Steam is overrated

I bought the deluxe edition of Code Vein on steam earlier partly to support good games but also because i wanted to try out the co-op mode (which didn't work properly once i finally got around to trying it).

The first issue i noticed is that they don't actually have any good payment option for swedish users. I ended up paying with a credit card which was a pain (had to enter like 23 different digits and get them all right, no i am not letting them save those details) and having done that twice is already a bit much for my taste.

I am used to services having convenient payment options such as "swish" which you do very quickly with your phone and it's more secure than paying with a credit card.

But more importantly it felt like i was paying for nothing. I was not actually getting any real ownership. I was not getting any physical disc to look at, no physical manual to read and enjoy, no case holding everything.

I remember someone asking steam if he could have someone inherit his steam library via his will and steam basically said that his games would die with him.

I don't find the features steam are offering for people paying for games there particularly useful. I don't need their achievements (i prefer not having that to be honest) and i don't care about their trading cards and other extras they have.

Steam also restrict you on their site unless you have awful 2FA enabled which i don't want. So i am now not even able to reply on forums (i don't want to sign in to my email over and over again to access my steam library, what if i later lose access to that email?)

on GGn there is no need for me to give them any credit card details and the games i get their already have the DRM removed, they have a nice community you can interact with, you can see reviews, etc.

In terms of download speed it seems like GGn > steam > epic.

In terms of community and site features i would rate GGn > steam >> epic.

In terms of getting games for free it's GGn >> epic > steam.

I have not bought a game on GOG yet but i might try that out next if take a significant liking to a game and they have it available for me to buy there.

"But you are probably giving your credit card details to amazon/ebay/whatever anyway"
No i typically buy via "faktura" (english: invoice) where you buy now and pay in 15 or 30 days. That allows you to despite the charge and having them be the one having to go to court if they want money (rather than you having to sue to get your money back). "buy now, pay later" is actually a very good thing if you pay manually and don't let klarna (or any other such provider) automatically draw money from you.

The process for doing a chargeback is painful where you have to contant visa/mastercard/whatever praying and hoping you are actually going to get your money back. I once accidentally deposited 20$ to pokerstars and it was a nightmare to get that money back (still lost 1.2$ from the bullshit fees charge even though they claimed there was no processing fee).

So no i don't generally pay using a credit card and in rare cases i do i only temporarily enable it again via the bank after leaving just enough money for the purchase and then i disable online credit cards payments again after that.

I do not let any company save my credit card details because credit cards are awful when it comes to security, if those payments details leak they can use that to charge you money and it will be a pain in the ass trying to get that resolved later (assuming it can be resolved to begin with). The issue is credit cards not having any actual confirmation a lot of the time (my bank has a security system that is optional meaning worthless since scammers are not going to be opting into that).

"2 factor authentication adds security"
It can result in you being outright locked out your account due to losing access to the second authentication method. It's common for email providers to outright delete accounts that aren't used enough (such as if you don't log in).

Furthermore some 2FA methods such as SMS are very insecure and there are people who have lost a lot of money on crypto because they were stupid enough to use sms 2 factor authentication allowing a hacker to steal all they crypto they had paid for.

I have many accounts on private trackers and 0 of them have been hacked and i am not using 2FA for any of them.

My steam account isn't even that valuable to begin with since it has like 1 game of value (the only game i actually paid for) and i don't plan on buying any more games there when i cannot post in their forums despite having been a paying customer.

steam has that lame 2FA login, every fucking time I go to their site, I need to get a code and verify.

many steam deck owners say they experience that shit on their handheld.

they don't have any good games as far as I have seen, tho I am waiting for Metal Eden, but
it could go woke in the last moment.

the xbox handheld may be a better option... NOT! because it does not have hall effect joysticks, so once it gets fucked enough you get stick drift and you can't even replace it like in the switch. (maybe if you find a special place that repairs them, good luck with that).

You can get mods from the workshop without buying the game first
They have been making this harder over time but currently you can still download it using this tool:

https://github.com/imwaitingnow/WorkshopDL

If they disable that completely we have to wait for members of torrent sites to start ripping that for us.

