Register UT3 Retail Key With Steam

[IronMonkey]

You also forgot that Valve has now brought region-coding to PC gaming. However did we manage without that?

I have to laugh at how the Steam fan-boys have forgotten the shafting they got over the Euro exchange rate. But at least it was conveniently done and that's what it's all about, isn't it?

The vitriol is an indication of the depth of their embarrassment for having sold out.

Yeah ... except when you happen to buy the game before the 'official' releasedate.
And then there's the time you need to wait before the game is 'validated'.
Plug&Play ? Nothing beats a console.(period)


What's the big deal when the games sold through digital distribution should be much cheaper to buy by default ?
Especially when it is a given that 'real' games have a margin of 50% ...


until Valve decides that you were cheating or banned your account by accident.
Good luck trying to play any of your games ...


Do the words : "First Time Right" mean anything to you ?
Besides ... how many patches did UT have and was it really that difficult to be notified of them ?
Heck ... they've got in-game patch-announcements these days.


I guess I should be asking 'what are friends and why would I want them?'
Seriously ... isn't MSN or Skype good enough ?
I've never given a *beep* as far as game-statistics and other e-penises are concerned, so I'm not sure why it is interesting to see the stats of your friends.


great ... yet another VoIP/IM-system to add to the dozen already available.
Why can't people stick to just one instead ?


I suppose no one has ever used an electronic agenda ?


as do the console-versions ... same stuff
there's in-game unlocks as well, although few games advertise these as part of the 'public' achievements.

btw : if off-line were a real option for Steam-contaminated games then why do all such games list 'internet-connection' as a minimum requirement ?

Steam effectively loses any 'plug&play'-advantage as soon as you can not connect on-line.

// ---
What use is Steam if it succeeds in fragmenting the already tiny pc-community even further ?
Unless it does allow you to see 'non-Steam' friends playing etc ... which I doubt.

 

[Alhanalem]

1.my download limit is capped at 7 gb a month, i have to pay 1$ per MB if i go over that, so that means i would be paying $1000 to download and reinstall ut3 from steam all because it is an 8 gb game

1) You don't need to reinstall, there is a way around it
2) You need a better ISP. Most of the ISP's I know (in my region, northeast US anyway) do not limit your bandwidth or charge obscene overages, unless microsoft moved their web servers to your internet connection ( that is, being completely unreasonable) 7GB is an absurdly low limit in today's day and age.

3) i'm not aware of any region coding on steam. As far as I know, the catalog is the same both in north america and europe. If I fly over to europe, I can still access my steam account and install/play all my games. Charging different prices to different users, while messed up, is not the same thing as "region coding."

 

[Growler]

I'm confused, if UT3 is already installed/all there after I move the UT3 folder to Steam, then how come it's downloading the whole thing, and WHERE is it downloading it TO?


I must confess to you tho, after I moved the UT3 folder to steamapps\common, I accidentally clicked on "Delete Local Content" thinking it meant something different.
So now most of my Binaries folder is gone before I cancelled the deletion


It's now "downloading", but will this mean I'm installing UT3 TWICE then?

Secondly, I bought UT3 at the shop about a year ago, does this mean that if I uninstall it and reinstall it again into the Steam folder, it wouldn't work like it should?

 

[Unregistered]

I tried it. uhhhmm, I think I may have done something wrong but after i did it and the file check finished ,it kept giving me a message that said "game currently unavailable".

I was like, wut. I think it may be mod related but I figure I just fudged up on a step or something.

So, damn, I guess I'm redownloading UT3. It's great that my ISP caps my bandwidth at 200kbps and I get to share all of that with three roommates.

Did you uncheck read only in the properties folder... I just did the transfer,took about 40 minutes and then steam added about 150 MB's of I don't know what ...Everything works perfectly ,amazingly. I suppose you could copy the retail DVD contents directly and then let steam update...

 

[Alhanalem]

It's now "downloading", but will this mean I'm installing UT3 TWICE then?

If you watch, the progress % is advancing far faster than it should take you to download 8GB. It's not downloding the whole thing over again. It's actually running through all of the files, replacing a few, but not actually downloading most of them.

 

[TheSomian]

does anybody know, what happens if i enter the CD key of my UT3 US version in my german steam account? will the game be censored? i really don't want my account to be messed up with that.

 

[hal]

does anybody know, what happens if i enter the CD key of my UT3 US version in my german steam account? will the game be censored? i really don't want my account to be messed up with that.

There's a post in this thread indicating that the game loses its censored status.

 

[MonsOlympus]

I think some people are missing the fact that you dont need to use your key with steam if you dont want to. For the people who are happy with the steam system they can.

Pretty simple if you ask me! Atleast in the PC world we have this thing I like to call choice.

