Steam unavailable?

[crackshot1980]

WTF?

Reading the post (Future of gaming cuz of HL2/Steam) it suddenly occurred to me that steam is going to get an almighty ball whacking hit around launch hour. Of course, steam would have forseen this and got a bunch of new servers, but I still think there will be almighty chaos on the western front.

So, when do you think you will be able to /play/ HL2?

/pessimism

 

[Chris D]

It should be at 8am GMT tomorrow. If Steam really struggles they can throw some more bandwidth through.

 

[nagual678]

search for "expensive phone call" in the valve answers thread ^_^

 

[Biggleska]

Al-Qaeda strikes again..

 

[crackshot1980]

I remember this from the CS:S beta a month ago. Valve upped the bandwidth from about 4Gps to 8Gps, now it`s around about 15Gps. Surely this isn`t the maximum they can cope with? I believe he has already made one expensive phone call, and may need to make another one before the day is out. Mind you, I think that half-life 2 is going to be a runaway success and the temporary servers will more than pay for themselves.

I /really/ want HL2 to be a major success and think that the whole steam delivery content system is a great idea, but to trial it for a huge release of a massive game is a little risky. Fingers crossed it will all go well and this will be the shape of the distribution to come.

One final thing, is steam a distributed network (along the lines of bittorrent) or is it a straight server-download system? If it`s the first then huge amounts of people downloading copies of the game won`t be a massive problem, but everyone will contribute pieces of their game. As long as the authentication system stays up all will be well.

Ah, optimism strikes again!

 

[czrsink]

How much bandwidth can activation take up? Anyone with any brains would have already preloaded, so it's just a question of unlocking the content that's already on your HDDs, isn't it?

 

[Quartz Botanica]

Do I need Steam to activate my retail CE copy? Because someone said you do.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

I am sure if the servers are lagging, Gabe will up it to 15-20GBPS, that enough for a small file download.

 

[maniac618]

i reckon steam will be overpowered and go down.

 

[Quartz Botanica]

steamoverpowered.com, eh.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

i reckon steam will be overpowered and go down.

I don't, even when they first launched the hl2 payment plan options it didn't go down, it just lagged.

 

[Rozza]

Yeah even if you purchase retail you need to activate it on Steam. That is why peple with advanced copies haven't been able to play it, if they say have then they're probably lying.

 

[DuB]

If they had released it like halo (so in everycountry respectivley at 12:00am local time) there would'nt be such a load on steam, as different continents would be getting their files at different times.
But I guess thats imposible via steam, as valve have no way of limmiting or knowing who is a user from what country.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

Actually VALVe can localize servers for users of certain countries/continents.