Yea just turn 2FA off since you don't need to post on their forums, etc anyway. I only need steam to launch a few games (and not really even that).
Turns out that the steam-deck is even worse than i thought it was. Especially the LCD model was always trash with the bad resolution and framerate (the oled model isn't even much better in that regard).

But when the steam deck launched there were no good alternatives to it which is why it did so well (there were ayaneo and onexplayer which were overpriced and still not very good).
If you check the stats for steam users you see that most people have bad hardware because they wasted the money on buying games instead most of which they haven't even played yet.

Steam reviews are also useless in that regard since most people keep recommending utter garbage.

That's why they want you to provide them with your credit card details, reduces the friction for getting garbage games sold via their "steam sales". Actually "sold" is the wrong word here since you don't actually own any of your steam games.
Isn't the legion go (at least the S model) the only one with hall effect joysticks?

You can replace the steam deck joysticks but i don't know if that's worth the cost and effort required to be honest.

IG I'll wait for when pragmata releases and then I'll get the best handheld. now I am towards the Legion GO S because of the hall effect, but maybe by then a Switch 2 Oled will release or something else.

only games I want are:
Metal Eden
pragmata
GTA 6(if its good and has a not multiplayer ver)
redout 2 (which I will need to buy again for the new console unless redout 3 releases)
maybe Forza
gundam seed destiny remake(I could get it now but it might suck on my switch 1 also maybe I should wait for a sale)
samurai shodown v special

boxing games are another consideration for me, only the switch can do those it seems.

pokemon za might be good but most likely it will be woke slop, and I am through playing online multiplayer games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r0a7-qyjss

Valve is now censoring games on behalf of payment processors
They should have just dropped paypal since that is an awful service i refuse to use.


Maybe they should add support for the local instant payment processors instead (like swish in Sweden).

It's surprising that people still think payment processors restrict games purely because of sexual content. A more likely explanation is that some Western developers face discriminatory treatment from certain Japanese publishers and vendors.

Take DLsite as an example. They’re now shifting to Forbooks for payments as if that alone will fix things, while continuing to make it harder for non-Japanese creators to earn money.

Instead of open bias, these companies often hide exclusionary practices behind layers of bureaucracy and arbitrary demands. But in time, they tend to adjust—just as history has shown.

How would the Japanese even be involved in this case?

VISA and mastercard are US based companies.

they have online shops where users can open online shops and sell digital shit. like how dlsite is like steam.

only thing is they only let japs open shops, while westerners are refused under veneer of bureaucracy.

its not beneficial for western banks because this Japanese businesses only take money while not letting westerners generate income. so its easy for the payment processors to veneer back at them.

Interestingly visa actually denied doing censorship putting the actions of steam and itch.io into question.



It's really stupid if they removed games just to keep paypal on their site.

https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content
Even if paypal were to drop them they could still use regular bank transfers for payments.

https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/august/clarifying-recent-headlines-on-gaming-content.html

Edit: mastercard is lying



https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/na/global-site/documents/mastercard-rules.pdf

