By John Walker on November 4th, 2008 at 6:00 am.
You may remember that back in May, RPS was the first place in the world to announce Valve’s new addition to Steam, Steam Cloud. Today Valve have declared that it’s finished, and ready to go live.
Steam Cloud is a feature for Steam which, when implemented, allows players to store their save games and game configurations on Steam’s servers, rather than their own computers. With Steam you can access your games from any computer, so long as you’ve bought them on your account, but you’d have to start the game from scratch or carry your saves around with you. So the idea is, with your saves and configs stored on Steam, you can just pick up and carry on whichever computer you use.
The first roll-out of the system is going to be focusing only on the config stuff. Valve explain,
“Steam Cloud support will ship with Valve’s Left 4 Dead demo later this week and the full game on November 18. In this first release, the information stored and accessible through the Steam Cloud includes keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configurations, as well as multiplayer settings such as spraypaint images.”
Of course, with Left 4 Dead not having saving, there’s no need for the other half of the Cloud feature. But there’s currently no word on when that function will be available. However, it’s also become more clear that it won’t be annoyingly fiddly.
“The Steam Cloud will “just work,” meaning any user changes to their game options will propagate to the Cloud by default. Upon logging into Steam from another PC, these settings will be brought down from the Cloud and automatically leveraged by the game. Any configuration changes on this second machine are then synced to the Cloud for future sessions.”
It’s free to users, and perhaps more importantly, to developers and publishers, and it’s available to be retrospectively added to previously released games. It seems like an idea good enough that it would be quite ridiculous not to include it in any future games. Although you might wonder about the reaction from publishers who seek to prevent customers from installing games on more than one computer. Ideally, the Cloud system becoming commonplace would make such draconian thinking look sillier.
Valve say they have plans to expand the features in the near future, which hopefully means an announcement on save games.
Weee!! I love steam :D
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A small, but welcome, addition to PC gaming.
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I remember reading this in (if I recall correctly) the latest Steam Update you get upon login to it.
Seems like a terrific idea, and I do hope publishers/developers, besides Valve, have the pants to implement this into their games.
The first game that could benefit well from this would be STALKER. I almost completely changed the keyboard configuration in this game, and I’ve installed in on three different computers (not simultaneously, though) and it was a huge pain in the arse to try and remember the configuration each time, thus leading to a tedious trial-and-error-esque cycle until I got them correct (or comfortable) again.
I can see no use for the multiplayer configuration, though. What else, besides the username, can be needed? … Yet it will be a small relief not having to go to the options tab to change the name.
Again, Valve is completely full of win. I guess… I guess I am a Valve whore!
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Makes you wonder why game developers didn’t think of this sooner…
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Valve spoils us rotten with awesome stuff like easy-to-use server browsers, Steam Cloud, and community features. I wish more games would either use Steamworks or just copy Valve’s formula. There’s no excuse for shoddy in-house server browsers or Gamespy these days.
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VALVE ROX!!!
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Free internet hugs for Valve!
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@Dyscharge
A lot of more serious players of games such as CS 1.6 and TF2 change their autoconfigs drastically from the default settings for optimal performance. Trust me, it is a pain to have to do it on each new computer.
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YES PLZ. This’ll make me have to worry a lot less about reinstalls or moving to new computers. I just hope it gets support from non-Valve products. Now if it could just let me transfer graphic settings from HL2 to any mods by default…
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Hopefully this will fix the way certain TF2 achievements are per-install, while others are per-account.
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What we really need is EA to adopt this so when we post bad comments on their forums not only can they remove access to our games, they can delete our savegames while they’re at it!
Sorry for the troll, but i couldn’t resist :)
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@ bemo56: No worries, I loled.
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“Upon logging into Steam from another PC, these settings will be brought down from the Cloud and automatically leveraged by the game. ”
“Leveraged”? What the fuck is wrong with “used”?
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>“Leveraged”? What the fuck is wrong with “used”?
Not enough synergy for the win-win.
I hope it is better implemented than Microsoft’s horrible Gears of War stuff. You HAD to be online to be able to save there. Also, the server was so poorly implemented there was only one save file per player, and saves where not atomic. So if the client crashed during a checkpoint save (which happened to me) the save file got corrupted and you had to restart the game from the beginning again. Whee.
Still, since we are talking about Valve here I’m pretty sure they are going to get it right (optional, safe and non-intrusive).
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Just out of curiosity, but how many people actually play on more than one machine?
