The truth ZOS doesn't want you to know: Steam problems will not get fixed

simonsnowlock · July 2018

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

MaxBacon wrote: »

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

Swergdach wrote: »

It is also sad that people are not united in their desire to achieve real action from the ZOS in solving this problem. People who have an account that is not tied to Steam, are indifferent at best, and at worst - protect the ZOS, accusing steam players of all mortal sins. It'a so rediculous. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Non steam users believe they get extra crown crates by supporting ZOS blindly. Every time when I raise support ticket in steam, response is to contact ZOs and not steam issue. ZOs as usual doesnt provide any response.

It provides legal ground for steam to go against ZOs if ZOs treats steam customers as garbage and intentionally not fixing the issue in time ? Its revenue loss for both ZOs and steam . ZOs is not intending to fix steam issue on time . ZOS just brags and never responds to support ticket. Whenever server loaded on prime time , steam players are kicked ?

It's true ZOS doesn't support Steam players, in fact it's a nightmare for a Steam player to even send a ticket because they don't give them support accounts.

How more ridiculous can this get? ZOS sits and watches as the reputation of ESO goes down the toilet as people grow angrier and angrier at one issue that only gets worse, with 0 communication from their side aside of a "we're investigating" every time it happens.

ESO has enough players even without steam . Why would ZOs care once they got active player base in retail ?

Because we bought the game, and the new DLC's and also subscribe to ESO+...….you don't think any of that goes to ZOS?

trashmyego · July 2018

I doubt they'd have a case against Steam legally or would even poke that bear. Yes, this problem involves Steam, but it also involves contracts already in place and services that are set for a product that is constantly being tooled with and updated let alone what they're doing server side and inbetween. It's on ZOS to ensure their end is compatible with the service they are expecting from Steam.

JumpmanLane · July 2018

Down again. It doesn’t matter. Don’t know how much longer gonna bother with ESO.

Sigtric · July 2018

Sure glad OP knows everything.

Jayman1000 · July 2018

MaxBacon wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

I bought the game through Steam, but I never log into Steam anymore. I use a shortcut directly to the game, or the ESO launcher (not Steam) when an update is needed. I only know Steam as a PC platform. How is this an issue? On console? On PC? Don't use Steam. Just use the ESO launcher. Is that not the answer?

Exactly the problem of ESO, most MMO's just open the launcher, ESO actually has a specific launcher just for Steam players, that directly connects and relies on it to login. Other MMO's just tie their launcher to steam and players login with their normal accounts independent of Steam.

yup, that fix only works if your account is old. Never accounts MUST login through Steam, and when that does not work you screwed. And ZOS doesn't care, obviously. Or else they would have found a permanent and working solution by now (Like offering Steam players to convert their account to a non-steam account, but no, of course not that's not ever gonna happen. Why try to do something for your customers when you are a big company with a fat income stream every month?)

The_Camper · July 2018

ZOS: Hey do you miss a day or two every other week out of your ESO+ days that you PAID as a service? Here have some crown poisons in a crate to make you feel better"

Players: OW MY GAWD THANK YOU. all better now. best mmo EVAH!

*pizza guy gets 2 mins late than promised delivery time*

Same people: *#$^ you, minimum wage delivery guy. i want the pizza free. you know I PAID for this sh%$. don't want to see your incompetence face ever again.

MaxBacon · July 2018

The_Camper wrote: »

ZOS: Hey do you miss a day or two every other week out of your ESO+ days that you PAID as a service? Here have some crown poisons in a crate to make you feel better"

Players: OW MY GAWD THANK YOU. all better now. best mmo EVAH!

*pizza guy gets 2 mins late than promised delivery time*

Same people: *#$^ you, minimum wage delivery guy. i want the pizza free. you know I PAID for this sh%$. don't want to see your incompetence face ever again.

Pizza late usually means the pizza will come free as compensation.

But not only ESO+, also will miss all the dailies and the login reward today, it's like a divine punishment for having bought ESO on Steam. O_o

Elsonso · July 2018

Jayman1000 wrote: »

Incredible these issues continue to persist. I doubt it will ever be fixed. I also doubt ZOS will ever compensate ESO Steam players for all the lost time where they couldn't login and play. It really sucks when you have planned some play time and then you can't login AGAIN, because you were so stupid to buy through Steam. I swear to God I am never ever going to buy a game through Steam again if it requires me to login to anything else than Steam itself.

