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This comment is completely off the rails. Your extremely idealistic interpretation of "I should just run the program directly" is preventing you from gaining en

This comment is completely off the rails. Your extremely idealistic interpretation of "I should just run the program directly" is preventing you from gaining enjoyment out of literally the most popular gaming program in existence. And it's popular for a reason: It's really damn good at its job. All these extra steps are just a consequence of you extremely rarely opening it - steam is likely giving you the "first start" experience because it's been so long (I say this because nobody else is reporting issues like this online). I've seen it happen after certain major updates too. There's also an element of PEBKAC; password managers are a thing and make logging in take no more than a couple clicks.

gcanyon 2y ago
1. Other apps *ask* if they can update; Steam just does it. 2. Can you justify why Steam should *ever* log me out? 3. re: password managers -- so your answer to my complaint that I have to run/use a second program just to run the one I want... is to install a third app to make the second one less problematic? And: I *have* a password manager: the one built-in to the OS. I have over 100 applications installed; exactly one of them requires another program to gatekeep it. And I understand I'm in the minority here -- I did start with, "Am I the only one..."
- free_bip 2y ago
  My answer to your complaint of "I don't remember my password" is that you should be using a password manager. If you are using one and forgot it anyway, this is clearly not the fault of steam. The other 2 are easily googleable/chatgptable, so I'll leave that to you.
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    I'm saying that I use the built-in password manager in MacOS. I just checked, and it has the password, but Steam apparently isn't capable of auto-filling. So I looked it up, entered it, and then steam decided that wasn't enough and I had to confirm by email, because new computer. This isn't national security, it's a $20 video game that is twenty years old, that you used to be able to play for free through flash in a web browser. Steam sucks.
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      > This isn't national security, it's a $20 video game that is twenty years old, that you used to be able to play for free through flash in a web browser. You can still do that. https://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html https://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n
      - gcanyon 2y ago
        Nice, thanks!
krisoft 2y ago
> This comment is completely off the rails. My experience mirrors that of gcanyon. I'm an extremely casual gamer. I play every few months a single-player game sometimes. I'm fine with that and I don't want to change it. Steam sucks and makes me play less my games. Why? This is how the "play game" experience worked in my childhood: I had the game installed. Found the icon of it on the desktop, or in the start menu. I clicked it. The game loaded and I was playing. This is how the same thing works now with Steam. I start steam. I need to wait while it updates itself. Then I need to log in. (yes I'm using a password manager, it still sucks) Then I need to sort out the second factor. Then the game updates. (Sometimes I have to do some wrangling so the game I actually want to play updates first, instead of having to wait while all the other games update). And then I can play. > All these extra steps are just a consequence of you extremely rarely opening it Okay? So I should feel less bad? It sucks. Everything else is excuses. Sometimes I have a few hours, and I think "hey maybe I could play something" then I remember how much it sucks and I just go and read a book. That's not a glowing endorsement for Steam. Steam is acting as if it is Fort Knox. I understand that I would need to go through all of that before I can purchase a new game with a stored card. But I just want to play a game I already have, and have it installed and it is on my disk. So just get out of my way and let me play.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  You can save your password on Steam. You can also set games to not automatically update. Steam and Valve are are pretty popular, in the absolute wasteland that is game launchers and gaming companies. Steam starts up reasonably quickly, and has pretty well thought out functionality for things like playing with your friends. Valve has nice sales, and contributes stuff like Proton (a nice wrapper around/extension of Wine, for Linux support). That said, I think everyone who likes Steam/Valve should be able to imagine how you feel about it. Because that’s probably how they feel about stuff like the Epic launcher, and all those. It really ought not be that mysterious, we’ve all got different thresholds for what annoys us!
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > Steam and Valve are are pretty popular, I understand, and appreciate that. My brother who is an avid gamer told me (i paraphrase here) “when i was young i used to play more games than i paid for, now i buy more games than I can play with” which is a big change. Steam is one of the big factors behind that. That is nothing sort of miraculous. > we’ve all got different thresholds for what annoys us That. But also i totally see that my usage pattern is different from most other users of it. I assume if i would play every day that would keep my “cookies” warm. And even if not, and i would still need to log in once every few months that would be a “rare hickup” as opposed to “every darn time i start this thing”. (Just because the baseline would shift.) So i totaly understand that. I also understand that from Valve’s perspective perhaps my usecase is not that lucrative. I just don’t bring in enough dough to make it worthwile to “fix” things for me. Especially when fixing my use case could perhaps lead to other indirect costs like more stolen steam accounts. (I don’t really know. I don’t have a full understanding of all of their security practices. What I am saying is that i can imagine that it is a tradeoff from their perspective. They could make the session system more forgiving but then they would suffer other consequences.) I see all of that. But just because i understand those things i don’t have to pretend things are working well for me when they are not.
ASalazarMX 2y ago
I play several times a week, and in my experience, Steam updates GBs of data too frequently. Nearly every time I open it, it starts downloading updates, so I had to uninstall but a handful of games to minimize that. I like the convenience, but you need a good broadband connection to keep up.