I can see a use for this by people migrating to a new machine or protection against disk crashes (both of which I’ve experienced the past couple months – always back up, boys and girls), but I can’t see it being a daily part of my gaming life.
It’s a good idea, but I don’t see myself personally having a huge use for it. Anyone else?
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This seems like a pretty logical way to get round the old piracy issue, bascially make it so piracy is irrelivant. Big problem was that games are singular products and so it was worth copying.
Here its not a “disk licence” its a “user licence” you as a user ar authorised to use the software and so it doesnt matter where you play it.
The Cloud just makes it a killer app, now as you can drag everything with you wherever you go the muppet who pirated feels like a tit and the regular users actually get a better experiance for a change
This could cause problems later on when Steam goes tits up (because it will go tits up) but hopefully someone will take it on or valve will release some of the locks on software or soemthing. But dont count on it.
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Now that is how you fight piracy. (Yes, I said the p-Word)
Give the players who paid for the game access to features everyone likes to have (well except the privacy-nazis perhaps), instead of punishing the players who bought your game with ludicrous resrtictions.
Go Valve !
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That’s great: I just hope they’ve implemented some sort of packeting, so that only the bits that have changed since your last downloaded save file get downloaded when you log in, otherwise it’s going to consume a lot of bandwidth, and slow down the experience to the point where it’s useless.
I can see me using this for playing a Football Manager save spanning home and work in a better way than keeping it on a memory card like I do now, but only if I don’t have to download 200MB or so of savegame before I can get going every time.
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Well, I usually play on two different computers, desktop and laptop, so I will be using this feature at least on some games : )
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Pretty sure blizzard do something like this already for WoW. Your actionbar setups and macros are now stored on the server so you dont get quite as messed up from loggin with different machines. Unfortunatey this doesnt solve the problem with all the addons I use :(
It definitely makes sense tho, I often play the same game from 2 machines.
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I have most of my Steam games installed on my desktop and laptop, so this is a welcome addition.
Now all I’d like is if they could automatically work out what resolution you want based on other Steam games. That’s a pain to set up every time.
Thank you, Valve.
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@Ginger Yellow
I was a bit aghast at that particular tidbit of business speak; I can only assume it somehow permeated from an earlier internal meeting and someone forgot to edit it out.
I was leveraged by a synergy once. I got better.
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“Although you might wonder about the reaction from publishers who seek to prevent customers from installing games on more than one computer.”
It wouldn’t make a difference, as the publishers who only want a game to be played on a single machine probably wouldn’t have it on steam anyway.
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“just works”
Sounds disturbingly mac-esque
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Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory servers (yes, people still play it!) store your keyboard config and all such settings – but that’s the only similar thing I can think of.
It’s quite a welcome addition to steam, I only wish that other developers would stop being so – behind the times, and catch up.
Better still, put their games on steam. xD
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Once again, Valve continue to make other publishers look bad. I have concerns about implementation of things like system settings (i.e. if I play on a powerhouse PC and a low-spec laptop, I don’t want my graphics settings copied) and save game file sizes. Some games have stupidly big save games (whether thats due to no optimization or necessary I don’t know) and that could pose issues for playing anywhere.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to this!
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This is not only great for those who play accross several machines. It is also useful to those of us who periodically wipe their reg-bloated windows install and re-install everything.
I have learned to hate certain games that scatter their save game and config info through half a dozen obscure locations and encrypted files.
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I for one would be thrilled with this idea, had it been announced, what, 5 years ago?
Nowadays my so-called CS career has ended and my LAN days are over, so I have little use for this cute little feature.
Still, I’m always prone to blowing up a piece of two of rig due to misusage, so having everything backed up is a relief. :D
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As a student, i migrate between my hometown and uni-town every weekend, and sometimes i play on my brother’s laptop, so this is great news indeed. Was getting tired of constantly copying my savegames to the USB and back.
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Blizzard implemented a similar system in WoW a few weeks back. Config Settings, Keybinds, Macros, etc. are all stored server-side.
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“Just out of curiosity, but how many people actually play on more than one machine?
I can see a use for this by people migrating to a new machine or protection against disk crashes (both of which I’ve experienced the past couple months – always back up, boys and girls), but I can’t see it being a daily part of my gaming life.
It’s a good idea, but I don’t see myself personally having a huge use for it. Anyone else?”
You seem to have missed the point where you can migrate your FPS settings to the next FPS game you buy (provided it’s on Steam). As a left-hander, this saves me roughly 30 seconds the first time I install a game to change from WASD to Keypad, and to invert the mouse buttons.