Is project 2025 behind the censorship push on steam, etc ?
Currently people are contacting Visa and Mastercard, en-masse, in an effort to get them to explain why they are banning legal content from being transacted through their systems. These arbitrary restrictions caused companies, such as Steam, http://Itch.io, and others to pull violent and adult video games from their platforms. They continue to remain silent on the reason WHY they enforced the restrictions on the companies. I surmise they are gagged from speaking through likely threat of regulatory pressure. May I introduce, Russ Vought, a co-writer for Project 2025, Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, AND Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/images/cfpb_headshot-russell-vought_DA8Ama7.original.png This man has already publicly stated his desire to have pornographic content, violent video games, and other types of content "harmful to children", banned from the internet. This claim he makes is not based on unbiased scientific testing. In a two minute clip posted on YouTube by The Intercept the following transcript, highlighted in yellow, shows his intended starting point (start with children), and then he cuts himself off from explaining the next part of the plan, of violent video games, etc, as that route had failed twice already in the past few decades. https://youtube.com/watch?v=0noIS9lmR0Y https://i.imgur.com/CxpcUOs.png https://theintercept.com/2024/08/16/project-2025-russ-vought-porn-ban/ Now, as his position in the CFPB, he has ultimate authority over payment providers and banks, and he has likely been abusing this power to strong-arm changes in these privately owned businesses regarding content he specifically had shown his distaste and hatred towards previously. All clearly telegraphed before hand, many years ago. This was ALL done in the guise of protecting the children. Admittedly, it is a very solid tactic, at the core. But, if you use the mantra of protecting the children, it tends to mean that it's just a ploy, usually to further a specific agenda. They are a threat against the United States, nay, the entire world. They are a threat against our democracy, a threat against free speech, and a threat against gamers, a threat against media in general. These are the same people who believe violent video games cause violent things. An entire generation of individuals have been playing Grand Theft Auto, playing Doom, Quake, and other games, but we are not currently, nor will we face a worldwide pandemic of armed car robberies, driving on sidewalks for the fun of it, or people running around with sawed off shotguns killing demons, or raping people, because a video game was made exploring the content. Those in power have been eroding free speech in the law. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) provides immunity to online platforms from liability for content posted by their users. They are actively attempting to kill this protection to further their goals outlined in Project 2025, by passing liabilities of their userbase onto the operators via financial regulation threats and pressure, thus killing speech directly, while still keeping in the shadows publicly. "He filmed the crimes and posted monetized rape videos on P*rnhub, earning revenue for him and the site owners." https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1898747162306937184 This is their attempt to kill section 230 immunity. You should not be frightened that they MAY come into power, they are ALREADY IN POWER. They are exercising it spectacularly, taking baby steps to erode away your speech, and we've all been asleep at the wheel.

Steam will ban your account if paypal does a chargeback you didn't ask for
People will naturally assume that if paypal is listed as a payment option using it will be fine but it actually isn't and people are being screwed over because of that.

pway_videogwames_uwu wrote:

I've never trusted using it with Steam. 15+ years ago my friend had to fight to get his Steam account unbanned because PayPal randomly charged back a purchase.

Western-Dig-6843 wrote:

PayPal once let someone into my account. The thief used basic social engineering to get into my account through a customer service representative, bypassing my password and 2FA completely. They changed the email on my account, which I didn’t see the notice of until they had already used my account to buy gift cards. Thankfully my credit card company had my back and reversed all the charges.

Haven’t used PayPal since.

PlasmaLink wrote:

SAME! My parents gave me a paypal account with $70 on it as a birthday gift once to let me practice being fiscally responsible. I bought something on steam with it, and they immediately charged back and got my steam account stuck. I was in tears, and my mom had to spend like 4 days talking to people on the phone to get it fixed.

twogayfiremen wrote:

this exact same thing happened to me. made a purchase through paypal one single time on steam. both accounts over a decade old on paypal and steam. out of nowhere i am banned from steam 2 days later. paypal in their infinite wisdom charged the 100~ dollars back for no apparent reason. refused to contact steam support and i had to beg steam to undo the ban. i never got an explanation as to why they reversed the charge. they then froze my account with around 2000 dollars in it. the account had been used for ebay and a few other things only a month or two before with no problems.

haven't touched it since. have only heard nightmare stories from friends who use it for their businesses. meanwhile steams final words on the matter were making me pay the lost amount and saying i would be irreversibly banned if this ever happened again in the future. never got an actual answer from paypal on why they did this or why my account was frozen for a decade.

meltedskull wrote:

This happened to me. I had to rebuild my entire steam library. Hated it.

slackforce wrote:

I have to use PayPal because Steam stopped supporting Amex. I fucking hate it. Thankfully I live in Canada but I’m going to be pissed about that for…forever I guess.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1motd97/paypal_is_no_longer_an_option_for_steam_except/

I did make a post about this on steam and users their claimed that this is no longer how the operate but the fact that they did so in the past is still pretty bad and illustrate the issue with trusting them with your game library.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/601912617062197537/

People losing access to their steam accounts
Buying games on steam is just stupid when it can be taken away from you for no fault of your own.

You should definitely disable email 2FA since that can cause you to get locked out but you obviously cannot trust that.

I'm traveling a lot and they accuse me…
I'm traveling a lot and they accuse me of having sold my account. So they permanently blocked it. I'm a Steam member since July 14, 2008 with lots of games in my library.

I contacted the support, explained my situation and they just don't care.