Probably wise. This is why I would never buy ESO from Steam. I am concerned about games that require Steam to go off and chat up some other game computer before I can log into the game and use it. It just doubles the opportunity for something to go wrong.

Jayman1000 wrote: »

And ZOS doesn't care, obviously. Or else they would have found a permanent and working solution by now (Like offering Steam players to convert their account to a non-steam account, but no, of course not that's not ever gonna happen. Why try to do something for your customers when you are a big company with a fat income stream every month?)

I am sure that ZOS cares. This is all set up and working, but it only works as long as computers on both the ZOS and Valve side are functioning properly. We have no idea which side it is on, but ZOS is probably more motivated to get it fixed than Valve, since it is ZOS that is taking the bulk of the heat and the blame. My guess is that this is not a programming fix, but an IT issue. Since ZOS has IT people who have likely been called in, even on a holiday, my guess is that it would have been fixed already if it were a ZOS issue. Those ZOS people are highly motivated to fix it so they can get back to what they were doing. I suggest that people are waiting on someone at Valve to work with the people at ZOS to resolve the issue.

Shardan4968 · July 2018

Can we get another hotfix or smth? And why the last one worked only for couple of weeks?

A_Silverius · July 2018

Have you guys tried launching ESO from the exe in steam folder? :\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Zenimax Online\The Elder Scrolls Online\game\client\eso64.exe

I got ESO and installed from steam but always launch it that way. Never had any issues. I hope this helps somebody

PS: It should be noted I got morrowind and summerset from a 3rd party retailer and unlocked them on eso website.

coolkhajit · July 2018

Anotherone773 wrote: »

@Priyasekarssk

Anotherone773 wrote: »

Phage wrote: »

Here we go again.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

At this point you guys really should suggest to the higher-ups that Steam PC players be given access to the regular PC launcher. A large swath of your Steam PC players are going to be leaving in droves if this keeps happening.

I agree, if i sit down to play a game and i cant play this one, i play another. If i get involved in another game then i will lose interest in this one and just play that. And i spend at least $30 a month on this game and up to $100 a month.

@ZOS_GinaBruno

You should just give steam users login keys, so they can use the regular launcher as well, since you cant seem to fix this problem which occurs more and more frequently.

The important part is bolded. Because ZOS is a business and a businesses goal is to make a profit. It would be the death of a business who thought along the lines of : "we have enough players to put us in the black without steam so why should we care about them?"

That is what they are doing though - they have to know the problem on some level and they are showing that they don’t care about steam users. Whether they don’t care if we leave or not or if they expect us to pay for the leftover scraps of not playing on holidays or weekends, I don’t know but their actions (or lack thereof) speak for themselves.

Lirkin · July 2018

Everyone should login to their Steam account and complain as well as post here. If no one mentions it on the Steam forums people will continue to by it from them and not know. Puts pressure on both ends. I did.

karekiz · July 2018

Honestly

This feels a tad different than before. Mostly because each time before if I was online - I was safe. This time. I hard crashed and bam I couldn't log back in. Most would think it was just me, but multiple people in *my group* crashed at the *same time*. According to a person online in disc her friends list started to hit offline all at once.

At least before I was able to just force myself to not afk auto log and the issue never hit me.

Hippie4927 · July 2018

A_Silverius wrote: »

Have you guys tried launching ESO from the exe in steam folder? :\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Zenimax Online\The Elder Scrolls Online\game\client\eso64.exe

I got ESO and installed from steam but always launch it that way. Never had any issues. I hope this helps somebody

PS: It should be noted I got morrowind and summerset from a 3rd party retailer and unlocked them on eso website.

@A_Silverius

That only works if you bought the game on Steam before 2016 (or sometime during 2016). If you bought the game after that, it does not work.

Shantu · July 2018

If they would just get rid of the disingenuous banner message and just give people the truth, it would alleviate a lot of the angst. Heck even a message stating, "Something just happened. We don't know what we're doing but we're trying to figure it out." would gather more respect.

warabi · July 2018

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

So you're accusing ZOS pf abandoning their player base with zero evidence?

We can only go off the facts we've encountered thus far:
-This login issue for Steam users has been going on for months
-The only feedback we've gotten from ZOS is the usual banner up top and this thread that was posted the last time this happened (that isn't even pinned anymore) https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/420483/update-on-steam-login-issues/p1
-From what I can tell the last time ZOS posted anything on the ESO steam forums was 2016

There has basically been barely any communication on a pretty serious problem for quite some time now. Without having other facts from ZOS we're only left to speculate. What OP posted really isn't a leap in logic.