Migration of config settings other than mouse and keyboard controls is the really useful side. I just hope Valve lets you distinguish between different genres: an FPS setup being pretty useless in an RTS game. Also I can’t see how this ‘leveraging’ is going to work for games not made by Valve or using the Source engine, will they force new publishers to put their games through ‘conversion filters’ to change “player_jump” to “+jump”, “item_back” to “invprev”, and so on (just made up examples). On the surface of it, it looks like only Valve-made and Source engine games are going to be able to offer this particular Steam Cloud feature.
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Another thing: when do you think Valve will start charging for all these great, free services?
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ESDF users rejoice! Its not a big deal but its nice. Carries potential issuses. For example empire total war, those saves carry alot of info. Potentially too much for zero footprint steaming.
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I wonder is they will utilise information on user controls and other settings to determine better key layouts and graphical settings. A resounding ‘meh’ from me tbh, but it does seem like a feature that will be very useful to some people.
If they could make it that all their games would come with my custom key layout already set, then I’d be impressed :P
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The heck are you talking about? Install limits are a completely rational method of combating piracy. As a measure it’s show tremendous success to date.
Somebody else back me up on this!
Somebody?
Anybody?
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I’d love to see this in Call of Duty 4 on Steam, since storing ranks and weapon unlocks locally is the worst idea ever. I know it’s a console port, and you don’t format consoles and whatever, but still.
And Fallout 3 could use something like this too.
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Nice news for all of you!
Unfortunately my steam account just got highjacked. The day after i bought Fallout 3. Yes it sucks. And i’ve been waiting 3 days for a response from steam support.
Feel sorry for me.
I do.
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@theleif
Now ladies and gentlemen this is why you don’t store all your eggs in one basket. Steam is a bad idea.. cloud computing is a bad idea. Chicken farmers in the dark ages knew this.. but you guys can’t see it???
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Jeez, thats harsh. Good luck dude. I’d forgotten that was even possible. I’ll go change my pw later.
Install limits are to combat resale, i know i’d never buy mass effect or spore etc second hand. They effect piracy in no way what so ever once a crack is in effect.
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Gametap is using this for their services. No save-files are stored locally (as far as I know). I’ve been using their free games a little and the combination of no save-files and “try for a limited time” has made me go out and buy the games (Thief and Fallout). I can’t put my finger on why, exactly, but the games just felt borrowed.
I hope Steam’s Cloud will have locally saved games IN ADDITION to uploading them to their server.
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bloody brilliant idea, hooray for Valve, yet again!
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OMG! It doesn’t do that already??
I formatted the drive that had steam installed last month, and didn’t back up anything! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
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Awesome. This would be very handy for all LAN cafes that have Steam on thier computers. Now, what was the password…
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@mashakos
Don’t worry, it appears that even if you use the ‘back-up’ function it doesn’t back-up your saves, as I found out to my detriment recently. (It also seems to fail to back-up some of the software.) So at least in your ignorance you didn’t waste several DVDs and a fair amount of time. (Plus, it couldn’t restore the backup from the DVD directly, and still expected me to re-download steam. Actually, come to think of it now, I’m pretty sure something went wrong.)
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oh well, time to play 11 games all over again… :’(
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Hate to tell you this but you didn’t have to be online to save Gears. I played it all the way through and didn’t have to go online once to save the game.
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Steam Cloud sounds really great, although I’m wondering about some of the specifics that could be an issue (stuff like it loading too-high settings on a weaker computer that someone else mentioned). Hopefully there are options to avert that.
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Now if only Steam wouldn’t be so painstakingly slow. There’s just no excuse in the world that a modern game takes like 3-4min to load (that’s steamlogin + gameloading time + connection time).
The cloud maybe a nice feature, but before they get the speed problem sorted, I’m not impressed.
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This was a obviuous feature back wen Counter-Strike was popular, and people roamed from home to a cybercafe, to another different cybercafe. More the settings, than the savegames ( I feel better with my savegames where I can backup then). *buzzword alert* this may help adding web2.0 features to gamming *buzzword alert*. Is also a double edge sword.
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@AbyssUK
You mean like how keeping everything I own inside my house is a bad idea? I mean, my house can easily burn down, and then I’d have lost everything! Ironically though, in such a situation, I’d still have the games I’d bought off Steam…
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I wonder if devs will have access to (and use) this information stored on game servers? While looking at game save might not be that informative, I imagine having a vast pool of game config files could be very useful for streamlining and improving default settings for future games.