Locked out of account
Locked out of account, and in a perpetual loop. Terrible customer service. Lost all my paid for games, seeking legal redress

Locked out of my account - customer service won't help
I started using Steam and later on purchased a whole bunch of games under it a few years ago. At one point, I lost access to the e-mail address that I used as log-in e-mail address. Mind you, it was not a mistake on my part and I need not e.g. lose my Steam log-in password. So, I had the reasonable expectation that I would still be able to log into the Steam account and e.g. update the e-mail address. However, when I try to do so, Steam is insisting on sending a verification/security code to the registered e-mail address, which obviously wouldn't work. I never asked for this additional security feature and it's now keeping me from logging in and using the account (even from logging into the Steam client and uninstalling the locally installed games to free up hard drive space again).

I contacted their customer service repeatedly in order to try and restore access. Unfortunately, it's like talking to a wall. One way I could potentially verify the account would be by providing the transaction ID for at least one of the purchases under the account. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for me, since PayPal will only store such transaction data for three years (or something in that order) and my transaction were before that time. So, I cannot recover them via PayPal and provide them to Steam.

Unfortunately, they refuse to find any other reasonable solution. I e.g. offered to verify that I'm the rightful owner of the associated PayPal account and its log-in e-mail address (which is a different one from the Steam one and still functional), or even by providing ID. However, they didn't respond to that suggestion at all. They just went back to their script and kept droning on about their PayPal transaction IDs. You'd think they could just find a goodwill solution and hand the account over to me, since their server logs should show that nobody else is claiming and using this account. However, they just won't have it. Very frustrating seeing as how they're now holding my purchases hostage and I can't access them. I won't be spending any money with them in the future under these circumstances.

Broken support
No matter how many times I reset my password it still tells me it’s wrong. Forking stupid.

The new steam box has garbage specks
Only suckers will buy this. It's just awful.

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

https://www.reddit.com/r/consoles/comments/1ovej3f/the_steam_machine_has_8gb_of_vram_meaning_its/


Weak GPU.
Only 8GiB of VRAM.
Only 16 GiB of DDR5.
No additional NVME port.
no SD express.

No more than 6 CPU cores.

It get utterly demolished by my 3 year old PC.

https://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/725698143

My honest thoughts about the upcoming steam machine
I was concern already when i heard the rumor about it only having 16 GiB of DDR5 and 8 GiB of vram. That's definitely not something you want with a PC. I was hoping they would improve things for the final model but no instead things turned out to be even worse.

Just 2GiB of vram (and 160 bit bus instead of 128 bit) would have made things a lot better. The GPU itself also need to be significantly more powerful given how poorly optimized a lot of games are.

Valve should be able to mitigate some of the issues causes by not having enough vram by butchering graphic settings in problematic titles to get it within the limit but that clearly not the right way to go about things.

PS5 and XSX can compensate for the low amount of ram by having a very fast SSD to load assets that are needed quickly. PS5 also let people buy a standard gen4 NVME to expand the storage with allowing for up to 8TB of additional storage which adds to the existing storage (up to 1TB with base model, up to 2TB with PS5 pro).

The new steam machine however does not let people expand the storage buy adding an additional NVME and instead you will have to replace the existing one (and somehow move the data over to the new disk which will likely require a second PC). Instead they opted for slow SD cards for expansion (not even SD express) which is obviously stupid.

But even if you just use NVME storage with the new steam machine you might still run into issues with games due to them not being made to take advantage of fast storage on PC instead relying on having enough ram.

And no the steam deck wasn't great. It had severely compromised hardware that was only partly fixed by the later OLED model. They did however see that a lot of people bought it anyway (in part due to lack of good alternatives initially) so now they are doing a similar strategy again.

I do expect things to look generally alright initially but then when games start being made for the PS6 in mind (which will have significantly more ram) we will see some bigger problem over time. It will be a similar story as the series S where people will try to gaslight you initially claiming that its low amount of ram is fine and then developers will be blame for not spending millions of $ trying to work around that severe hardware limitation.
And unlike PS5 the new upcoming steam machine is not going to have a big enough install base to push developers to make sure the game can run on it. Instead the community will have to find various workarounds with people spending time on that instead of actually enjoying the games.