Rillawenria · July 2018

Started a post in the Steam forums... CHEEEE-YAAAAARGE!

Ral'nor · July 2018

Jayman1000 wrote: »

Incredible these issues continue to persist. I doubt it will ever be fixed. I also doubt ZOS will ever compensate ESO Steam players for all the lost time where they couldn't login and play. It really sucks when you have planned some play time and then you can't login AGAIN, because you were so stupid to buy through Steam. I swear to God I am never ever going to buy a game through Steam again if it requires me to login to anything else than Steam itself.

this is the only game having this issue with Steam. And at first, you didn't need to login through Steam, that was a change.

Cpt_Teemo · July 2018

Anotherone773 wrote: »

MaxBacon wrote: »

Sadly so, and for several reasons, the most core one is because the whole system is tied to Steam in a way that they can't do much when Steam the steam services themselves become unreliable, the fix would require to stop relying on steam services to provide a reliable login system, and the rumored contracts they have with Steam are said to not allow that.

So what is actually happening when ZOS posts the usual message?

Absolutely nothing! Everything ZOS is doing is monitoring the Steam service waiting for the normalization, you can bet ZOS has no developers assigned to this problem.

This problem will last for as long as the service they depend on logins continues being unreliable, it may be weeks, it may be months, it may be years, it's just sad that this company is not capable to face their players and openly discuss the mess the service reliability has become and always hides behind superficial "we're investigating, we're working on it" messages. My personal bet on that is that in a month or two, we'll still be seeing the "we're investigating the issue and working on it" as the steam login continues to fail.

Cool story bro, but its not a steam issue. All my other games work perfectly fine with steam and have for 11 years. Its a ESO issue.

I've had problems with Tera & Rift launching cause of the double launcher issues, and i have to play through stream since that's where I bought them when they released

GamerAeryn · July 2018

All I want is an account port. The ability to keep what I've worked for and not to be locked out by a sub-standard login mechanic and the space of an entire other game copy on my hard drive. Yes I did this to myself, but it's too late for me to go back now or I would.

MaxBacon · July 2018

And there we go, the issues "have been resolved" message, only means the steam service normalized by itself.

Just wait a few days and we'll get another outage on the login server...

Also true @warabi one issue that so much affects Steam players and ZOS does not even have the decency to give one update on the steam forums, it's like they're pretending they don't exist.

Merlin13KAGL · July 2018

If first Steam login failure
Popup("First Failure - retry")

If second Steam login failure
Open "Offline Login" (standard Username/Password UI)

The login failure is fine, but at that point, the option to use name and password should be provided, just as thousands of other Steam games can run in 'offline' mode (meaning Steam, not the game).

Nobleshield · July 2018

I ended up getting so frustrated, I bought the base game for $10 last night just to be able to bypass Steam if it happens again. Which is a little silly (paying $10 to fix a problem with a game I already spent a lot of money on between Morrowind CE, Summerset CE, Summerset CE for my fiance, and at least $100 worth of Crowns to purchase some in-game housing for RP, as well as being an ESO Plus subscriber) but had to be done. I am incredibly regretting my initial choice to buy the game via Steam. It's been nothing but a hassle, way more than the ease of running it has ended up being.

It seems to be related t how intertwined ESO is on Steam; most other MMOs I run via Steam, Steam just handles the file install and that's it, the launcher and everything else is not tied to it. But with ESO, it's linked, and that's where I think the problem is coming from, somehow.

HanzeeBokeem · July 2018

I do wonder if these issues have resulted in the upcoming online Fallout 76 not being available to purchase via Steam. It looks as though they are only going to use the Bethesda Launcher and bypass Steam altogether when it launches on PC. There may be no connection but it might point towards a disagreement between the two companies.

Elsonso · July 2018

HanzeeBokeem wrote: »

I do wonder if these issues have resulted in the upcoming online Fallout 76 not being available to purchase via Steam. It looks as though they are only going to use the Bethesda Launcher and bypass Steam altogether when it launches on PC. There may be no connection but it might point towards a disagreement between the two companies.

Bethesda is not going to walk away from Steam. Steam integration does add complexity and additional points of failure, making it less reliable than a direct connection, as we have seen. The same can be said about XBox and PS4.

ZOS_JesC · July 2018

Greetings, we've decided to close this thread because it's non-constructive and perpetuating misinformation. Thank you.