What a joke….
If you’re not familiar with Steam, it’s the download-based service that is pretty much forced on you any time you purchase a Valve product like the game “Half-Life 2“, which I purchased some time ago.
I already don’t like the service due to this underhanded type of distribution model. I just want to play your game, not be tied to some service I may or may not be interested in.
Anyway, much to my own surprise, about a year ago I purchase a Steam game called, “The Ship“. It sounded pretty neat. It’s game that takes place on various cruise ships. The idea is that you get information about another shipmate that you need to kill while someone else has that same information about you. Thus you need to be wary of everyone you come in contact with while also trying to track down your own target.
In the end it sounded a LOT better than it actually played and I quickly stopped playing it entirely.
Anyway, now my son wants to play Half-Life 2 but he can’t. In order to play you need to re-install Steam and log in with your account information.
I’m a nut for keeping every registration I get via e-mail so I was able to find my account name at Steam. What I couldn’t remember was my password. Every attempt to get it has failed. All paths with Steam lead you to send e-mails that are all automated and don’t do what they claim to do.
When you load the Steam applet it asks you to log in. There’s a typical “I forgot my information” link. I fill that out and I’m told my account is there and an e-mail has been sent with my information. It never arrives. I’ve tried this now countless times and various different ways. I have no e-mail filters that would kill this though it’s possible Comcast is blocking it as spam.
We then tried e-mailing them and got nowhere. I sent an e-mail from my main e-mail address and I’m told that they can’t respond because the e-mail I sent it from isn’t registered in their service. Okay, so I send the same e-mail from the one that is registered and it sends back an e-mail saying it too isn’t part of their service.
I then tried to get on their forums and that doesn’t get you very far. First of all, just to register for the forums is a real job. They have the worst verification “captcha” graphic I’ve ever seen. This is a graphic that shows you jumbled letters and number that you need to enter to prove you’re a human and not a bot trying to spam the forum. The problem is I can’t read it! I’ve never seen one this ridiculously hard to read. It’s terrible.
I finally did get one to work after many attempts and then find I still can’t post as I’m now told my account is in “moderation queue” waiting to be added to the system.
Boy am I glad I spent my money with these people…. I won’t do it again and I don’t think you should either.
