Does Bis have any correspondence with Valve/Steam?

[johncage 30]

I'm thinking of buying OA through steam, and I heard that for Arma2, steam had to redownload the entire game just to install the latest patches(I have several steam games, and this is the first time I've heard of this happening). Could this be avoided in the future or am I better off getting the game elsewhere?

[Panzer Jager 10]

You can't even buy it on steam right now. It has a page but there's no price and no buy button. Looks like pre-order and pre-load are out of the question. They've got 7 hours to make it work as that's when it says it will be 'unlocked.'

[Placebo 29]

Sprocket avoids such issues mentioned and is available to download and play right now :)

Sprocket OA )The website's a bit slow right now but the actual download is done through different servers so will be much faster) :)

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Sprocket avoids such issues mentioned and is available to download and play right now :)

Sprocket OA )The website's a bit slow right now but the actual download is done through different servers so will be much faster) :)

I guess there's your answer. :rolleyes: Seems they'd rather take advantage of the situation to convince potential Steam customers to buy from Sprocket instead... :j:

But on a more serious note, Maruk hinted at looking into the way Steam patches are handled. Hopefully we'll hear something about it soon.

[ActionMan 10]

Does Bis have any correspondence with Valve/Steam?

Yeah, I'd like to see some evidence for BI's assertion that "that's just how Steam works"... seeing my other games don't re-download their gigabyte data-files whenever they're updated.

Other games do release proper patches through steam, but BI is blaming steam for this situation, which is obviously wrong...

[onchas 10]

I'm thinking of buying OA through steam, and I heard that for Arma2, steam had to redownload the entire game just to install the latest patches(I have several steam games, and this is the first time I've heard of this happening). Could this be avoided in the future or am I better off getting the game elsewhere?

I don't know where you heard that, but it's false.

The last couple of patches I've just downloaded from the BIS site and installed them just as I would have if I owned the DVD version. You just have to shut off the steam auto updater for Arma2 under the game properties (which makes sense since you're changing the files)

EDIT: It seems I have to modify my above comments a bit. It's correct we could modify and update our files, but if we did it seems that we have to completely redownload and reinstall ArmA2 to be able to run OA. I haven't purchased the Steam copy yet so I haven't tried it directly, but others are reporting the need to redownload the game. Generally though, for updates to Arma2 you don't need to redownload to just add a patch.

Edited June 29, 2010 by Onchas

[Nithrakis 10]

--snip--

You just have to shut off the steam auto updater for Arma2 under the game properties (which makes sense since you're changing the files)

This does not always work. I most definitely had auto patching turned off for Arma 2 in Steam yet I was forced to download 7.5 gigs last night for the 1.07 patch.

Edit: I already had the BIS 1.07 patch installed.

[svo 10]

Strange....I had checked Steam earlier just to look at OA (I already bought the complete series from Amazon this time), as I started to read this thread I ran my mouse over the steam taskbar icon and it was downloading ARMA2 (which I already own through Steam). Now I know why this website is slow. Anyway, I didn't tell it do that and now I can't play the game because of errors. I was going to say as some others had that installing the patches manually hasn't been an issue unless you try to authenticate the STEAM download. But.....I guess I'm eating crow!