This is precisely why I'm waiting for a stable Steam emulator before installing my purchased copy of HL2 !!
Steam is a very invasive authentication model in my opinion.
Not only will Steam track activity since the install of HL2 but all previous VALVE games will be modified with phone-home-to-Steam code.
People that don't mind the likes of M$ and AOL auto updating their OS/Browser without pre-authorization probably won't care.
Snippits I collected from VALVE's Steam privacy policy…..very informative !!!
(I've underlined some text for emphasis and my personal comments are in orange)
"Collection and Use of Information
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.
"Aggregate information" is information that describes the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of users as a group but does not describe or reveal the identity of any particular user.
This information may be used to improve Valve's products and online sites, for internal marketing studies, or simply to collect demographic information about Valve's users.
Valve may use customer contact information provided by users to send information about Valve, including news about product updates, contests, events, and other promotional materials, but only if the users agree to receive such communications. See automatic OPT-IN Policy below From time to time, Valve's online products may provide chat forums, bulletin boards, or instant messaging tools to users.
Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Valve in databases hosted in the United States.
Valve does store information on a user's hard drive that is used in conjunction with online play of Valve products. This includes a unique authorization key or CD-Key that is either entered by the user or downloaded automatically during product registration (This is where authentication should stop IMO). This authorization key is used to identify a user as valid and allow access to Valve's products. Information regarding Steam billing, your Steam account, your Internet connection and the Valve software installed on your computer are uploaded to the server in connection with your use of Steam and Valve software. Valve software automatically generates and submits to Valve bug reports upon a crash or other fault in the Valve software. This automatically generated bug report information may include information about other software or hardware on a user's system.
AUTOMATIC OPT-IN FOR VALVE MARKETING POLICY.
Choice/Opt-out
Valve gives users the option of discontinuing receipt of promotional email communications from Valve. Instructions for discontinuing receipt of promotional email communications from Valve will be provided in such subsequent email communications to users."
Other tidbits from Steam FAQ !
http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=faq
_________________________________________________
How can I have a LAN party or similar event using Steam?
Any Steam game, when played on a LAN or otherwise, requires that each individual client be able to authenticate via the Internet.
At a LAN party, this means that Internet access must be available to every machine on which Steam games are being played.
If desireable, the network administrator of such an event can limit internet access to only the TCP/IP ports which Steam needs. These are:
UDP 1200
UDP 27000 to 27015 inclusive
TCP 27030 to 27039 inclusive
At large events, it will be necessary for each attendee to let their games fully update before attending to avoid taxing the shared internet connection with too much content delivery.
modified on September 29, 2003, 4:18 pm
__________________________________________
Why is my Norton firewall reporting that Valve's trying to infect my computer with a "trojan horse"?
This is a false positive from the Norton firewall product.
Occasionally the Friends server sends your computer a message asking if you're still online. If you closed Steam (especially if you kill it from task manager) this message can be intercepted by the Norton firewall. And since Friends sometimes uses the same port number as a known trojan, the firewall incorrectly identifies the message as being malicious -- even though it's not trojan traffic at all.
__________________________________________________________
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Why is there non-Steam information in my Steam cache files? Is Steam Spyware?
Some users have seen non-Steam related information (like names of private files on their computer) show up inside their Steam cache files, raising privacy concerns. This is actually a result of the way Windows handles files. The cache file gets created on the client using the Windows CreateFile() command. This command will create the file but not initialize it. Due to the large size of the file, the Steam client does not initialize the empty data blocks in it as this can take an appreciable amount of time. On NTFS machines, files created with this method happen to have the property of appearing empty (initialized to zero) but for FAT32 machines, it shows up as whatever old data was sitting on drive in the sectors that just got allocated for the cache. This data is never uploaded or even read by the Steam client. Eventually, as Steam downloads more data, the old data is overwritten.
modified on September 16, 2003, 5:27 pm
http://news.com.com/Computer+gaming...+page+2/2100-1026_3-5443293-2.html?tag=st.num
The Steam network itself was originally as much an offshoot of the company's online multiplayer games as a way to reinvent the way games are distributed. The company was looking for an efficient way to create on-the-fly online matchmaking between players and update games, and ultimately decided to create a broad system that would allow for full distribution of games as well.
Valve settled on home-grown technology that draws elements from content distribution networks like Akamai Technologies and peer-to-peer services like eDonkey, without being identical to either. Steam consists of bits of software that sit on each player's computer, checking central servers for updates to games and keeping tabs on servers that can be used to create multiplayer games at any given moment.
When Valve has a new game to distribute, it uploads bits and pieces at a time over the course of days or weeks, so that no player's Internet connection is overwhelmed by downloading several gigabytes of data all at once. According to the network's Web site, it has about 10,000mbps (megabits per second) of bandwidth available for content distribution and matchmaking purposes.
The system was riddled with bugs when it launched a year ago, and much player feeling ran high against it. But the network has stabilized over the year, and many players now say it's been a positive development.
"There are still a lot of people who are 'anti-Steam,' but now it is completely mandatory to play all of Valve's back catalog," said Chris Deeming, lead editor of fan site HalfLife2.net. "People have learned to live with it, and most actually quite like it now."