gcanyon 2y ago

1. Other apps *ask* if they can update; Steam just does it. 2. Can you justify why Steam should *ever* log me out? 3. re: password managers -- so your answer to my complaint that I have to run/use a second program just to run the one I want... is to install a third app to make the second one less problematic? And: I *have* a password manager: the one built-in to the OS. I have over 100 applications installed; exactly one of them requires another program to gatekeep it. And I understand I'm in the minority here -- I did start with, "Am I the only one..."

free_bip 2y ago
My answer to your complaint of "I don't remember my password" is that you should be using a password manager. If you are using one and forgot it anyway, this is clearly not the fault of steam. The other 2 are easily googleable/chatgptable, so I'll leave that to you.
- gcanyon 2y ago
  I'm saying that I use the built-in password manager in MacOS. I just checked, and it has the password, but Steam apparently isn't capable of auto-filling. So I looked it up, entered it, and then steam decided that wasn't enough and I had to confirm by email, because new computer. This isn't national security, it's a $20 video game that is twenty years old, that you used to be able to play for free through flash in a web browser. Steam sucks.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > This isn't national security, it's a $20 video game that is twenty years old, that you used to be able to play for free through flash in a web browser. You can still do that. https://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html https://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n
    - gcanyon 2y ago
      Nice, thanks!

krisoft 2y ago

> This comment is completely off the rails. My experience mirrors that of gcanyon. I'm an extremely casual gamer. I play every few months a single-player game sometimes. I'm fine with that and I don't want to change it. Steam sucks and makes me play less my games. Why? This is how the "play game" experience worked in my childhood: I had the game installed. Found the icon of it on the desktop, or in the start menu. I clicked it. The game loaded and I was playing. This is how the same thing works now with Steam. I start steam. I need to wait while it updates itself. Then I need to log in. (yes I'm using a password manager, it still sucks) Then I need to sort out the second factor. Then the game updates. (Sometimes I have to do some wrangling so the game I actually want to play updates first, instead of having to wait while all the other games update). And then I can play. > All these extra steps are just a consequence of you extremely rarely opening it Okay? So I should feel less bad? It sucks. Everything else is excuses. Sometimes I have a few hours, and I think "hey maybe I could play something" then I remember how much it sucks and I just go and read a book. That's not a glowing endorsement for Steam. Steam is acting as if it is Fort Knox. I understand that I would need to go through all of that before I can purchase a new game with a stored card. But I just want to play a game I already have, and have it installed and it is on my disk. So just get out of my way and let me play.

bee_rider 2y ago
You can save your password on Steam. You can also set games to not automatically update. Steam and Valve are are pretty popular, in the absolute wasteland that is game launchers and gaming companies. Steam starts up reasonably quickly, and has pretty well thought out functionality for things like playing with your friends. Valve has nice sales, and contributes stuff like Proton (a nice wrapper around/extension of Wine, for Linux support). That said, I think everyone who likes Steam/Valve should be able to imagine how you feel about it. Because that’s probably how they feel about stuff like the Epic launcher, and all those. It really ought not be that mysterious, we’ve all got different thresholds for what annoys us!
- krisoft 2y ago
  > Steam and Valve are are pretty popular, I understand, and appreciate that. My brother who is an avid gamer told me (i paraphrase here) “when i was young i used to play more games than i paid for, now i buy more games than I can play with” which is a big change. Steam is one of the big factors behind that. That is nothing sort of miraculous. > we’ve all got different thresholds for what annoys us That. But also i totally see that my usage pattern is different from most other users of it. I assume if i would play every day that would keep my “cookies” warm. And even if not, and i would still need to log in once every few months that would be a “rare hickup” as opposed to “every darn time i start this thing”. (Just because the baseline would shift.) So i totaly understand that. I also understand that from Valve’s perspective perhaps my usecase is not that lucrative. I just don’t bring in enough dough to make it worthwile to “fix” things for me. Especially when fixing my use case could perhaps lead to other indirect costs like more stolen steam accounts. (I don’t really know. I don’t have a full understanding of all of their security practices. What I am saying is that i can imagine that it is a tradeoff from their perspective. They could make the session system more forgiving but then they would suffer other consequences.) I see all of that. But just because i understand those things i don’t have to pretend things are working well for me when they are not.

ASalazarMX 2y ago

I play several times a week, and in my experience, Steam updates GBs of data too frequently. Nearly every time I open it, it starts downloading updates, so I had to uninstall but a handful of games to minimize that. I like the convenience, but you need a good broadband connection to keep up.