Everything about the device without exception is lackluster at best. The only thing that might (just might) be good is the controller but i am waiting for it to actually be out.

At least they might be able to undercut PS5 in terms of price but they might not even do that since they might opt for making like 200$ on each unit sold instead to milk their stupid fan-base.

And fuck steam in general. It's by far the most overrated thing with PC gaming. I very much prefer playing versions of the game i got from GGn. People are praising it even though they are paying to get a worse experience.

No doubt people will shill for it even if it launches at 800$ and sucks similar to how people shilled for the shitty steam link (high latency and limited to 1080p60).

"But the GPU isn't much weaker than the base PS5 one"

Yes but that's a 5 year old console and why go through the trouble of setting up PC gaming if you are not going for better performance?
By the time the new steam machine has launched it will be maybe 1.5 years before PS6 launches and it's obviously playstation 6 will utterly destroy it in terms of hardware (same with the upcoming xbox).

so what's your alternative, GOG? all the games there are old and demo tier.
yes ideally we could buy games normally not dependent on their steam launcher,
but they stopped selling games like that

GGn
Steam underground community.
Fitgirl repack.
F95zone

Debunking "the bad steam machine specs are fine because 70% currently have the same or worse"
Valve and their shills are trying to do damage control now after the awful specs for the upcoming steam machine was revealed but don't let those people gaslight you.

The big point with getting a new system is getting something better than you already have to last years into the future. Not to barely be able to play games currently on the market (after you spend like an hour tweaking settings to barely get 60fps).

And a bad thing being common does not stop it from being bad. Most people in the world being poor does not mean you should be fine with living in poverty yourself. You want something better, especially for the future.

And looking at the GPU stats i get the impression that the 70% figure they provided wasn't even accurate (i don't agree with the grouping but it's whatever).



The most popular GPU currently on steam (3060) does typically come with 12 GiB of vram and that was launched well over 4 years ago.

And a big reason why so many people only have 8 GiB of vram or less is because nvidia and AMD keep showing it doen people throats such as not nvidia currenty not offering any model below the 5060ti 16GB with more than 8 GiB of vram. Despite that at least 32.8 % of steam users currently already have more than 8 GiB of vram.
Since when is "most of the time" acceptable when it comes to products? I want the products i buy to work every single time without exceptions.

And even if the game will technically run it will often result in awful performance due to having to rely on system ram instead (resulting in very severe performance issues). As we saw when 5060ti 16GB was compared against 5060ti 8GB
There is already a product for that. It's called the xbox series S. Not sure why anyone would want that.

But it's worse since you will manually tweak settings to make things work on PC instead of having the developers butcher graphics settings for you (like how they made black myth wukong run on the series S after a year of delay caused by the consoles weak hardware).

Tiny_Slide_9576 wrote:

the specs are fine bc its supposed to be a cheap alternative to console. could they give us better graphic card? yes but it would cost more

Realistic-Tiger-2842 wrote:

How is it a cheap alternative to a console when it’s going to cost more, while being worse?

vintologi24 wrote:

From what i heard they weren't even going to do that. Instead they would compete against prebuilds so it's probably not even going to undercut the console (at least based on the statements from valve).

Adlerholzer wrote:

We already know it will be more expensive than PS5, because they said so.

Niitroglycerine wrote:

The specs are fine because it's not designed as a high end rig, or aimed at people who will buy high end rigs, it's designed for 30-60fps couch gaming on the TV with a controller, and it's probably gunna be pretty good at that

vintologi24 wrote:

Doesn't most people have 4K TVs these days?

Then having such a weak GPU and limited amount of vram is going to result in a bad experience.

And no scaling up from 540p via FSR3 is not an acceptable workaround.

chrissb34 wrote:

Until pricing is revealed, excuses can be made. But so far, Valve themselves said that it’ll be priced above the PS5 while also being a competitor for the prebuilt market. This is a fail, if it turns out to be true. But nothing’s gonna stop reddit from going head over heels in defending them, just like they’re doing with AMD, for example.

ameserich11 wrote:

frfr its even weaker than PS5/XBOX, they need to atleast be 50% more powerful that current gen console to be acceptable. such thing is easily doable on 4nm process node

vintologi24 wrote:

At least the GPU will be weaker.