What's there to like?
Steam is a very invasive authentication model in my opinion.
Not only will Steam track activity since the install of HL2 but all previous VALVE games will be modified with phone-home-to-Steam code.
People that don't mind the likes of M$ and AOL auto updating their OS/Browser without pre-authorization probably won't care.
Snippits I collected from VALVE's Steam privacy policy…..very informative !!!
(I've underlined some text for emphasis and my personal comments are in orange)
"Collection and Use of Information
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.
"Aggregate information" is information that describes the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of users as a group but does not describe or reveal the identity of any particular user.
This information may be used to improve Valve's products and online sites, for internal marketing studies, or simply to collect demographic information about Valve's users.
Valve may use customer contact information provided by users to send information about Valve, including news about product updates, contests, events, and other promotional materials, but only if the users agree to receive such communications. See automatic OPT-IN Policy below From time to time, Valve's online products may provide chat forums, bulletin boards, or instant messaging tools to users.
Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Valve in databases hosted in the United States.
Valve does store information on a user's hard drive that is used in conjunction with online play of Valve products. This includes a unique authorization key or CD-Key that is either entered by the user or downloaded automatically during product registration (This is where authentication should stop IMO). This authorization key is used to identify a user as valid and allow access to Valve's products. Information regarding Steam billing, your Steam account, your Internet connection and the Valve software installed on your computer are uploaded to the server in connection with your use of Steam and Valve software. Valve software automatically generates and submits to Valve bug reports upon a crash or other fault in the Valve software. This automatically generated bug report information may include information about other software or hardware on a user's system.
AUTOMATIC OPT-IN FOR VALVE MARKETING POLICY.
Choice/Opt-out
Valve gives users the option of discontinuing receipt of promotional email communications from Valve. Instructions for discontinuing receipt of promotional email communications from Valve will be provided in such subsequent email communications to users."
Other tidbits from Steam FAQ !
http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=faq
_________________________________________________
How can I have a LAN party or similar event using Steam?
Any Steam game, when played on a LAN or otherwise, requires that each individual client be able to authenticate via the Internet.
At a LAN party, this means that Internet access must be available to every machine on which Steam games are being played.
If desireable, the network administrator of such an event can limit internet access to only the TCP/IP ports which Steam needs. These are:
UDP 1200
UDP 27000 to 27015 inclusive
TCP 27030 to 27039 inclusive
At large events, it will be necessary for each attendee to let their games fully update before attending to avoid taxing the shared internet connection with too much content delivery.
modified on September 29, 2003, 4:18 pm
__________________________________________
Why is my Norton firewall reporting that Valve's trying to infect my computer with a "trojan horse"?
This is a false positive from the Norton firewall product.
Occasionally the Friends server sends your computer a message asking if you're still online. If you closed Steam (especially if you kill it from task manager) this message can be intercepted by the Norton firewall. And since Friends sometimes uses the same port number as a known trojan, the firewall incorrectly identifies the message as being malicious -- even though it's not trojan traffic at all.
__________________________________________________________
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Why is there non-Steam information in my Steam cache files? Is Steam Spyware?
Some users have seen non-Steam related information (like names of private files on their computer) show up inside their Steam cache files, raising privacy concerns. This is actually a result of the way Windows handles files. The cache file gets created on the client using the Windows CreateFile() command. This command will create the file but not initialize it. Due to the large size of the file, the Steam client does not initialize the empty data blocks in it as this can take an appreciable amount of time. On NTFS machines, files created with this method happen to have the property of appearing empty (initialized to zero) but for FAT32 machines, it shows up as whatever old data was sitting on drive in the sectors that just got allocated for the cache. This data is never uploaded or even read by the Steam client. Eventually, as Steam downloads more data, the old data is overwritten.
modified on September 16, 2003, 5:27 pm
http://news.com.com/Computer+gaming...+page+2/2100-1026_3-5443293-2.html?tag=st.num
The Steam network itself was originally as much an offshoot of the company's online multiplayer games as a way to reinvent the way games are distributed. The company was looking for an efficient way to create on-the-fly online matchmaking between players and update games, and ultimately decided to create a broad system that would allow for full distribution of games as well.
Valve settled on home-grown technology that draws elements from content distribution networks like Akamai Technologies and peer-to-peer services like eDonkey, without being identical to either. Steam consists of bits of software that sit on each player's computer, checking central servers for updates to games and keeping tabs on servers that can be used to create multiplayer games at any given moment.
When Valve has a new game to distribute, it uploads bits and pieces at a time over the course of days or weeks, so that no player's Internet connection is overwhelmed by downloading several gigabytes of data all at once. According to the network's Web site, it has about 10,000mbps (megabits per second) of bandwidth available for content distribution and matchmaking purposes.
The system was riddled with bugs when it launched a year ago, and much player feeling ran high against it. But the network has stabilized over the year, and many players now say it's been a positive development.
"There are still a lot of people who are 'anti-Steam,' but now it is completely mandatory to play all of Valve's back catalog," said Chris Deeming, lead editor of fan site HalfLife2.net. "People have learned to live with it, and most actually quite like it now."
What's there to like?
