A new and hopefully informative perspective on Steam

Hello all,

Long term viewer, first time poster.

I have read many feedback articles this year about Steam, however feel that I can add some value to the discussion which I hope will be of interest and helpful ultimately to SI and SEGA, who together make a fantastic game.

I am a mature customer. My first SI game was CM00/01, and I have brought every edition since then up to and including FM12. Some of my very good memories of my early teenage years revolved around playing FM (particularly 2005 and 2006 during which time I had a lot of spare time on my hands!). Now I am married, have two young children aged 2 and 6 months, and a full time office based job. I have little spare time these days, and certainly do not get to enjoy FM as much as I used to.

However, I try to enjoy some 'me time' with FM from time to time when I can. Tonight, the kids are asleep by 7pm, and my wife is watching a movie, leaving me with the first real chance I feel I've had to get stuck into FM12 since its release.

I am computer literate, but not 'savvy'. I can use powerpoint, excel, save documents and explore the internet. I do not know anything about .exe files, configs or anything else. Still, I had no qualms about using Steam for FM12, followed the instructions to load the programme etc, and even purchased my game digitally from them. However, I have suffered no end of problems.

My Steam account told me that it couldn't connect. My game said it was currently unavailable. I left it a few days, have come back and tried again tonight, restarted the computer, nothing worked. No matter, I have read some similar problems faced by users on here, so I jumped on and started researching. I have spent the last hour since then trying to get things going, and still cannot get in. Currently, Steam is updating 35% complete after crashing out from the last attempt 15 minutes ago. It seems to be updating very slowly, and I'm not sure what it is updating.

I feel very disheartened as I write this. I paid good money for a game, and as a young family man the time I have for my hobbies is precious. I do not want to spend my precious time on a Friday evening researching how to delete registries and explore the inner workings of my PC to try and get to a stage where the game will open. I understand that people will tell me that it is easy to do these things, and there are FAQs and fixes in place, but for me I don't have the time or desire for this.

And so, as a lifelong fan and purchaser of the game, I feel as though this will be my last FM. I feel as though FM is almost telling me it is time to stop. I really didn't ever think that this time would come, as with FM 10 and FM11, despite having children and family commitments, I still managed to enjoy some FM time every few weeks which was nice. I thought I would buy FM forever. I really want SI to know that they have lost me, a lifelong fan and loyal customer through the steam only decision. And please, I am not a steam basher, I think the idea for the software is great. As said, I bought through them which saved me and my precious time a trip to the shops. But the product simply is not working for me, and I'm not computer techy enough to fix this. I almost feel as though this is the sort of hassle I would have to go through to buy a pirate copy, which is quite ridiculous.

The point is that there must be many like me, who have been forced away from the franchise through these problems. I really am at my wits end. I want to play FM, I cant. SI and SEGA may have stopped a pirate from getting the game early, but they have lost me in the process. I would like to have on record for the future that the reason why I will not be buying FM13 is because of the Steam only activation.

I wanted this post to be different from the usual 'steam sucks' posts. Perhaps there are others who could share similar stories? I would love to hear from people who feel the same way I do, or is it just me that is out of touch? Hopefully SI and SEGA will not make this mistake in the future, but for me, the damage has been done.

Thank you for the memories. I will continue to read the forums regularly as I enjoy that. Thank you for taking the time to read my post, and sorry that it has been so long.

For you to write so much about a subject that means so much to you, I feel that this won't actually be your last FM. Especially if you continue to read the forums regularly like you mentioned at the end.

Fortunately for me, I have had no such problems with Steam so I can't really relate to your post, but I'm still sorry to hear of your (and many others') troubles with it. But actually the problems may be due to Steam and not the fault of SI/Sega etc

It sounds like you have interrupted your steam client trying to update, this does take a bit of time unfortunately, until that is complete steam will not work properly im afraid.

Some say: but it's easy to solve the eventual issues... close, reinstall, check, download again, clean cache, do this, do that... be patient... Fine but how come "the future" requires a whole lot more hassle than "the past"?! - You have summed up exactly my thoughts in a better way than I could have done, thank you RBKalle. Unfortunatly for me, these are not easy things to fix, and to be quite frank these things scare me much like how ATMs used to scare my grandmother! This is the only thing that will stop me from buying future FMs. As much as I love the game, I'm not going to spend money and time trying to get in and start.

Milner point - has this happened to you? I am not sure what the updating is, it is possible that something has been interrupted as my wife uses the computer too, however I don't know why an update would be there in the first place?

It sounds like the Steam client itself is trying to update, this can take a bit longer than game updates unfortunately, i have come across the problem myself, letting steam finish its update sorted the problem out for me. If it was interrupted it may have messed the update up, which could be causing your problem.