And PS5 also has better options for expanding the storage (you can buy 1 additional NVME up to 8TB and easily install it fairly easily).

I don't think many people are interested in something that is weaker and significantly more expensive than the base PS5.

ameserich11 wrote:

look how im being downvoted, they are absolutely clueless. this thing will never sell for 500$, likely 700-800$ if it have neural cores that enables DLSS like thingy or frame generation it would be acceptable for its intended price

i remember the time when "Steam Machine" "Console Killer" was a thing in 2017, they were easily 2x more powerful than PS4/XBOX1 the current console at the time

Hardware unboxed explaining how bad it is on a podcast
GPU clearly worse than what base PS5 is offering. CPU also expected to be very weak.

When you buy a new hardware it should be an upgrade from what you already have. It just doesn't make sense to pay like 600$ for such bad hardware.

The Phawx tested a PC with equivalent hardware and it was horrendous
Even worse than what i expected. He had to put everything on low and performance was still awful. Framerate often being as low as 30fps which was awful to even look at via youtube.

https://youtu.be/Bg99bsQT3_E&t=849

This is going to cause severe damage to the valve brand as their fanboys buy that only to realize how they basically got scammed.

Screwing over early adopters and fanboys
The more expensive steam deck LCD models were all scams since you were better of just buying the cheapest model and add more storage yourself (allowed you to get 2TB extra instead of 512GB).

But regardless of whiich model you bought you got bad hardware which is why i never recommended it.

The OLED model isn't exactly great but at least the screen goes up to 90hz instead of being capped to 60 which is a decent improvement.

Anon wrote:

Make no mistake just like the deck just like the deck OLED they are going to wring the paypiggies first.

All you retards asking what the MSRP will be? It will be $699 on launch. I'll buy it for $400 on eBay 2 years after launch if the deck 2 isn't out yet, which is what they should've released instead of the meme frame.

The MSRP is going to be at or above $600/$700. I'd be really surprised if they didn't go lower than $700 considering how terrible the deck LCDs hardware and screen was for basically $600, $550+tax and they still decided to sell it for that much.

Then valve went and released the deck oled to milk paypiggies steamie cultists even more at the EXACT same price $600 showing it was never about reality, they could've released the deck with OLED day one. Valve is using the same scam tactics on consumers as Nintendo. Evil scammer fucks. Fuck valve. Really I only care about the steam deck 2.

https://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/726193901/

The truth about the tens of thousands of games being published on steam
Almost all of them are utter garbage not worth playing.

Instead of bringing actual advancements we are have games worse and less advanced than what we could play on SNES shoved down our throats with a lot of people praising all those garbage titles as something supposedly great. No it's not great and i want to immerse myself in an actual world and play as a beautiful female character.

While 2D games can still be fun for a while they are ultimately severely limited in what type of gameplay they can provide so you basically end up with the same types of games over and over again which will get boring eventually. And most indie 2D games are not even innovating to begin with and are less advanced than umihare kawase for the SNES.

r/fucksteam user wrote:

I think the term "indie" is just an excuse to sell shovelware games at a high price.
Honestly, the amount of shit that's being sold on Steam is ridiculous. It doesn't help that the stores filters are so bad that you can't even wave through it properly!

Can someone also explain to me why the search function, including using the UI to search for games is so broken!?

I swear to god Steam is a dumpster fire that barely functions half the time when you need it to. I understand Steam is what most people go to, and have thousands of dollors invested in this company for years. But goddamn does Steam need some good competition.

It's getting obnoxious...

Like where is the quality control!? I understand that having game development being easily accessible to the public is a blessing and a curse. But I gotta ask...when did it become acceptable to praise garbage getting sold at $10-$30!?

You have literal noob beginner made games being priced at fucking high prices flooding Steam! And don't give me that "You're looking in the wrong places!" Bullshit statement.

If I'm literally using tags and selecting a specific group of categories then how the fuck am I looking in the wrong place!? It's a game store! How else am I supposed to look?? Also, why is it that every time I select tags on the left menu that Steam decides to keep resetting my selected tags!?
I swear this program is a buggy mess at times!

Wtf is going on with Steam?