[HN Gopher] Steam required additional 57.51 GB download for a re...
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       Steam required additional 57.51 GB download for a review
        
       Author : mcraiha
       Score  : 108 points
       Date   : 2021-06-19 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mcraiha.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mcraiha.github.io)
        
       | hakube wrote:
       | isn't it a mechanism to combat fake reviews or this is just a
       | bug?
        
       | jorams wrote:
       | This is disingenuous. Apparently Steam has a bug where it asks
       | you to write a review for a game that can't be reviewed. That's a
       | bug, but it's pretty minor.
       | 
       | The one you _can_ review is a _different game_. The store page
       | for Metro Exodus describes the Enhanced Edition as:
       | 
       | > a stunning visual upgrade that REQUIRES a Ray-Tracing Capable
       | GPU as part of the minimum spec.
       | 
       | Things like that can introduce all kinds of new problems and
       | glitches, so reviews for one version don't necessarily apply to
       | the other.
        
         | remram wrote:
         | Is the "Extended Edition" on Steam at all? I can't find it in
         | their catalog. Is the OP trying to review a non-Steam game on
         | Steam, by reviewing a different game, and is complaining that
         | they are different games?
        
           | squeaky-clean wrote:
           | A discussion page exists[0], but the review page is empty
           | when you view it (and clicking to add a post brings me to the
           | TF2 review page!)
           | 
           | Enhanced Edition is on Steam, but you get it when buying the
           | original Metro Exodus. You get both, the original game
           | (steamid 412020) and the Enhanced Edition (steamid 1449560)
           | in your steam library.
           | 
           | I don't own it, but from reading OP's post and other stories
           | online I'm guessing it's similar to how the Call of Duty
           | games handle Singleplayer and Multiplayer. They are 2
           | separate "games" in your library that you get from a single
           | purchase, and can install independently. But from what I can
           | tell in steamdb, the CoD games don't seem to use separate
           | steamid's for the split, while Metro Exodus EE does.
           | 
           | https://steamcommunity.com/app/1449560/discussions/
        
             | plttn wrote:
             | CoD games do use different apps.
             | 
             | Steam has apps, packages, and depots.
             | 
             | Package: the store page, the actual entitlement purchase
             | 
             | App: the entries that show up in the steam library
             | 
             | Depot: not really important to this discussion
        
         | NH4CO2Wp34 wrote:
         | I doubt it's related to reviewing different version, otherwise
         | the enhanced edition would have its own store page. It's
         | probably just a mistake from the publisher made possible by
         | Steam not handling these peculiarities very well.
        
       | bigcorp-slave wrote:
       | Software has bugs, in related news water is wet.
        
       | encryptluks2 wrote:
       | Steam game downloads are kind of a nightmare. Their game backup
       | compresses the game into a CD, DVD or custom format size, which
       | can take anywhere from a few minutes for a small game to 1 hour
       | for a large game. They provide no straightforward mechanism for
       | you to tell if a game has been updated, and I can only assume
       | that the file hashes aren't going to be the same if you backup
       | the same game twice even if there are no changes.
       | 
       | I like to keep backups of my games, but they make it so freaking
       | hard to keep your backups current. Really, it should be a single
       | click of where you want your backups to go and as games get
       | updated then only change what is necessary, not require another
       | full backup and a 1 hour wait.
        
         | h2odragon wrote:
         | Steam on low bandwidth is bad, too. It''ll happily keep trying
         | and failing to download client updates (ignoring the "download
         | window" time settings). Viasat likes to kill connections after
         | ~10mb or so, so the thing will download the same 10mb of an
         | update over, and over, all day long, if its allowed to.
        
         | Tsiklon wrote:
         | My home internet is particularly low bandwidth, so I've taken
         | to downloading my games from steam on a laptop somewhere else
         | where I can get a 4G/5G signal and just copying the directory
         | to my gaming computer. When it's migrated to a new system all
         | that's required is a redownload of the executable
        
           | encryptluks2 wrote:
           | Some people merely copy their Steam directory in order to
           | create a backup, but they do have a backup mechanism that
           | works differently... and has some pros to it, vs simply
           | copying your entire Steam folder.
        