It says 'Updating Steam platform..." currently 48%. to be truthful, even the fact that it is updating worries me. As I've said, I'm not hugely computer savvy. I know not to click on links in emails etc and shouldn't download things unless you know they're safe etc. Well I have no idea about this at all, why it has happened to me, what it is for or anything??? It is now 51%. I'll keep going and see what happens, but it could be a few hours yet judging by how long it's been so far.

It could also be downloading the lastest patch as Steam does this automatically for you.

It says 'Updating Steam platform..." currently 48%. to be truthful, even the fact that it is updating worries me. As I've said, I'm not hugely computer savvy. I know not to click on links in emails etc and shouldn't download things unless you know they're safe etc. Well I have no idea about this at all, why it has happened to me, what it is for or anything??? It is now 51%. I'll keep going and see what happens, but it could be a few hours yet judging by how long it's been so far.

There you go that sounds like the same issue i had, leave it to finish updating and you should be ok. The Steam client needs updates from time to time to fix problems, or improve the service, just like windows will do periodically. The updates are nothing to worry about, and you will get a list with what they updated when the update is complete so you can check exactly what has been changed and updated, although if your not computer savvy it will be foreign to you.

Hi YAY. I don't think it is the patch, as I purchased and downloaded through steam and updated with the last three patches - it is a different update dialogue this time. I think what Milnerpoint said sounds most likely. I have done a lot of google searching though and it seems there is no easy solution if It doesn't update well on its own. 57% complete now.

Let's stick to trying to help the OP sort his problems, or, regrettably the thread will be closed, the other stuff has all been done to death.

Thank you Kriss. Hopefully some of you can help me further. The update completed, and then the dialogue box saying 'preparing to launch FM12' popped up, but then another box popped up saying:

Steam - error

This game is temporarily unavailable. Please try again another time.

???

Thank you Kriss. Hopefully some of you can help me further. The update completed, and then the dialogue box saying 'preparing to launch FM12' popped up, but then another box popped up saying:

Steam - error

This game is temporarily unavailable. Please try again another time.

???

Sounds like you need to do the varify cache thing now. IM sure Kriss or Milnerpoint can find you a link. Or you can try the FAQ's.

Thank you Kriss. Hopefully some of you can help me further. The update completed, and then the dialogue box saying 'preparing to launch FM12' popped up, but then another box popped up saying:

Steam - error

This game is temporarily unavailable. Please try again another time.

???

Try closing the steam client and restarting it, id suggest closing it down using task manager and re-starting it, if that does not help you could try changing your region in steam, if you want i will find you the link in the FAQ.

Hi Milnerpoint, I tried closing steam and restarting - that didn't work. I shutdown the computer and that didn't work either. I am now following the instructions to verify the cache as suggested by YAY. Why might changing the region help? That sounds like an odd thing to affect a game?

Sometimes changing the region sometimes kicks it into action, i dont fully understand the technical side of Steam so i couldnt answer why. One other thing to note is this is a known issue with FM on the steam forums, one of the dev's has been looking into the reasoning behind this, which they will fix hopefully. Let us know how you get on with the cache and changing region.

After the cache verification it said that "2 files did not get validated correctly, reaquiring" or something similar. Now it is downloading in the library section of steam.

Obviously something has happened somewhere along the lines, and probably at my fault, but I just don't know what, why or how I would have done it. This is why I will not buy FM13, it has all just gotten too complicated for an average user like me who just wants to plug in and play.

SI and Sega have really cut off their nose to spite their face here. I feel very sad

Thank you for your help Milnerpoint, I will post how I go. Though the kids will be up in about 7.5 hours, so nearly bed time for me

Yeah it will replace any lost or damaged files, but that should take much less time than the steam client download.

Hopefully you get it up and running mate, the thing to also remember is after this year, you will be experienced in steam and hopefully will be able to avoid these issues in the future. Let me know if you have any success, if not ill keep digging about for you.

I have had success, after almost 3 hours It has finished, opened up and working once again. The only problem now is that I need to go to bed. I still have no idea what happened though, and just hope that there is not a repeat performance.

I admire your optimism Milnerpoint, but I do not think that experienced steam user will ever be used in a sentence talking about me!

Glad its working for you Redfearn. Hopefully you wont have to wait too long for a bit of spare time to play. Just remeber the steps you have taken to fix it though, because no doubt you will need to do it aaaaaaaaaallll over again sooner or later unfortunately

Good news eventually:) one fault with Steam is that it rarely tells you it's doing something so you assume nothing's happening and go into omg mode, possibly causing a problem without knowing it.

I always wait till something happens (which invariably it does) before assuming something's wrong, one day I've no doubt I'll be found in my chair waiting:D

In the meantime I'll close this before the usual happens but open another thread if you have further problems.