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“I can see no use for the multiplayer configuration, though. What else, besides the username, can be needed? … Yet it will be a small relief not having to go to the options tab to change the name.”
For those of us who use invert mouse, t for talk, y for team talk, different buttons for prone, walk, jump, sprint, crouch, etc, it can be extremely useful. Not to mention dev console on, whatever hz your monitor is, etc.
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These features should have been picked up earlier, especially when Xbox Live presented them on Xbox 360 a couple of years ago.
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@StormTec – people have insurance for that. You can’t really claim for Steam.
I do wonder why people don’t just have separate steam accounts for each game. It means you can give them away when you’re finished with them and it’s more secure. It messes with the social parts but frankly Steam is massively inferior to facebook or instant messengers there anyway.
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@StormTec
Why do people defend Steam so much… it’s slow, it’s basically malware, you must have it running if you want to run tf2/halflife and it dials home, it goes against everything PC users want it’s horrible! My god its the worst DRM out there! Yet everybody loves it because its valve and they make great games…I say keep on making the games but leave the other stuff alone. Come on you can’t even choose where you want to install a game! let alone it’s save files.
Why have a program like steam at all I just don’t get it… it can all be done in a simple web page…it’s totally pointless. I wish google would buy valve so they can do the steam part correctly.. then valve can concentrate on doing what they do best which is making games.
The added insult is normally boxed games from the shop are bloody cheaper than downloading! WHY! WHY! seriously people take a closer look at steam and tell me it’s a good application.
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Works fine on the two PCs I run it on. It doesn’t inhibit me from playing the games I want to play in any way and doesn’t infringe on my rights.
Why anyone feels so strongly about such an innocuous program is beyond me. People can be so precious about their PCs.
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Abyss: The reason why people like it is that it adds functionality for them. It’s the only way to get people to like DRM – by offering them something that they can’t get without it.
(e.g. Consoles are basically a DRM system. No-one really mentions this because of all the things they allow you to do – ease of play, etc.
e.g. MMOs. The login to play is a DRM. However, it’s the only way that sort of game could work, and since it offers stuff, people accept it – in fact, they even love it)
People like STEAM now as it’s got a mass of features which make life a lot easier. Rather than EA’s DRM which makes life harder, Steam’s DRM makes life – generally speaking – easier.
And that’s why people like it – and it’s the reason why a lot of people would rather buy from Steam rather than a DRM free verson direct from the developer.
KG
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It’s annoying when they have retail DRM on top of steam sold games. Fucking third party publishers.
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Exactly.
I’m all for having Valve DRM on my PC if it means I can have integrated friend/clan management, game updates and now game save backup.
The only other software I can think of that offers this on PC is EA’s equivalent and I don’t think anyone can claim that to be preferable.
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EA Downloader or EA Link or whatever it is called now is a piece of software coded by Satan himself.
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@Abyss
You seem to be missing the fact that you can download steam games as many times as you like, onto as many computers you want.
I don’t mind DRM – piracy is a problem. When it gets obtrusive is when I get annoyed, and so far steam has improved my gaming experience.
The only thing that is strange is that although games on steam start off below retail price, some of them (I’m looking at you Bioshock) stay at that price seemingly forever. Bioshock is still about 25 quid on steam, yet I bought it for 13 in a store.
But as I said, steam is good for games that have just come out.
Let google buy valve? Are you mad?
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I hope it is better implemented than Microsoft’s horrible Gears of War stuff. You HAD to be online to be able to save there. Also, the server was so poorly implemented there was only one save file per player, and saves where not atomic.
Oooh, I want one of those kind of saves. Are they in Fallout 3 perhaps?
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@AbyssUK
Steam is not perfect, but it is by no means the digital manifestation of all that is evil and inhumane as some (not necessarily implying you) make it out to be.
And, as Kieron and fishmitten say, people like it because it actually has functionality. Functionality that, it would appear, a fair amount of PC users are quite happy about. I’m not denying that it’s slow, that it needs to be running to play a game, or that it dials home, but most people just don’t seem to see that as such a big deal in the face of Steam’s more positive features. Basically, the DRM parts of Steam aren’t as intrusive (for many), and Steam on the whole (as a form of DRM) offers more than it takes away, in my opinion. Though it would be nice if it was perfect, of course.
I’m sorry if I’m playing the other part of some fanboy war here. I’m not saying anyone should like Steam. I’m just saying that it isn’t exactly a crime against humanity in digital form, and that there are some valid reasons for people liking it (as some seem to think that there aren’t any).
