next »

[Omegamatt Shadowstar]

Did you not get the 3 different system information files that I sent to Steam, Tzu?  Oh, that's weird, I made sure to CC every possible file to you just so you could be of as little help to me as Steam was.

I didn't find the page on fixing game crashes, because I didn't have a game crash.  The game never successfully loaded.  I did what any sensible person would do, recorded the error that Steam threw, and searched their support system for it.  That got me: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9626-UOAC-4950  If they thought that the verification thing was important enough, maybe they should've put a link to your page on there, with a note "Try these first."  It was only a lucky break that one out of thirty students with the exact same problem found your link by mistake and told the rest of us.

Please don't think I didn't supply Steam with enough information.  I did.  The reason I didn't do the same here is because I wasn't asking for someone here to spend time picking my problem apart piece by piece.  I was asking for anyone who's had similar problems to please post a solution.  Thanks for your time, support, and sarcasm.  Jerk.

[Tzu]

Jerk.

LOL  I do what I can.

I'm sorry, but my point was that most any reasonable gamer who has been through this process with any game/client before, generally begins with a search much like mine to begin with the troubleshooting FAQ page or forum searches, and goes through any possibly related error/crash/whatever FIRST for their game or client to rule out all that stuff BEFORE contacting tech support.  Since the game was "crashing" in Steam (for future reference, if a game returns an error instead of loading, that is a crash, because it tried to load and failed.  It doesn't have to visibly start loading any sort of GUI or splash screens or ANYTHING before crashing, it can simply crash right out of the gate with a critical stop like "Engine Error"; that is still a crash, so you may want to start with crash searches next time something like that happens), but the SDK was working fine, logic would dictate (as you reasoned) that the problem was on Steam's end. 

So I think logically most gamers would begin with a search through Steam's troubleshooting pages and forums (regardless of whether their label sounded as if it fit their exact problem) for crashes and have found either page I've linked to (as both took me all of 30 seconds of effort to locate with basic searches such as "steam troubleshooting" or forum search: "portal2 crash", which incidentally returns a page that links to a STICKY thread which contains all sorts of bugs, and links directly to this related Engine Error:  http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=22007652&postcount=606).  The fact that you provided information included in the basic troubleshooting guide I linked later, without linking to the fact that you acquired your information by some other means, made it confusing.  If you gave that same info to Steam without a link to where you found it, they would likely also have been confused and thought you'd been through the basic troubleshooting.  That is the crux of my "not enough information" rant.

Again, if I am acting like a jerk, I'm not intending it, and I'm not trying to drag you through the dirt in public; I'm trying to help you (and future troubleshooters) understand the process of troubleshooting better, by giving some tips on how to resolve these issues before contacting tech support and potentially getting a wrong answer.  With just a simple link to the info page that you got your troubleshooting tips, I could have easily seen it wasn't the right info, and found the 2 links I posted, you'd have had the problem fixed over a week ago and then laughed at how Steam failed to respond with the right info. 

I was rude, because when I asked you for more info, you simply continued to simply bash Steam.  You were thereby rude to me by not answering my questions, and that's why I became a jerk to you.  There's an old addage, "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar."  In this case, you resolve more tech issues with information than with anger.

You are right about one thing, thought.  Steam's troubleshooting team should have linked to the basic troubleshooting page and told you to make sure you tried all those steps first, why that wasn't included in their response is beyond me, and you should contact them and tell them that they should do so in future emails (but you may want to re-read the entire email first and make sure you didn't miss something else without your glasses).

[Omegamatt Shadowstar]

Look, Tzu.  I'm sorry I called you out.  I appreciate that, underneath it all, you were intending to help.  The main drive of this thread has been about asking the community at large if they'd seen the error before and knew what to do about it.  The reason I didn't want to go through all the sundry information here is that I'd already done in for Steam's support service, in the hopes that just one of the two different approaches would work. 

