking manner.

1/.5

I can keep track of different processes' bandwidth usage, no viruses or anything. My connection is easily sufficient for surfing, youtubing and gaming, but with Steam's autoupdates the latencies and packetloss skyrocket.

I have emailed a local importer if they have any info on the activation system...

Stop the presses! Large updates use large bandwidth. I choose to only update my stuff when I want to play it, and that interfers with me wanting to play it right now!

The Steam client updates tend to be very small. If a client update is bringing your internet to a screeching halt you don't have a very good internet connection. Game updates do pause when you start a game that is played online. What I see likely happening here is people keep it off most of the time and don't let it do updates over night or something reasonable, and instead choose to basically do all the updates at the same moment they are ready to play a game. I.E. user error.

If you only start your car when it needs to be serviced it will take longer to get somewhere. That is not a fault with the car.

And some people have better uses for their bandwidth when they dont have the free time to play, and dont keep their computers open 24/7.

Better uses? You mean like downloading stuff? I don't really need much bandwidth except when gaming or downloading stuff. Browsing takes very little bandwidth so that can't be what you are referring to unless as I suggested you have a low bandwidth to begin with in which case I can see how Steam may seem inconvenient.

I will not bother with CoD if the only way to play online is through Steam. I want the flexibility to play online whenever, wherever and in whatever country I am in. If Steam is provided as one option with others, like Hyperlobby, also available then maybe it wont be a problem, but I've not read anything yet that makes me think this will be the case. I've just cancelled my pre-order until its clear what is going on.

As long as you can get online, you can use Steam anywhere.

Edit:: You can of course use Steam offline too, but his point was to play online.

Goodbye Oleg and team :(

One of the more entertaining topics recently.

Are you going to commit suicide?

I wonder about people who get so worked up about bits of software, but each to their own.

I'll leave it to Vera..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcun...eature=related

I'm passionate about the subject matter of CoD, so I'll install whatever it needs.