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Amazingly, I’ve had zero problems with Steam in the many years I’ve used it. Looking back, I’m rather impressed by how seamlessly it’s been incorporated into my PC gaming experience. Even so, I only buy non-Valve games if they’re on sale.
My biggest gripe is not with Steam, but with the idiotic publishers who put SecuROM and/or install limits on top of Steam’s inherent DRM. Screw ‘em.
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I love steam, i can use it on any computer at home, and quikly load up HL for some testing at school whilst having a free hour. It doesnt whine about keys, or anything, it just installs and allows me to play the games i have.
yes, steam didnt start off perfect, but i think it is the best thing out there right now.
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I suggest any box with “SecuROM” to include a small warning “This game include malware / rootkits”.
Steam/stuff… how convenience can be usefull to add features, and the Steam Cloud seems the perfect machine to build this feature into and deliver from all “steam-games”. I will still play *and buy* no-steam games, but Is nice that steam is becoming soo good platform for gaming on PC’s. And other RPS guy say, XBox Live invented this years ago… we are late on the party!
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Aaanyway… back to Steam Cloud:
Does anyone know if we’ll have control over which settings are exported from each PC? I use my Steam account at work and at home and my two PCs vary quite a bit. It would be nice to be able to share my control, avatar and spray settings, but leave my video settings unchanged if possible.
If this isn’t how it’s going to work, I can see a lot of people having problems.
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Tei – Securom is not a rootkit it has been around a very long time and the charge that it is a rookit is a load of bollocks and been proven wrong on multiple occasions by security experts.
Securom generally offers two flavours of DRM a disc based check which is the oldest one an online product activation component again nether are a rootkit and the whole business got started off in Bioshock by a clueless user who didn’t know how to use analysis software in the first place then started shouting rootkit, rootkit from the rooftops. Of course there are those with an agenda such as pc gamers pirates and anti-drm people who try to spread the false message as much as possible.
No I don’t work for Securom but I strongly dislike people spreading false information about the security of computers its like peter crying wolf.
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Taxman: humm???… that is new to me. SecuROM install as a driver, that on Windows is the OS level, and use tecniques to be hidden to the OS (That include ofuscated registry keys).
Microsoft tool to detect toolkits, also detect SecuROM has one.
Download the tool:
http://technet.microsoft.com/es-es/sysinternals/bb897445(en-us).aspx
Try it, on my computer it detect securom.
Arrgh..we are talking again about this crap. Is boring, lets talk about something else. Is more interesting how to CREATE NEW THINGS (what cloud is tryiing) than to STOP THINGS (that is what DRM is about).
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taxman sounds like shill
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I’m fine with Steam as DRM, its great! however, not removing the TAGES DRM on the Steam version of Stalker: Clear Sky was a big mistake. Now I cannot play my game, as although one DRM works fine (my steam account), TAGES will only let you “activate” the protected game 5 times. Such “activation” can occur over swapping hardware, or formatting your PC. What’s more, neither Valve, the game developer (GSC Games), or TAGES will take ownership of this problem and revoke or replace this awful DRM! So, guess what? now the only way i can play it is to pirate it.
btw anyone else who has sorted this problem pls post xD
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It still is the largest MP FPS, by a quite large margin. (http://www.onlinegamingzeitgeist.com/games/ That recent huge dip was because an update that rendered people being unable to join servers until they were restarted (and thus updated), it’ll probably go back up in a week or so (because the site uses a 7 day average))
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The way Valve works made it impossible for me not to buy Left4Dead. I tried to save my money for GTA4(PC) but I simply couldn’t resist spending it at Steam. DAMN IT, haha.
Nice work, valve!=)
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Well, I just can’t accept the idea of having to be online to play a single player game. I don’t accept Steam. I bought HL2 and used Steam years ago and I just can’t go back to it.
Anyway, this new “cloud” feature sounds awesome but i just don’t like Steam. I admit that this service is better than draconian DRM, just chalk me up as an Angry Internet Cave Man.
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“Well, I just can’t accept the idea of having to be online to play a single player game”
…except you don’t, you know. You do have to be online to _install_ the game, yes, but something like half-life 2′s probably had most of its own weight in patches anyway, so you’d be needing web access any way. After the game is installed, and can be played, then you can quite happily take your laptop somewhere with no net connection, turn it on, and play your games.
the question then becomes “is having net access when installing these games a barrier?” and for most people, of course, it isn’t. If it is for you then fair enough.
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with this update I started to hate steam…
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