steam doesent track non steam games?

[Profaned Profanity]

i find it really stupid that steam doesent track how long ive spent playing non steam games, is there a reason that they dont?

[Tito Shivan]

What about they did not earn any money from those games and all the tracking and logging costs them money?

[Profaned Profanity]

why would it cost them money? also it detects that im playing the game and says that im playing it, it wouldent be very hard to also detect how long i was playing it for

[jjb-54]

I have to ask - What the heck is a "NON-STEAM GAME"?

[Profaned Profanity]

non steam game = game i added that wasent on steam, EX: world of tanks, guild wars 2, older games that were purchased on CD not steam like simcity 4

[Tito Shivan]

There's a difference between being a CONSUMER and being a USER.
When steam tracks a steam game, bought on steam, they are offering a feature to a CUSTOMER.
When the let you add a non steam game, bought elsewhere they are pleasing a USER.

If a game bought on steam, and a non steam game worked equally on Steam... What would be the point of buying them ON steam?

It's a differencing factor avaible to steam CUSTOMERS.

[jjb-54]

Okay - I am just a little confused - since I bought Skyrim DVD - Fallout 3 and NV - from Best Buy and some other games from Game Stop ... I did not buy any of those from Steam and yet they are tracked ... thus my question....

[DarkCrystalMethod]

If you read the back of the box (or maybe somewhere tiny on the front) you may see the words "Activation required on Steam". You bought the disk version of the steam games.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by jjb-54:

Okay - I am just a little confused - since I bought Skyrim DVD - Fallout 3 and NV - from Best Buy and some other games from Game Stop ... I did not buy any of those from Steam and yet they are tracked ... thus my question....

Games that can't be bought through or added to Steam.

For example: Mechwarrior 4, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1 and 2.

None of them are bought through Steam or listed in Steam's games list.

You can create a link in the Steam Library to the game on your computer, then launch the game through Steam with the Steam Overlay, but is a non-Steam game.

[jjb-54]

AH - okay ... thanks .. it was just a curious question is all .... Thanks! :)

[Profaned Profanity]

Originally posted by jjb-54:

Okay - I am just a little confused - since I bought Skyrim DVD - Fallout 3 and NV - from Best Buy and some other games from Game Stop ... I did not buy any of those from Steam and yet they are tracked ... thus my question....

also older games before everything required steam put on steam off the CD often dont track the time spent in them. i still find it stupid that they would do that.

[KillerKoala78]

Originally posted by fauxtronic:

I don't want to install half a dozen systray apps (xfire, raptr, etc.) whenever I'm playing non-Steam games just so I can track time and stuff and then disable them when I *am* playing games acquired through Steam. That's just a hassle;

Here's the solution to your problem. Don't disable them. You never need to disable XFire. You'll just have Steam and XFire both tracking your gaming progress. I always start Steam and XFire when I game.

[Profaned Profanity]

Originally posted by fauxtronic:

I don't buy into the "you bought it somewhere else so it doesn't help them," argument.

The more fully integrated the experience, the more useful Steam is to users. The more useful Steam is to users, the more they will use it, the more they will spot offers, the more they will buy games from Steam. If it wasn't useful to Steam to offer such features, then they wouldn't let users add non-Steam games to their libraries, and they wouldn't let us use the overlay to take and upload screenshots from those games. The bandwidth associated with uploaded screenshots incidentally puts the cost of time tracking in the shade. The latter costs nothing by comparison. The software itself tracks the time and the code is already there. They just need to hook it up to the launch and end times of non-Steam games in a user's library.

exactly, so exactly what is the real reason they dont track it?

[KillerKoala78]

Originally posted by fauxtronic:

Everything running in the systray is using resources. CPU cycles, memory. It all adds up. That's why I generally try to have only essential apps running there. This is, in fact, a very common approach to systray applications.

Besides, I'm not much for XFire, and as I said: The idea of a single, unified management tool for these things is far more appealing.

Unless you have a really slow computer, don't worry about the CPU resources being used up by a small app. That's only a concern if you have barely enough resources to play the game smoothly.

XFire is the single, unified management tool for tracking games. It does everything and updated regularly. Steam still has to catch up to all the benefits of XFire.

[VOID_TRAVELER]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

There's a difference between being a CONSUMER and being a USER.
When steam tracks a steam game, bought on steam, they are offering a feature to a CUSTOMER.
When the let you add a non steam game, bought elsewhere they are pleasing a USER.

If a game bought on steam, and a non steam game worked equally on Steam... What would be the point of buying them ON steam?

It's a differencing factor avaible to steam CUSTOMERS.

That has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard anyone reply with. I am a steam customer and want this feature now what is the excuse? Also why wouldn't they want to add a very simple feature to the offering to attract more customers? It seriously takes 5 seconds to code that into an update. Track time from game launch to game close for non steam games added sure is hard huh.

[Ineffable Anathema]

Originally posted by fauxtronic:

I don't buy into the "you bought it somewhere else so it doesn't help them," argument.

The more fully integrated the experience, the more useful Steam is to users. The more useful Steam is to users, the more they will use it, the more they will spot offers, the more they will buy games from Steam. If it wasn't useful to Steam to offer such features, then they wouldn't let users add non-Steam games to their libraries, and they wouldn't let us use the overlay to take and upload screenshots from those games. The bandwidth associated with uploaded screenshots incidentally puts the cost of time tracking in the shade. The latter costs nothing by comparison. The software itself tracks the time and the code is already there. They just need to hook it up to the launch and end times of non-Steam games in a user's library.

I don't want to install half a dozen systray apps (xfire, raptr, etc.) whenever I'm playing non-Steam games just so I can track time and stuff and then disable them when I *am* playing games acquired through Steam. That's just a hassle; the kind of hassle which pushes me away from PC gaming and towards consoles because they at least attempt to unify game related features.... regardless of which store you bought the games from.

I'm inclined to agree with your logic even though personally I don't much care whether or not my games' time is tracked. I play a very wide variety of games from Steam based to GOG games to DRM free games in bundles to free games. I definitely like being able to launch the 40 or 50+ non Steam ones via a double click in my Steam window. Having all (well most; a few older ones won't run properly in non Steam games) of my games available in this manner definitely keeps me on Steam more than elsewhere.