 

[TheSomian]

umm, I didn't mean that i have the cut version and i would possibly get the uncut, i meant that i have the uncut and would get the cut.
(sry, didnt read the whle "OMG YAAAY "thread )

however, it's nice, that it's not cut, so ill just activate it =)

EDIT:
(to join the YAAAY)

nice, epic! Seems like all the features missing from the console version (achievements, proper controller support, splitscreen?!) are going to be re-added and the game itself will be finally out of alpha-status =)
and the game will finally be enjoyable =) cant wait for the patch.

 

[Defeat]

2) You need a better ISP. Most of the ISP's I know (in my region, northeast US anyway) do not limit your bandwidth or charge obscene overages, unless microsoft moved their web servers to your internet connection ( that is, being completely unreasonable) 7GB is an absurdly low limit in today's day and age.

Welcome to reality ;[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[

 

[NitrousUser]

Did you uncheck read only in the properties folder... I just did the transfer,took about 40 minutes and then steam added about 150 MB's of I don't know what ...Everything works perfectly ,amazingly. I suppose you could copy the retail DVD contents directly and then let steam update...

hmm i may not have, but its already too late for that i guess. I've downloaded 5gigs so far and everytime i restart steam the counter and percentages change and i have no idea how much progress ive made on the redownload. I may give the dvd file copying a go though, but I have suspicions that due to compression issues they may not be compatible.

But this redownload thing is taking forever, I wanna frag people noooowwww.

 

[Skold]

If you have the game installed in another location, there is a REALLY simple way to get it hooked into Steam, and that is using the MKLINK command line tools. This is available in Vista->Windows 7. Here's an example:

You have Steam on C:\Program Files\Steam
You have UT3 on F:\Unreal Tournament 3

Here is the command to run from cmd:

mklink /J "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\unreal tournament 3" "F:\Unreal Tournament 3"

If you're in XP it is only slightly more tricky:

1) Download junction.exe from sysinternals:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx

2) Extract junction.exe to a folder in your Path (or your user folder or whatever, wherever you can easily find it).

3) from the command line run:
junction "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\unreal tournament 3" "F:\Unreal Tournament 3"

Once you've done this it will be as if your UT3 directory is in the steamapps folder regardless of where it is actually installed. You can then verify game cache in steam and it will fix the executable and such.

After some messing around (mostly with the "downloading" UT again) this finally did the trick! Thanks for the tip, buddy.

 

[Renegade Retard]

Okay, I must be dumb, so someone enlighten me.

Besides being able to load the game on another game and not having to keep track of your disks, what's the big "YESSSS" for? What's the big advantage that I need to unistall, download, and reinstall?

I've used steam to purchase and install other games, but I don't understand what the big advantage if you already own the disk version of the game (notice I said "big" advantage. I can see all the small perks, but what really makes it worth going through all the hassle?)

Thanks for all those who replied to fill me in. My question was in no way to be a naysayer (as someone suggested), but only trying to understand the benefits. Folks have shared the pros of Steam, and finding out that I don't have to delete and re-install greatly sweetens the deal.

No matter what, I appreciate Epic looking out for us PC gamers after feeling a bit neglected lately. :tup:

Just did the swap. After you enter the key just keep clicking through the screen and it'll start downloading. Once it starts, pause downloading and exit Steam. After that just copy Binaries, Engine, and UTGame from \Program Files\Unreal Tournament 3\ to \Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\unreal tournament 3\.
Start Steam again and resume update on UT3. Should only take a couple minutes to download.
After that uninstall the regular UT3 installation.

I love you

 

[cosmix]

I Love It!
The Steam network is amazing. Best choice Epic! Can't wait for the Titan-Pack release.

 

[MuLuNGuS]

I Love It!
The Steam network is amazing. Best choice Epic! Can't wait for the Titan-Pack release.

slowly with the young horses, first the patch, than the titan-pack.

or in german:
langsam mit den jungen pferden, erst den patch, dann das titan-pack:

 

[JaFO]

/me smiles ... hey I'm glad to have been of service

Anyway back to answering some of the issues raised :

If you dont cheat i think the risk for getting banned is minimal and if it still happens im sure you just need to contact Valve to sort it out.

It's still a rather large risk and with the witchhunt for cheaters out there on-line I wonder how easy it is to falsely accuse someone and have Valve revoke his license.
The biggest issue : it's guilty until proven innocent and as such it is contrary to how law ought to work. You may like that, but I sure as heck don't.

First Time Right"? cmon, have you ever played a game that hasnt needed patches?

