That sucks. And cool that you got AW to work. Yeah, I'm just glad to know the game doesn't suck as that would only add salt to the wound.

I got it yesterday and installed it today, works like a charm.

Did you try to move your Steam server to another location in options? I use Romania or Austria because situations like these as they have lower traffic than my default option.

No, I didn't. Probably should have retrospectively speaking. I'll try that if it's still not acting right after the reinstall.

I bet dollar for a dime that after the next big sale you will not only anticipate this instantly, but your Steam account will have swollen with dozens of 5$ indie games you'll be enojoying more than the next AAA title.

That was what happend to me. Die hard Steam critic for 6 years, and then they sucked me in!

I just remembered an instance where Steam kicked me out of a singleplayer game that was in progress because of something with the servers. It was really frustrating. I remember I was just thinking "oh now it's getting interesting!" when the game suddenly shut down and there was a message "Steam servers something something. Sorry for the inconvenience.".

If you want to play Steam games, you either need to be lucky or have a thick skin... or break down and cry. That's an option on bad days too.

LOL We'll see. I have a few wishlisted. I thought The Binding of Isaac looked pretty cool.

Was that a Ubisoft game that required an always on connection. Whilst palying Splinter Cell Conviction if the UPlay servers dropped out then it kicked you out to the Steam Library screen with error message. Happened to me a fe times.

Never had any issues with any other games on there. Been times when connection has dropped and Steam goes into offline mode whilst I have been playing but it hasnt kicked me out of a game unless it was multiplayer / co op understandably

That never happend to me. In fact, I can kill my connection and continue playing. My client doesn't even bother me much when I switch IPs while it's running. Normally Steam only accesses the "community functions" in a SP game, if you go offline during an SP game the worst that can happen is missing achievemts.

Wow, reading this thread just reinforces to me why I'll never, ever mess with Steam. Long live GOG!!

Right. I was just really looking forward to playing this game. LOL I think anything else you know. You just go find something else to do. Having never messed with the client I didn't expect the very first game that I bought through Steam to handle like that. But yeah, after everyone's input. If I had been more patient I probably could've tried a few other things that might've worked. Still, it turned into a good thing. I learned some stuff about getting started with Steam and we have a giveaway.

Which I am amending. I'm adding another option to mix. So, now we have these current options:

One copy of any one of these three.winner's choice: Age of Wonders I, II & III

If AoW doesn't tickle your fancy I'll hand over Steam key to [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/10170 ]Wolfenstein (2009) [/url]

If neither of those options suit your tastes... Soulbringer

Winners choice.

One winner will be chosen when Alan Wake is up and running. Hopefully sometime tonight!

Try switching your Download server to an european one... here is after midnight so I guess the servers are a bit less easy to use ;)

Btw I will PM you a game to entertain yourself if changing servers doesn't work for you :)

It was Dawn of War 2: Retribution. I was playing the Chaos campaign solo, when all of a sudden the game just shut down. If there hadn't been that error message from Steam, I'd just thought that the game crashed. I think the message went something like "Steam servers are going under maintenance. You will not get any achievements during this time.". Games crashing is sort of forgivable every now and then, but games shutting down because of achievements is pretty annoying and made me let out a sigh possibly akin to one of an exhausted parent coming home to find a mess. I started playing it again after a few minutes, though, and it worked.

That whole Steam community feature or whatever is pretty annoying in itself, too. "You got an achievement that you weren't aiming for! We're blocking your commander's health bar with this announcement. We hope you didn't need to know your health during that intense fire fight.". :p

I'm just venting. When Steam works, it's okay.

That is not a Steam issue.

Dawn of War 2 has an extra layer. The achivements are not Steam. It is a Games For Windows Live (GFWL) title and the achievments are done through that side of things. So GFWL dropped out which kicked you back out to Steam. Then when you reconnected it logged you back in to the MS service and you could carry on.

They dropped this on Retribution. It's no longer GfWL.

Looks like Steam was the issue.

Same thing for me. I was quite skeptical of Steam at first, but someone gave me The Orange Box for christmas so I figured I might as well try this steam thing, whatever it was. I must say I've grown quite fond of it, and I've never had any of those problems people on these forums seem to report all the time (I think I experienced not being able to start a game once during the christmas sales, and that lasted for about a minute and then I could start it just fine).