Apparently, any sort of criticism is frowned upon on the Steam forums, to the point of abuse by users and banning.

Steam has turned out into something of a cult. Steam users will defend Steam to death. The fact remains that people bought the digital distribution of W2 from different sources, and it is only Steam that has the issue... but Steam is not to blame. Go figure.

VERY WELL SAID, SystemShoch7!

Cheers.
Wolfy

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Easy way around:

1.) Use this to identify ripoffs: http://www.steamprices.com

2.) Get yourself a US-contact on Steam, pay (via PayPal) him to gift you games

This is quite common these days. Even with the PayPal fee and some little extra (your US contact wants to benefit from it after all) you can usually make a bargain and get the uncensored version on top of it. ^^


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The location of every user is shown below the avatar. Yes he's from Germany. You're from Australia. It's magic! :D

Yeah I am German lived abroad for a bit and therefore my English isn't that bad not perfect but I don't care.
Your German is really good as well.

I'm a very bad Canadian. I don't follow hockey at all except a bit during the Olympics.

As for the OP I'm a little surprised that Canadian high speed is faster than anywhere. We are practically a global laughingstock when it comes to high speed internet. Too much land, not enough people i guess.

As for video game pricing I have seen some truly wacky things. Europe and Australia must have some vicious taxation or import pricing schemes happening on the distribution side because their prices are far and away far higher than elsewhere. Digital distributors are forced in many cases to price up I think possibly due to some asshole in a suit protecting local interests. As long as those local interests are the game distributors and not the consumer. Impulse, Steam and GOG all have their sparring matches with these pricks and so far have lost.

I don't think Steam cares enough to fight though. GOG on the other hand flipped the bird at all these twerps by offering store credit for the exchange rate difference.

A lawsuit is no doubt pending.

The way usual patching works, for all the versions NOT on Steam, is you take the old file, that you want patched, and the new file, that you want to change the old file into, and you note the differences between these two. You then make a little executable that takes the original file, applies those differences, and turns out the new file. You then distribute that little executable, people run it, and it changes their old file to the new file. This can be thought of as distributing the differences, and then having the client apply those differences.

Steam doesn't do this sort of patching... it does not distribute 'difference files' and let the client apply those differences. It does not allow that sort of thing (as others have said, it isn't just TW2 that has this issue, other games have it as well). Instead, if file A(version1) needs to be changed to file A(version2) Steam simply distributes file A(version2) and overwrites A(version1) with it. For a lot of games, this isn't an issue, because the game is split into lots and lots of individual files... replacing them involves small downloads to replace the small files. But... when you have a game (like TW2) that has 1 large archive (pack0.dzip) this becomes a problem, because Steam will distribute the entire new file (which is 9GB).

My opinion is... this is only a problem for Steam users, due to the way Steam downloads and applies patches, and is a problem to be sorted by Steam. If CDPr do something different to patch Steam versions (like distributing a new small .dzip that contains the changes) then they're going to end up with massively disparate versions of the game out there (with different file structures), which could lead to more problems in the future. Or, they could change the structure of the game for everyone... breaking up the 9GB .dzip, so that in future, smaller files will need to be downloaded and overwritten. But then, surely they are using the current game file structure for a reason.

......

http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/news/the-witcher-2-gog-update-bypasses-censored-australia-version/a-20110510145849897023/g-20100323131251436086/c-1#10374492282526139496599631252490197

Why don't you petition your government to stop price gouging on electronic entertainment venues if you have to buy from e-bay? Suggesting a petition is even more worthless than those petitions themselves.

DD's are the only solution here, no real brick&mortar retail stores who do not price gouge. So steam is the lesser evil here.

GoG and CDR have a better connection than Steam and CDR, hence the whines here as well as on steam forums. Plus, steam forums almost never gets developers responding them except a few fringe cases (Tripwire and Arcen games come to mind), which is understandable because they're full of crap.

Nice to see there are at least some people who can see what the situation is even without being affected by it themselves.

someone on the steam forums actually worked out a solution to patch the game so it works like the retail version. but his thread was locked. this leads me to believe valve has something to do with it. i think cdpr sent them patch files to tell steam to patch the game, but steam patches the game, then uploads the finished patched game, hence the huge download. valve doesn't know how patches work, apparently.

Well, obviously a huge part of the corporate identity of Steam is the walled garden approach - that you, the customer go there for all your gaming needs, including patches.
Obvously this has advantages sometimes (just one site to check), but well, it does have some disadvantages this time as well...

Dont understand.

Why cant valve just use the 20mb patch and applie it to the witcher 2 steam game via their own service?.

Because they don't want to. And they don't need to. They're Valve, your almighty god. :D

1. I did not have to download 9.4GB to patch my game and I am a customer, I was not pissed off.
2. GoG version patches fine with small file size and Steam version does not and has big file size whose fault is it?
3. As a customer I do request that you do not make post on my behalf, I have no issues with a software I have purchased in here and I do believe it to be a money well spent.
4. This is NOT a Steam forum… regardless of what you might have been told GoG and CDPR are NOT responsible for Global Warming.

When I decided to check out the digital gaming market, Steam came highly reccomended by a mate of mine.

So off I went and created an account, and bought two games.

I could have got boxed copies cheaper on eBay, (sllightly), and my local EB store has a piss poor range of PC games, so "instant gratification" it was.

Then I discovered the overlay = extra overhead, 'game sized patches' etc, and decided to 'shop around'.

I discovered GoG, and a couple of others that enabled me to download complete 'install packages enabling reinstalling at my leisure if need be, (ok Steam has a 'back up feature), and sensible patch sizes.

So I no longer use Steam (unistalled the client), repurchased said games and am much happier.

The games even run noiticably better, and my system is no slug.

So Steam take it or leave it, personally I think their service is a steaming pile of .....

Having said that, with regard to the OP, have a problem with Steam?

Take it up with them then, if you don't mind.