             | ninjinxo wrote:
             | Tried this recently, and it's a complete mess if you run
             | low on disk space. When trying to move a 100GB game to the
             | SSD recently it turned out that:
             | 
             | 1) steam will not rediscover the files automatically at
             | startup or by attempt to launch the game, nor is there any
             | specific option
             | 
             | 2) the existing file discovery process is instantiated by
             | forcing a new download of the game
             | 
             | 3) this process will not begin unless there is enough free
             | space for the game
             | 
             | So in the end, I had to copy the files back to the HDD to
             | make space on the SSD, start an install of the game on the
             | ssd, exit steam, copy the files to the SSD again, open
             | steam and resume download, then wait for it to verify each
             | file.
        
               | Dylan16807 wrote:
               | Did you move just the folder in steamapps/common? There
               | is also a file like steamapps/appmanifest_220.acf that
               | tells steam the game is installed in that folder. It
               | should detect those in all game library folders on start.
        
             | Trellmor wrote:
             | I don't know where you want to backup you games, but you
             | can copy just the one game folder and remove the game
             | afterwards from steam. To restore it move the folder back
             | and "install" the game. Steam will verify the files and
             | only download new/changed files. Should be faster the the
             | backup option inside steam itself.
             | 
             | If you have a second hard drive (or maybe network drive,
             | haven't tried) you can also create a steam library folder
             | on that drive and just move the game to that library from
             | within steam. That way it will still get updated.
        
       | Vrondi wrote:
       | Just log into your Steam account via their website, and then
       | leave a review there, through the web page.
        
       | vSanjo wrote:
       | Is this more a problem with the publisher and not Steam? I don't
       | imagine Steam dictates what is and isn't a 'linked' game. I would
       | think the publisher has the final say on what gets a new store-
       | page. I'm curious what page the author reached to purchase the
       | game itself.
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | Well yes sort of but also:
         | 
         | A) Steam is allowing that metadata to be set like that;
         | 
         | B) Steam is requiring the download prior to review
         | 
         | Which in combination is what's not working. So to fix:
         | 
         | A) Steam can disallow metadata being set in such ways; or
         | 
         | B) Steam can consider all the weird and wonderful allowed
         | metadata combinations when checking for (among other things)
         | download before review.
        
       | sitzkrieg wrote:
       | did they really think they had to finish the download to leave
       | the review on the base game no one will look at? lol
        
       | notafraudster wrote:
       | This is actually a problem with how the developer and publisher
       | chose to deploy their "Enhanced Edition" of the game.
       | 
       | But even given the publisher and developer made this stupid
       | choice, another option for an end user would be to spoof playtime
       | on Metro Exodus using any idle tool and then review the game that
       | way.
        
         | Causality1 wrote:
         | As far as I know there's no playtime requirements for leaving a
         | review. Back before Steam offered refunds I left several
         | negative reviews for games whose glitches prevented me from
         | playing for more than a few seconds.
        
           | squeaky-clean wrote:
           | The minimum playtime to leave a review has been 5 minutes for
           | at least several years now.
        
         | NH4CO2Wp34 wrote:
         | Agreed, it's not a major issue but nonetheless caused by the
         | publisher. Despite that, Steam allowed them to do that mistake.
        
       | manigandham wrote:
       | Steam has a ridiculously terrible UX, and somehow it's still
       | better than all of the others like Epic and Origin. I'm amazed at
       | how many billions are spent on these stores but basic UI design
       | and features still can't get implemented.
       | 
       | This is probably the most valid question of "what exactly are all
       | those devs doing?"
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | Steam's UI sucks. Steams UX is fantastic though, at least in my
         | experience. They'll do everything in their power to put you in
         | control of your software, inviting you to tinker and poke
         | around with it if something needs to be fixed. It also does
         | most of the leg-work when setting up Wine in Linux, so most
         | Windows games are just install-and-play. Their payment system
         | is friction-less, their recommendation system is actually half-
         | decent, their CDN is relatively fast... there's not much that
         | Steam fails with, besides it's social features and general UI
         | shortcomings.
        
           | w4rh4wk5 wrote:
           | You are not in control. Neither can't you downgrade a game,
           | nor can't you disable the update mechanism.
        
           | manigandham wrote:
           | How would you not be in control? It's files on your drive,
           | you can always tinker around with the software regardless of
           | how it's installed.
           | 
           | Their payment system doesn't even support multiple cards
           | saved at the same time, but having a checkout and using a CDN
           | is ecommerce basics that any hobbyist can setup. That's a
           | very low bar for UX.
        
