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[TripJack]

steam with more stable & faster servers would be the perfect gaming client

[BigD145]

steam with more stable & faster servers would be the perfect gaming client

You can change your default server. You don't have to pull from Seattle.

[TripJack]

tell me something i dont know

there are still speed and stability problems during weekends & sales and other peak usage times

[PrimusRibbus]

Biggest problem with Steam at the moment is that they don't QA anything. They're adding increasingly complex features and and day's update could break any particular feature. I run a very light and small multimedia box on my living room TV and stream games to it from my gaming PC with Steam In-Home Streaming. When it works, it's perfect. Problem is, some Steam updates just break random parts of it (or the entire feature). There will often be another Steam update within a couple hours that will fix the bugs, but the fact that they're a massive service that is completely allergic to making stable builds is a bit scary.

[Silent_Thunder]

Biggest problem with Steam at the moment is that they don't QA anything. They're adding increasingly complex features and and day's update could break any particular feature. I run a very light and small multimedia box on my living room TV and stream games to it from my gaming PC with Steam In-Home Streaming. When it works, it's perfect. Problem is, some Steam updates just break random parts of it (or the entire feature). There will often be another Steam update within a couple hours that will fix the bugs, but the fact that they're a massive service that is completely allergic to making stable builds is a bit scary.

Are you running the beta client? I get updates maybe once every 2 weeks.

Ninja edit: Checking the update history, the most recent main branch update was on the 9th, so if you're getting updates more frequently than that, you're running the beta client.

[Levi]

Ah, speaking of clients, the GOG Galaxy client has gone into Beta.  The alpha wasn't bad, it'll be interesting to see how the beta is. 

With the GOG Galaxy Beta, you can install your games in one click and keep them up to date automatically, the beta currently supports this feature in all but a couple of titles available here. You can also perform backups easily by downloading a standalone installer through GOG Galaxy. The beta features a friends list, game time tracking, achievements, and chat. You can now talk to each other, connect with your group of friends, and see what everyone is playing. You can also try out our online multiplayer & matchmaking solution that, in select titles, includes cross-play: platform-independent multiplayer between gamers on GOG.com and Steam. If you download a patch that breaks something or if you just change your mind, the app will soon feature a unique rollback option to restore a previous version of your game.

Not sure how the crossplay thing works, sounds like voodoo to me.

[Parsely]

Steam gives me good recommendations, and only when I ask for them on the website, never in my client. I don't see what the big deal is regarding that. It's less intrusive than banner ads, since I actually have to purposefully navigate to the portion of the website where the recommendations are.

[Shadowlord]

I see GoG Galaxy has an update rollback feature listed as "coming soon"

Do want.

[BurnedToast]

What's wrong with disabling ad popups in the settings, setting your default page to community or something, then leaving steam in small mode and ignoring the stuff you don't like?

Nobody is forcing you to browse through the store every day or screw around with trading cards.

[sebcool]

GOG Galaxy has already been mentioned.

There's also Evolve (not the game), which seems to fill all the features, except for the store. When you run a game with it activated, it adds it to the library and you can run it from there. It works with all the other gaming clients, so no problem there. It has an overlay, friends list, party system (with a bunch of neat tools, like matchmaking), streaming, all kinds of stuff. It's basically Steam without the store and a few nifty features. The guys developing it seem to be active, last time I checked, and they pay the bills with donations and subscriptions (which add a few more features, nothing major).

[Ghills]

Well, GOG 's solution is pretty nice. The main thing they have ahead of steam is the whole the client isnt drm thing, you can just uninstall it and keep your games.

Sorry but I have to correct this every time it comes up: Steam is not intrinsically DRM. It is a download manager that can but does not have to be used as DRM.

There's also the nasty spyware aspect of Steam/Origin/UPlay. It's not just the typical DRM that people object to, although that is significant. Steam does a lot more than just act as a download manager.

[Shadowlord]

Spah? Where?

[BurnedToast]

Spah? Where?

The only thing I can think of is at one point steam checked for connections a very specific set of websites as part of VAC. Apparently it does not even do that anymore, since cheat makers figured out a way around it.

If that's not what he's talking about, then I have no idea. Steam is so widely used it would be incredibly difficult for them to sneak spyware into it without anyone noticing, and you can bet if someone noticed some genuine spyware you'd hear about it.

[Neonivek]

I used to like Steam's "recommended" aspect back when what it did was just find a bunch of popular games usually with some eclectic sense.

Now it just gives me a huge pile of terrible games and I have to tell it on mass "not interested!"

[Shadowlord]

> on mass

It's "en masse..."