How many really *needed* those patches and how many are you still playing ?
I've only ever had two games that needed patches just to get them up and running (every other problem was solved either by updating a driver or disabling the 'protection' used by the software). Everything else has been just peachy.
So I really don't see an auto-patcher with the potential danger of faulty patches causing problems instead of preventing them (like AVG-incident last year)

Well, if everyone uses Steam we will "stick" to the same VoIP

*if* everyone did, but now we've got half the community on steam and the other half without.

//

Every time I've bought a game via Steam prior to release, ...

point is that you can't play it even after you've bought it 'prior to release'.
I otoh can play the game without having to wait for Valve to flick a switch that says I can ...
Maybe I'm not used to having to pay for stuff and then being forced to wait until it's delivered and I'm allowed to use it, but I think it's rather odd to hand over money without even being sure that the other party will deliver.

Edit: No, strike that. I just looked and I have 56 games through Steam. So if I want to keep them all up to date, that's 56 different websites I've gotta check, and 56 different downloads to patch each one in due time. F that - let Steam handle it for me.

are you really playing all 56 at the same time ?
Do all of them have serious game-destroying issues that need to be patched every so often ?
I really wonder how people like you would feel if your car/bike/tv/house was built like the average game is these days.
Imagine having to check your car at a garage every week just so you can keep driving it.
Ridiculous, isn't it ?
Yet this is considered acceptable for software ...

And if you live in a world so devoid of Net access, how did you manage to post here? *scratches head*

perhaps because I only have basic internet at work and don't want to move my pc over there just to 'activate' a mere game ?
Besides ... MS allows activation by phone, so it is possible to have such an invasive activation-system without making internet a requirement.
Besides ... are you sure you can activate any of your games in the future ?
Valve already disabled their previous activation-servers so what makes you so sure they won't disable the Steam-service whenever they think it is necessary to do so ?
I really hope you've got backups for every game you've bought through steam, because it's not exactly smart to solely rely on Valve/Steam for your backups.

So... when you buy the game before it's available, you can't play it until it's available. Yeah, that pretty much makes sense.

but if it wasn't available, then why could I buy it and do I have a physical copy of the game in my hands ?
If that game wasn't 'available' then that copy should not exist ...

one of the necessary evils of the PC gaming world

I don't consider that evil necessary as it has been proven possible to do 'first time right' ...

The platform has matured very well with time.

That depends on what you consider threatening ... I still consider it very dangerous that any single company can have that much power & control over its consumers/customers.
Then again ... I guess people only hate scenarios like this if it is an 'evil' corporation like MS or EA. If it's someone 'friendly' like Valve or Epic there doesn't appear to be any hesitation in accepting a final solution like this one.


OH ... the region-thing for Steam is exactly the kind of issues that were easy to predict.
Imagine if we only had to pay the real cost instead of being forced to pay extra just because the region uses Euros instead of crappy dollars. There's no justification for that kind of thing except pure greed.
It's barely possible to explain why a 50$ game costs 50 Euro in europe as well if you refer to the physical product (shipping costs, import-tax ... could explain that bit).
With a digital distribution system like Steam which doesn't have shipping costs and neither suffers from 'import tax' as the server you're downloading from might be local it positively stinks of pure greed.

But hey ... feel free to ignore the warnings.
I just hate to say I told you so when the proverbial **** really does hit the fan ...

 

[Alhanalem]

They've (slowly) been addressing the price difference issue. in th case of one game (Savage 2) the developers asked them to change the price- mainly because anyone could buy the game at the savage 2 site and pay a fair euro price instead of the higher price on steam- so Steam changed the price. I don't know if that's happened for anything else though. I can understand complaining about this- but im sure it will be addressed.

But hey ... feel free to ignore the warnings.

few if any of your warnings are valid. You just have a vendetta against online distro (or at least steam specifically) and are spouting propoganda. No way around it.

I've only ever had two games that needed patches just to get them up and running

So, your definition of a "necessary" patch is only one that is absolutely required in order for the game to function? By that logic, none of UT3's patches were necessary (and they sure as hell were)

 

[elmuerte]

FYI, Valve doesn't undo VAC bans, they will only give you back your account when it was locked due to the account being hijacked (and when you can prove it was hijacked).

I just don't like Steam because of:
- invasion of my privacy
- games locked to a (single) account (i.e. only 1 activation for the game)
- online presence (you can only go offline (for a couple of days) when you are online)
- pure US store, so limited and crippled consumer rights for me

 

[Sir_Brizz]

It's still a rather large risk and with the witchhunt for cheaters out there on-line I wonder how easy it is to falsely accuse someone and have Valve revoke his license.
The biggest issue : it's guilty until proven innocent and as such it is contrary to how law ought to work. You may like that, but I sure as heck don't.