             | judge2020 wrote:
             | Being able to move games, add extra library locations, scan
             | and fix broken directories (eg. when your drive is failing
             | and you're only able to copy 90% of the game uncorrupted)
             | is immensely valuable.
             | 
             | The Epic Games store doesn't have libraries nor a 'locate'
             | feature, so if you want to move a game you have to go to
             | the existing game folder in Windows Explorer (no Mac or
             | Linux by the way[0]), move it to a temporary directory,
             | start the install in the new directory, 'cancel install',
             | move your game files to the directory the launcher just
             | created, and then 'resume' the install. Only then can you
             | move and have the launcher recognize the new location
             | without having to redownload the entire game.
             | 
             | 0: https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap
             | (it's not even in 'future development' which includes other
             | long-requested features like a shopping cart from 2019)
        
               | tracedddd wrote:
               | You can also specify custom launch parameters from the
               | GUI.
        
         | baobabKoodaa wrote:
         | I can't wrap my head around this one either. Yes, Steam UX is
         | horrible, every action takes 2 seconds to complete, even
         | opening the home page takes 2 seconds when Steam is already
         | running. They haven't even bothered to put up a loading
         | spinner, it's just a black screen. And yet, somehow, Epic is
         | even worse. Doing anything in Epic you have to look at black
         | screen for like 5-10 seconds, and you never know when it has
         | crashed versus when it's eventually going to finish doing
         | whatever thing it was doing for 10 seconds.
         | 
         | But the absolute worst thing about Epic Games Store is that it
         | steals 5% of my CPU cycles whenever it's running. That's right,
         | when I'm playing a game I purchased on Epic, the game runs 5%
         | worse (assuming it's CPU bottlenecked) because Epic Games Store
         | needs 5% of my CPU to do nothing, all the time.
        
           | manigandham wrote:
           | These stores and games now include some pretty invasive DRM
           | and anti-cheat software. That's probably what's causing the
           | CPU usage.
        
             | baobabKoodaa wrote:
             | Ok, I'll bite. Why does the DRM and anti-cheat software
             | need to run while a game is not running?
        
               | raptorfactor wrote:
               | Because if I can just load my own driver before you load
               | your anti-cheat driver it significantly lowers the
               | difficulty of defeating the anti-cheat. Whoever gets into
               | ring0 (or below) first usually 'wins'.
               | 
               | So for example Valorant's anti-cheat leverages a
               | hypervisor which is always-on, and then an additional
               | client which runs when you launch the game.
               | 
               | The situation is similar with the ESEA counter-strike
               | client.
               | 
               | I just refuse to play games with measures like that.
               | Especially given the fact ESEA got caught deploying a
               | bitcoin miner with their client.
               | 
               | These games always have cheaters anyway, so what am I
               | giving up all that privacy and security for?
        
             | nichch wrote:
             | Epic has no DRM. Steam's "DRM" is non intrusive and
             | optional. The EGS is a CEF application and is probably less
             | resource efficient than it should be.
        
           | hexo wrote:
           | thankfully they didnt put up a loading spinner. i would
           | explode. :D
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | Check out Legendary[0] as an alternative to the default Epic
           | games launcher. If you're comfortable with the command line,
           | it will stay completely out of your way, forever.
           | 
           | [0] https://github.com/derrod/legendary
        
             | iamcreasy wrote:
             | Wow, this is really cool. Is there anything similar for
             | Steam?
        
               | fragileone wrote:
               | https://github.com/dmadisetti/steam-tui is one and it's
               | built in Rust.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | Holy shit, thank you for sharing! I've never seen that
               | one before, but it might be the final element I need to
               | put together a no-DE laptop... well, if those Discord
               | TUIs hadn't died off :(
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | 29athrowaway wrote:
         | Origin feels really bloated and in need of optimization.
         | 
         | The Steam client has some nice features like Steam Link, which
         | you can use to stream to a smart TV by installing the app.
        
         | Jaygles wrote:
         | I shed a few tears when they decided to make Steam an electron
         | app. It used to be so responsive and snappy even on old
         | computers. And now almost every UI action has significant
         | latency.
        
