All The Steaming Connection Madness...

Edcrab

<div class="IPBDescription">What do you guys think?</div> With all the talk regarding the Steam beta's need for an authorisation connection even to begin a LAN game, I wondered what the overall community census is. Half the gaming world waves vaguely at FAQ's and the other mumbles barely relevant platitudes regarding Valve's apparent recognition of the situation.

I'm certain Valve will utterly remove plans/consideration of plans for the need for Steam authentication, but it does make me wonder. If HL2 truly needs a continuous or even a brief connection on startup, it really doesn't bode too well for my fellow dialup users.

Relevant (but confusing, I must admit) details can be found on the Steam FAQ <a href='http://steampowered.com/index.php?area=faq&id=1050915505,27362300,1050915726,98098300' target='_blank'>here</a> and <a href='http://steampowered.com/index.php?area=faq&id=1050915505,27362300,1050915714,91503900' target='_blank'>here.</a>

Of course, <a href='http://steampowered.com/index.php?area=faq&id=1050915492,63276400,1050915644,08525800' target='_blank'>this</a> shows Valve's rather obvious realisation that not all of their potential customers have access to broadband. Still, I guess I'm vaguely apprehensive... but then again, <i>I'm</i> a blatant fanboy...

CommunistWithAGun

I beta'd steam for a while, I was getting 500kbps downloads mid-day. And yes, there will be steamauth. The next HL/CS patch converts WONID to STEAMID.

Edcrab

Eh... I knew that Steam was replacing the WON ID system. I was just wondering what people thought about the (apparent) proposals regarding forced connections to the 'net, even for single player or LAN play.

NumbersNotFound

My guess is steam came aroudn when valve finally caught onto the fact that nobody knows what Won.net is...

DOOManiac

To be brutally honest, I'm not suprised in the least that its late.