Please give me an example of one person that has had this happen to them, and then another person who has had this done to the illegitimately. I have NEVER heard of anyone's Steam account being banned from the content server, not once. The only bans I've heard of are from the online portion of multiplayer games through VAC.

How many really *needed* those patches and how many are you still playing ?
I've only ever had two games that needed patches just to get them up and running (every other problem was solved either by updating a driver or disabling the 'protection' used by the software). Everything else has been just peachy.
So I really don't see an auto-patcher with the potential danger of faulty patches causing problems instead of preventing them (like AVG-incident last year)

That's you. Most people want patches. Personally, I put patches on all of my games whether they perceptibly need them or not.

*if* everyone did, but now we've got half the community on steam and the other half without.

And yet, that seems to be the choice of that half. Sorry, but I really don't see where you can possibly go with this argument. Does EVERYONE have to use something in order for it to be worth using?

point is that you can't play it even after you've bought it 'prior to release'.
I otoh can play the game without having to wait for Valve to flick a switch that says I can ...
Maybe I'm not used to having to pay for stuff and then being forced to wait until it's delivered and I'm allowed to use it, but I think it's rather odd to hand over money without even being sure that the other party will deliver.

How is this different from the following scenarios?

1) You go to Gamestop and put money down on a pre-order for a game.
2) You buy a multiplayer game three days before release and the master server is turned off so you can't play it online.

Both of the scenarios above are pretty much exactly the same deal as with Steam. You buy the game prior to release, you get the game the day it comes out, you play the game when you are supposed to. Nothing has changed.

are you really playing all 56 at the same time ?
Do all of them have serious game-destroying issues that need to be patched every so often ?

What difference does it make? If I WANT to play that game at any time, I don't have to worry about not being patched to the latest version. Thinking of this in terms of games like CoD4, this can save you a lot of time because you simply cannot play the game online without being fully patched.

I really wonder how people like you would feel if your car/bike/tv/house was built like the average game is these days.
Imagine having to check your car at a garage every week just so you can keep driving it.

Stupid analogy is bad. Can you imagine if you had to have your furnace checked every year... oh wait... Can you imagine if you had to have your car checked every year... oh wait...

You really can't compare these two things anyway, on any level. You can't just say "I want a car" and magically a copy of that car appears. It has a solid value based on manufacturing. If the price of a game were based on manufacturing we'd be paying $1.00 for the most expensive games.

On top of this, there are just not many commonalities between either the products or the businesses that contribute to these markets.

perhaps because I only have basic internet at work and don't want to move my pc over there just to 'activate' a mere game ?

I think you're pretty much in the minority here if you don't have internet at home.

Valve already disabled their previous activation-servers so what makes you so sure they won't disable the Steam-service whenever they think it is necessary to do so ?

What previous "activation servers"? Prior to Steam they used key based validation through the WON network for online play only. You didn't activate any keys.

I really hope you've got backups for every game you've bought through steam, because it's not exactly smart to solely rely on Valve/Steam for your backups.

Unfortunately for your argument, there aren't many forms of backup out there that it is good to solely rely on. If you're relying on your one hard drive to bak up your important data, I'll be the first to say "I told you so..." when it crashes and you lose it all

but if it wasn't available, then why could I buy it and do I have a physical copy of the game in my hands ?
If that game wasn't 'available' then that copy should not exist ...

That's not true for any copy-based media in existance. Or do you think when games are leaked weeks before they are released that they are suddenly now "available"?

OH ... the region-thing for Steam is exactly the kind of issues that were easy to predict.
Imagine if we only had to pay the real cost instead of being forced to pay extra just because the region uses Euros instead of crappy dollars. There's no justification for that kind of thing except pure greed.
It's barely possible to explain why a 50$ game costs 50 Euro in europe as well if you refer to the physical product (shipping costs, import-tax ... could explain that bit).
With a digital distribution system like Steam which doesn't have shipping costs and neither suffers from 'import tax' as the server you're downloading from might be local it positively stinks of pure greed.

As someone already said, though, it's not like it's region locked. You can get a buddy in the US to buy your game for you and then have them gift it to you on Steam. Hooray.

Look, I know in your universe it is really cool to hate Steam even though you have clearly never used it (particularly at any time since HL2 came out), but it is a good platform and lots of people use and appreciate the way it works. If it's something that doesn't interest you, great. Don't use it.

I also find it highly ironic that you say you don't want to lug your machine around to places that have Internet to get games activated (because you purportedly don't have internet access at home or something) and then proceed to whip Steam about it's online features. SORRY, BUT STEAM IS AN ONLINE PLATFORM. If that doesn't work for you, there is a magic cure-all: DON'T USE IT.

 

[Kangus]

Late to the party as I ever am, but....

YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!