You need to understand that when I generalize about what a sensible gamer would do, I'm doing so in reference to 28 of my fellow students, and my professor.  We all had the same thought process, and that was to look up the specific error we all received, and see what specific solutions Steam had generated.  None of us thought that a specific error would be caused by a very generic problem.  I guess that fault lies in the training we've gone through up to this point.  One student was lucky enough to just browse through all the support pages and try one of the generic answers.

If I was lambasting Steam, it was mostly because of the combination of slow responses, with the fact that my entire class was lagging behind because of this problem.  I acted out of frustration.  However, I don't really see how my frustration with Steam should actively offend you--a bystander who I had asked for help in regard to similar experience--and I was not prepared to deal with your 'hostility' towards me.  So sorry for calling you a jerk, but (and this is a big problem with a lot of Tech Support outlets) simply being told to supply more information when you've already given your dxdiag, msinfo, and a copy of your video card drivers to another, it just adds to the overall frustration of the problem.  I was just trying a different approach here.  It didn't work.  So sorry that you wasted your time on a troll post.

[Tzu]

I think you again missed my point.  I'll simply spell it out.

I get annoyed when people complain about how horrible a tech support team is no matter how they respond to a problem.  If they had, like many other teams, responded with a basic troubleshooting list to go through first, then people whine and complain that their problem was quite obviously specific enough not to warrant that.  If they don't respond fast enough, they are lazy.  If they don't respond with the right information the first time, then they're incompetant.  All the while they are busy trying to help about 1000 other people like you every day.

I've known plenty of people who deal with this sort of work.  I have heard all their nightmares.  I troubleshoot for my friends on the side, and I get the same sort of headaches -- "why are you doing that, I already tried that!" being among the most common ones.  So yes, when someone's "very specific problem" makes them so uptight and upset about not being resolved by a tech support team who decided to maybe not go through the very easy to find solutions elsewhere, probably because they get hastled so much for going through them when they are posted right up on the FAQ as something you're always supposed to do FIRST to resolve a problem, and then that very basic fix is what ends up fixing the problem, I do tend to take it a bit personally because I see it all the time and deal with it myself on a regular basis.  I especially take it personally when I've offered my assistance on the matter as well, only to get ignored when I asked questions, and then called a jerk for standing up for the poor people who have to deal with people like you.

I'm also very sorry to hear that your prof and 28 other students also felt too tech savvy to bother to check the basic troubleshooting lists first.  It just goes to show you that sometimes academia lives in an ivory tower where they think they are above the fundamental steps of a problem.

But don't worry, you won't have to deal with me being a jerk anymore or complaining about your troll posts.  I'm not coming back here.  In the short time I've been back, I have come to realize that I don't much care for this community anymore.  Its attitude of elitism and superiority is more than I can bear any longer.  It's been fun.  Enjoy the rest of your lives.

[Teo McDohl]

[Omegamatt Shadowstar]

Well I guess I'm just a terrible person then.  Is that what you want me to admit?

I think it's more accurate to say that person to person interactions are terrible, and the only way to make them less terrible are to adapt and try again.  Maybe I missed your point.  Maybe you can't take an apology.  Maybe I'm too insensitive.  Maybe you're oversensitive.  Whatever it is, I'm sorry there's this rift between us, and you feel your only option is to leave.

[Teo McDohl]

No offense to either of you, but you both just had a hissy-fit over a video game running on an operating system.  You both just wrote essays on this stuff.  This is why we can't have nice things, people!  I mean, of all the things to get bent about.

That's right, Teo is scolding Omegamatt for getting grumpy and taunting Tzu into one of his trademark essays.  Both of you need to look back at the absurdity of this thread.   

[Omegamatt Shadowstar]

Believe me, Mr. Teo, I can see the hysteria on the walls.  It's not a spontaneous thing though, it's been a-building for some time.  The problem is, being Americans, we've never had an odd friend who claims to be from the town of Guildford, but who is in fact from the vicinity of Betelgeuse, tell us "Why not go mad?"