           | paco3346 wrote:
           | I've had the opposite experience. Ever since they switched to
           | WebKit it actually works for me. Previous to that it was
           | always so sluggish.
        
           | hn8788 wrote:
           | I ended up going into settings and changing it to low
           | bandwidth and low performance mode to make it feel similar to
           | before.
        
           | forgotpwd16 wrote:
           | Technically Steam isn't using Electron but CEF.
        
         | pengstrom wrote:
         | Valve have been nothing but competent and financially
         | successful. In sure they know exactly what they're doing, and
         | it's not optimizing for customer ergonomics.
        
           | 542458 wrote:
           | I disagree on the "nothing but competent". They have done
           | things like left critical zero click RCEs open for years
           | without patching them.
           | 
           | https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-
           | ste...
           | 
           | People who have left valve often report that the organization
           | is extremely dysfunctional.
           | 
           | https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-
           | self-...
           | 
           | From where I'm standing, Valve looks like a company cursed by
           | success. They have the advantage of controlling the world's
           | biggest PC game distribution platform (an advantage that is
           | self-sustaining due to network effects), and as such have a
           | fountain of near infinite money. This allows them to run an
           | extremely inefficient organization without suffering the
           | consequences that most companies would.
        
             | ljm wrote:
             | I used to think Valve's approach to management (to
             | essentially remove it) sounded like a great idea. But now
             | it feels to me to be more of a curse than a blessing -
             | there's a machine that prints money and what's the point of
             | trying to kick off any project when no one has any real
             | skin in the game and can abandon it when they get bored?
        
           | bob1029 wrote:
           | Valve have been resting on the laurels of their prior
           | successes and are destined for the dustbin of history if they
           | don't start innovating again.
           | 
           | The gaming market has grown incredibly competitive, and
           | statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage
           | out of all the stores combined x100.
           | 
           | The most depressing thing about Valve Software is that they
           | are a privately-held corporation and have far more agility
           | than the likes of EA, ATVI, et. al. There aren't quarterly
           | earnings calls or other confining economics that would spook
           | away investors if an ambitious AAA project were to be
           | announced this Monday.
        
             | nvarsj wrote:
             | Valve released Alyx last year, which is really a
             | masterpiece of a game up there with Half life and Portal,
             | and is the only real AAA VR experience that exists. No
             | other big studio would risk building such a VR game due to
             | it still being considered a very niche market.
             | 
             | Yeah they release stuff sporadically, and by all accounts
             | the internal organization is chaos. But that somehow
             | manages to produce some of the best games of all time.
             | 
             | Let's not forget also that Valve has pushed Linux gaming
             | more than anyone else.
        
             | Hamuko wrote:
             | > _statistically speaking the steam store has the most
             | garbage out of all the stores combined x100._
             | 
             | That's basically a non-issue. Steam has had a ton of random
             | shit in there for years and people still prefer it to all
             | of the other stores.
             | 
             | It's in fact preferable to have too much than too little.
             | GOG might have DRM-free games and a fancy launcher that
             | combines ALL of your game libaries from different launchers
             | (GOG Galaxy is pretty neat), but it doesn't really benefit
             | me when Mass Effect Legendary Edition isn't on sale there.
        
             | COGlory wrote:
             | Valve is absolutely innovating in a way that can only be
             | done by companies that are privately held. They are laying
             | the groundwork for a shift from Windows to Linux. They are
             | playing a veeery long game there.
        
               | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
               | We need better Linux software support before that
               | happens. As long as it's easier to develop on windows,
               | it'll never happen. I'd love for windows to go the way
               | horse, but for now Valve is hedging bets on a
               | Frankenstein that is Linux. I'm being critical only cause
               | I'm aware of the difficulties of working with Linux. It's
               | great if your a CS person who likes tinkering. It's god
               | awful when you just want your computer to work. Meaning
               | not having to deal with drivers, deal with scaling
               | issues, weird software bugs that require you to install
               | something obscure and run 4 different commands to get
               | that one thing to run. Linux has gotten better immensely
               | over the past decade, but it's still not even in Windows
               | 7 reliability category of use yet. Maybe if there wasn't
               | 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on
               | getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot
               | wider of adoption. But I guess that's the allure of it.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | > As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll
               | never happen.
               | 
               | It's not though. Windows is a pain in the ass to develop
               | for, and the only thing keeping most developers from
               | writing cross-platform titles is DirectX. Luckily,
               | there's a DirectX-to-Vulkan translation layer that will
               | run 80% of Steam's "legacy" Windows games, as well as any
               | new exclusives. As the industry starts to shift to
               | Vulkan, developers will have much less incentive to ship
               | Windows exclusives.
               | 
               | The final nail in the coffin is probably sandboxing.
               | Linux support for sandboxed applications is next-level,
               | and projects like Flatpak and AppImage have made it
               | possible to ship software that's more stable on Linux
               | than it is on Windows. Valve's probably wants to combine
               | this with their Proton project to create truly "immortal"
               | Linux applications: imagine being able to download a file
               | containing a compressed VM image with Diablo 2 perfectly
               | configured like a Docker container.
               | 
               | > Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and
               | people just focused on getting a couple at the level of
               | XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption.
               | 
               | The only difference between distros is package
               | management, and 99% of them will install Steam, Discord,
               | Spotify, and any of your other "normal" apps the exact
               | same way.
        
               | COGlory wrote:
               | I think this is a fair comment and I wish people wouldn't
               | downvote it.
               | 
               | That said, I disagree with some of what you're saying,
               | and I also think there might be some stuff that you
               | aren't aware of.
               | 
               | For starters, and perhaps my comment didn't illustrate
               | this, but from my perspective, Valve's strategy is not to
               | popularize Linux desktop. They did have SteamOS which
               | they obviously abandoned/consolidated into Big Picture
               | Mode. There are rumors of a handheld console that will
               | likely be running Linux underneath, but I'd be shocked if
               | the user ever sees anything but a Steam interface. So I
               | don't think from that perspective that Steam particularly
               | cares about a Linux desktop experience. They don't (to my
               | knowledge) fund KDE or Gnome. They seem to want everyone
               | to interact with Linux through the Steam software itself.
               | 
               | Additionally, to address the fragmentation points you are
               | bringing up (which are clearly valid), Steam has
               | developed a unified Linux runtime that ships with Steam
               | on Linux, and developers can target that runtime for
               | their games. So again, this is a distribution agnostic,
               | desktop agnostic solution for developers. They only have
               | to support one thing: Steam runtime for Linux. And I
               | think that nicely solves the Frankenstein issues.
               | 
               | Now obviously if Steam never turns into a full OS, people
               | aren't going to switch to it just to play games, when
               | Windows can also play all those games, and supports
               | office and Adobe software. So what the plan is exactly,
               | I'm not sure. Valve doesn't seem interested in solving
               | those problems, at least not yet. Perhaps they are just
               | keeping the scope narrow to what they're good at (games)
               | and hoping that others will solve those problems.
        
         | c7DJTLrn wrote:
         | I like it. Steam is fast and fairly lightweight compared to the
         | competition. It boots the games and lets me buy new ones,
         | that's all I want.
        
         | swiley wrote:
         | It's not better than gog. I generally don't buy games that are
         | only available on steam because it's just so fucking bad.
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | Why does the Epic Games Launcher even have a Home page when it
         | always opens on the Store page?
         | 
         | And why is there an option "Hide Game Library" but there's no
         | option "Hide Game Store"?
        
         | blfr wrote:
         | It seems like all update/stores suffer from that. How can
         | apt update; apt dist-upgrade
         | 
         | be so snappy and pleasant to use, whereas graphical frontends
         | seem to hang, spin the fans, return little to no information
         | about what is happening, and be terrible in general?
         | 
         | Windows 10 is particularly annoying since I don't even know how
         | to force the update _now_ because it seems to be dead set on
         | doing it magically in the background at the least opportune
         | moment.
        
           | the_only_law wrote:
           | I'm still working trying to figure out why steam downloads
           | seemed capped significantly slower than my general download
           | speed
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | Make sure "Settings -> Downloads -> Limit Bandwidth To" is
             | unchecked. If you checked something describing your
             | internet speed after first install it'll throttle to that
             | and I think the highest option in that menu was still 100
             | Mbps. Steam downloads default to bytes per seconds (option
             | for bits in the same menu as above) so keep that in mind as
             | well. In that menu you can make sure the download region is
             | appropriately set to one near you too, I haven't had a
             | problem with the autodetection for this personally though.
             | 
             | If all of the above is in place and it's still slow make
             | sure you're not running into a single core throughput
             | issue. The encryption and compression can be quite taxing.
             | I can pretty easily hit 1 Gbps on a 5950X but some of my
             | laptops can't due to their CPU.
        
             | 1_player wrote:
             | Might be an issue on your end. Steam maxes out my bandwidth
             | more than Speedtest/Fast.com do
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | I think the advantage of apt and similar tools is their
           | database is the source of truth for the system not the other
           | way around. E.g. when Steam or even a general program
           | installer run they are responsible for checking the current
           | machine for anything that might conflict or a missing
           | dependency and fixing that once detected then actually
           | running the game or app. In apt it checks the lovingly
           | crafted app database and if that's wrong or you've done
           | something manual it's not set up to detect it'll simply
           | break. When 99% of what you ever need is in this automatic
           | database of free, basically first party, stuff it works
           | wonders.
           | 
           | The only difference between Windows 10 and say Ubuntu with
           | auto updates is Windows 10 will prevent you from picking an
           | infinite time out for updates that require a reboot. If you
           | want to manually update it's the same, go to the update app
           | and check for updates. If there are updates hit install. Upon
           | install the update app will have a restart to install button
           | and the restart/shutdown buttons in the Start menu also have
           | install and restart/shutdown options.
        
             | paholg wrote:
             | Steam, on Linux at least, comes with its own versions of
             | libraries for games.
             | 
             | So it gets to act much like apt.
        
             | Dylan16807 wrote:
             | Steam games and 95% of programs don't really have
             | dependencies other than stuff like visual C++ runtimes, and
             | steam takes care of running those installers. And those
             | won't cause conflicts either. There's no good reason it
             | can't work the same wonders.
        
             | jasonjayr wrote:
             | Windows Update is pretty brutal in general.
             | 
             | While Windows 7 was still current, there was an update that
             | refused to install, and reported a cryptic error code in
             | the UI.
             | 
             | After digging into dense log files and online support I
             | came to discover it was refusing to install because of an
             | Incompatible version of the super-old Novell Netware
             | client, that lived in C:\Old_Computer\hard-
             | drive\installers\novell_installer-${someversion}.exe
             | 
             | Windows was scanning the _entire_ hard drive @ install time
             | to look for any software on it 's list of incompatible
             | software.
        
           | Jiocus wrote:
           | > graphical frontends seem to hang, spin the fans, return
           | little to no information about what is happening, and be
           | terrible in general?
           | 
           | That's a beautiful description of modern GUI development
           | right there.
           | 
           |  _- What about a 150ms delay on-click for a smooth transition
           | here?
           | 
           | - And that spinner looks too good to rush through, so make it
           | pace evenly in case it finished too fast!
           | 
           | - Did you see that? There's a subtle but intuitive shade and
           | color change depending on the result. So natural you hardly
           | notice.
           | 
           | - Neat!_
           | 
           | deg
           | 
           | To be honest, while I may not appreciate this kind of design
           | in every place all the time, I do wish I was skilled enough
           | to make any beautiful GUI and web experiences at all.
           | 
           | Intricate design can be such a timesink doing even basic
           | stuff if it's not one's strong area. Kudos to all the UI, UX
           | people.
        
           | salawat wrote:
           | I see you have not run into the many edge cases where an apt-
           | based package manager does something completely daft,
           | requiring one to either go in and manually build back up
           | state to get it sane, or say screw it, burn it to the ground,
           | and start again. Anything with databases has had a high
           | chance of getting one into this situation in my experience,
           | and became the leading motivator for me to sit down, slog
           | through Linux From Scratch, get familiar with the GNU
           | dependency hierarchy, learn bloody dpkg, learn to tear apart
           | packages, learn to build cross-compile toolchains (still
           | haven't mastered quite yet), and work on setting out my own
           | system conventions that I'll eventually write down and hand
           | off to anyone unfortunate or enthusiastic enough to strike me
           | as being a candidate for inheriting my systems. Also grokking
           | the wiles of the dynamic linker.
           | 
           | You can say I'm doing it wrong for not going with the flow,
           | but at the end of the day, in a world with ever increasing
           | abstractive opaqueness, somebody has to carry forward a nuts
           | n' bolts understanding of what all of this madness is built
           | on.
        
             | fragileone wrote:
             | Curious your thoughts on Nix/Guix for managing your
             | packages?
        
           | floatingatoll wrote:
           | As far as I can tell, Steam's main window is a web browser,
           | upon which their web app "Steam" provides the experience we
           | all suffer today. No doubt it has benefits for cross-platform
           | work minimization, but they don't seem to care how shoddy an
           | experience it provides.
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | Steam does use CEF but I don't think the UI rendering
             | itself is actually what is causing slowness. The backend
             | logic as well as services are native code
        
           | easrng wrote:
           | APT? Snappy? In my experience APT is rather slow.
        
           | MikusR wrote:
           | A typical game is tens of gigabytes. A typical apt package is
           | megabytes.
        
             | emsy wrote:
             | That's not really the point here. The UI on command line
             | apt is instant, regardless of the package size you always
             | know what apt is doing at the moment. Compare that to any
             | recent updater that just throws vague status messages at
             | you with no indication of whether anything is actually
             | happening.
        
               | MikusR wrote:
               | Is that true also when the package is 100 GB? Also last
               | month I ran update on raspberry pi, and the kernel header
               | package took an hour with no indication of progress
               | except for heavy disk activity.
        
             | khrbrt wrote:
             | It's broader than that. Fedora's package manager, dnf, is
             | quick and snappy but it's GUI counterpart is sluggish and
             | always hangs mid update.
        
               | zenlot wrote:
               | Been using KDE native updater as much as command line.
               | Couldn't spot any difference and it's as fast as cmd,
               | never had any issues with it.
        
               | khrbrt wrote:
               | Nice. I've been thinking of switching to the KDE spin. My
               | bad experience is with dnfdragora that comes with the
               | default Gnome and XFCE spins.
        
           | chungy wrote:
           | apt has people that actually care about their users. They
           | aren't shipping a MVP just to make big bucks.
        
             | salawat wrote:
             | Mmmm. I try not to ascribe malice or altruism to
             | maintainers of software. All too often "works in my test
             | lab" is the key motivator there.
        
       | fortyseven wrote:
       | With an article as dishonest as this, I don't think I'm
       | interested in the observations their review would make. So let's
       | just call the whole thing off.
        
       | meh99 wrote:
       | Will somebody please think of all the people with inane
       | perspectives on multimedia they want to post!
       | 
       | Come on software engineers; social media problems are all there
       | is.
        
       | johnchristopher wrote:
       | Well, today I bought an app from the play store. From my laptop.
       | 
       | I could never download it on the smartphone. Once I got into the
       | smartphone play store the app was still listed with a price
       | without an install button. Trying to buy it again ends up in an
       | error "you already own this app". Then back to the buying button.
       | 
       | I know I should always buy from the phone and not from the
       | desktop, the free app rarely installs automatically.
       | 
       | Fortunately I could get a refund instantaneously. Unlike the app
       | I just bought. Bought and owned but prevented from installing.
        
       | mikl wrote:
       | You can see the point of requiring people to actually have
       | installed (and played) the game before reviewing it.
       | 
       | The Metro Enhanced Edition is just an edge case that slipped
       | through the cracks. I'd think Hacker News would be the first to
       | sympathise with bugs caused by weird edge cases.
        
       | beebeepka wrote:
       | I read the complainant and still don't get what the problem is.
       | This person is unable to write a review for a version of game
       | that does not have a dedicated (for that specific version) store
       | page.
       | 
       | This leads to downloading 57.51gb how?
       | 
       | Edit: thanks everyone. I guess I have never reviewed a game I
       | don't have installed. They do show play time next to each review.
       | Seems like a better metric than having the game installed lol
        
         | usrusr wrote:
         | Apparently buying the enhanced version included a licence to
         | the regular version and only the latter is used for
         | greenlighting reviews despite buyers going straight to the
         | enhanced. Seems like the studio was trying something clever in
         | terms of branding an update as a remaster or vice versa and
         | ended up setting some metadata in some unfortunate combination.
        
         | daveFNbuck wrote:
         | They're going to write a review for the version that does have
         | a store page, and are being required to download that version
         | first.
        
         | encryptluks2 wrote:
         | Because I guess when using the Steam client it requires that
         | you have the game installed that you are trying to leave a
         | review for, or have some play time.. since the version they
         | played doesn't have a store page, they had to download the one
         | that does in order to leave the review.
        
         | Volundr wrote:
         | Steam doesn't let you review games you haven't downloaded,
         | meaning in order to review the game he has to download the
         | version which has a store page.
        
           | oauea wrote:
           | Which sounds like a fantastic feature to cut down on review
           | spam.
        
       | NH4CO2Wp34 wrote:
       | OP got it wrong: you didn't buy Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition,
       | you bought Metro Exodus and that game came with the Enhanced
       | Edition. It's the same thing for Call of Duty games that have
       | separate singleplayer/multiplayer elements.
       | 
       | They have different APPID which is why it's messy but in no way
       | is that malicious (not that you implied it). I'd consider it as a
       | minor annoyance caused by how the publisher handled it and which
       | could be fixed but it doesn't harm anything.
        
       | mrkramer wrote:
       | This is not Steam's fault it is developer's, developer requests a
       | game page from Steam.
        
       | Zenst wrote:
       | That's one heck of a tracking cookie just to make a comment.
       | Makes you wonder about the internet requirements of CAPATCHA's in
       | the future.
        
       | devwastaken wrote:
       | Recently an expansion for Elite Dangerous came out, names
       | "Odyssey". It's been a very buggy and unfinished experience, and
       | there's very little actual content added in it for the $60 price
       | tag.
       | 
       | Steam has a policy of 2 hours of playtime = no return. By playing
       | the tutorial I already had an hour down. Then another hour trying
       | to fix performance issues (to no avail). I tried to issue a
       | return and nope. So now I have a product that falsely advertised
       | itself and I can't return.
       | 
       | Gamers need the FTC to rise up.
       | 
       | Steam response: "We are unable to refund this purchase to your X
       | ending with X at this time. Your playtime of an included product
       | exceeds 2 hours (our refund policy maximum)."
        
         | vSanjo wrote:
         | I think you might want to do a bit more research on Steam's
         | return policy. It's incredibly liberal.
         | 
         | I've played games for 10 hours and returned them with no
         | problem. I don't think you're _wrong_ but I don't think you're
         | right either. I worded my responses well, I told them what was
         | good and bad, and my very reason why.
         | 
         | I've enjoyed their support system for returns and have very
         | little to complain about with it.
        
           | Macha wrote:
           | 2 weeks or under 2 hours of usage is not "incredibly
           | liberal", except perhaps by US standards.
        
             | vultour wrote:
             | Surely you're not suggesting games should have the same
             | return periods as physical products? If the limit was 30
             | days then refund scams would be rampant.
        
               | Macha wrote:
               | Why do games get an exemption?
               | 
               | If I buy a power tool, use it for a project, then return
               | it, surely that's as open to abuse?
               | 
               | Games retailers should utilise the same tools as others -
               | don't sell to people you think are abusing your return
               | system.
        
               | shkkmo wrote:
               | Most hardware stores in the USA require tools to be
               | unopened/unused to be returned.
               | 
               | Most retailers are pretty restrictive and those that
               | aren't, such as REI, have generally been notable for
               | those policies.
               | 
               | In my mind, software return policies should be more
               | liberal than physical goods since there isn't any
               | potential loss to the retailer due to damage.
        
           | devwastaken wrote:
           | "We are unable to refund this purchase to your X ending with
           | X at this time. Your playtime of an included product exceeds
           | 2 hours (our refund policy maximum)."
           | 
           | Their policy in more detail: "Requests are considered on a
           | case by case basis and are not typically issued for purchases
           | of released products that are more than 14 days old, or if
           | the purchased product has more than 2 hours of playtime. For
           | in-game items the refund period is 48 hours and the item must
           | not have been consumed, modified, or transferred. "
        
         | LatteLazy wrote:
         | I've only returned 3 games. All were over 2h played. Are you
         | sure they can't help?
        
           | hn8788 wrote:
           | It's basically a steam customer support lottery if it's been
           | over 2 hours. Sometimes you get someone who actually reads
           | the reason for refunding, but most of the time they just
           | automatically deny it, even if the developer said they'll
           | honor all refund requests.
        
         | Jare wrote:
         | I had to request a refund in the Epic Games Store, and it had
         | already counted hours without me even having played the actual
         | game, just trying and failing to log into the servers.
         | 
         | They refunded without a question though, so I felt well cared
         | for by EGS.
        
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