So much for zero-rated Steam

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › So much for zero-rated Steam

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#657537 18-Jul-2012 11:34

Some of the problem I feel lies in that the ?small print? is actually pretty fundamentally important to the offer.

?small print? should be about minor details, not something that is a core part of what it means.

There is no hard and fast rule, but it all depends on what is reasonable. If the Orcon steam server was used, say, 95%+ of the time for your steam downloads then I think it fair to have the exception as part of the FAQ rather than stated upfront, but if it was, say, only 50% of the time then I that makes it much more of an imprtant fact to know, and so should be stated upfront.

Nebbie

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#657546 18-Jul-2012 11:55

OMG......

1.) The banner is supply to your PC from Steam Orcon supplied it to steam. (Free advertising for Orcon)
2.) The content sometimes may start off from Orcon server but steam will often load balance this onto other servers. as this doesn't come from Orcon's servers its not going to be zero rated its not Orcon's problem that this happens.

Stop wining that your ISP gives you free stuff then wining some more that its not good enough you should be supplied more FREE stuff..... God I hate people that wine about free stuff not being good enough..... just be grateful.

EDIT: From the moment Orcon announced this I knew this sort of thing would happen.

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Kyanar

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#657560 18-Jul-2012 12:15

Nebbie: OMG......

1.) The banner is supply to your PC from Steam Orcon supplied it to steam. (Free advertising for Orcon)
2.) The content sometimes may start off from Orcon server but steam will often load balance this onto other servers. as this doesn't come from Orcon's servers its not going to be zero rated its not Orcon's problem that this happens.

Stop wining that your ISP gives you free stuff then wining some more that its not good enough you should be supplied more FREE stuff..... God I hate people that wine about free stuff not being good enough..... just be grateful.

EDIT: From the moment Orcon announced this I knew this sort of thing would happen.

Precisely my point. Orcon supplied a banner that says "content zero rated". Therefore, if the content is not actually zero rated, then that's on Orcon. Borrowing from the common view from customers where I work, it's not my job to give a damn about load balancing or whatever - that's theirs and their suppliers. I will absolutely not be grateful for a service where the core premise of it is misleading, and I don't appreciate your implication that it is "whining about free stuff not being good enough".

plas

453 posts

Ultimate Geek

#657565 18-Jul-2012 12:23

Nebbie: OMG......

1.) The banner is supply to your PC from Steam Orcon supplied it to steam. (Free advertising for Orcon)
2.) The content sometimes may start off from Orcon server but steam will often load balance this onto other servers. as this doesn't come from Orcon's servers its not going to be zero rated its not Orcon's problem that this happens.

Stop wining that your ISP gives you free stuff then wining some more that its not good enough you should be supplied more FREE stuff..... God I hate people that wine about free stuff not being good enough..... just be grateful.

EDIT: From the moment Orcon announced this I knew this sort of thing would happen.

I've always said it should have been a nice bonus that wasn't displayed on the zero rated page, the average consumer doesn't know/care about how Steam works.

Kyanar

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#657575 18-Jul-2012 12:29

plas:

I've always said it should have been a nice bonus that wasn't displayed on the zero rated page, the average consumer doesn't know/care about how Steam works.

And if they can't guarantee it, the banner in Steam most definitely should not claim it is zero rated.

Granted, this wouldn't even be much of an issue if Orcon wasn't charging $2+GST per GB of traffic. It's highway bloody robbery.

Nebbie

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#657582 18-Jul-2012 12:34

Kyanar:
Precisely my point. Orcon supplied a banner that says "content zero rated". Therefore, if the content is not actually zero rated, then that's on Orcon. Borrowing from the common view from customers where I work, it's not my job to give a damn about load balancing or whatever - that's theirs and their suppliers. I will absolutely not be grateful for a service where the core premise of it is misleading, and I don't appreciate your implication that it is "whining about free stuff not being good enough".

Blame the ISP again and again..... Find someone to blame it on becuase you feel the need you need to blame it on someone and of course its NEVER the customers problem the ISP should bend-over backwards for the customer after all ISP's in NZ in the customers minds should be Non-Profit organizations.

Orcon can not control what steam do or what or client does this is why Orcon put this in the T's & C's.
So I can only see a simple resolution here Orcon needs to start charging customers for steam data I support this either a plan is Fully Unlimited or not.

Kyanar: And if they can't guarantee it, the banner in Steam most definitely should not claim it is zero rated. .

There is a Guarantee if the content comes from their servers however as Orcon do not control the PC or server its not a Guarantee that the content will always come from this server.

Kyanar: Granted, this wouldn't even be much of an issue if Orcon wasn't charging $2+GST per GB of traffic. It's highway bloody robbery.

Agreed its a little high, I was looking at Orcon at one stage to get a secondary backup connection however the caps were too low for my needs and the overage is steep as well.

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Kyanar

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#657584 18-Jul-2012 12:38

Nebbie:

Blame the ISP again and again..... Find someone to blame it on becuase you feel the need you need to blame it on someone and of course its NEVER the customers problem the ISP should bend-over backwards for the customer after all ISP's in NZ in the customers minds should be Non-Profit organizations.

Orcon can not control what steam do or what or client does this is why Orcon put this in the T's & C's.
So I can only see a simple resolution here Orcon needs to start charging customers for steam data I support this either a plan is Fully Unlimited or not.

I will be perfectly clear with you here, and I strongly suggest you drop the attitude. Orcon is the one that provided a banner image to Valve which clearly states "content zero rated". Therefore, if the content is not zero rated, that is Orcon's problem. If I tried using your views at work to justify why a customer isn't getting what we told them, I'd be fired - because it is not a customers job to give a #$% about the infrastructure, or the load balancing, or the billing rules or whatever. That's the service provider's job.

Nebbie:
There is a Guarantee if the content comes from their servers however as Orcon do not control the PC or server its not a Guarantee that the content will always come from this server.

Then they should not be guaranteeing that downloads are zero rated. Look again at the image - it does not have an asterisk, or a note, or a warning.

It says, "downloads zero-rated for Orcon customers". There is no room to manuever here.

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Skolink

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#657585 18-Jul-2012 12:39

Kyanar:
plas:

I've always said it should have been a nice bonus that wasn't displayed on the zero rated page, the average consumer doesn't know/care about how Steam works.

And if they can't guarantee it, the banner in Steam most definitely should not claim it is zero rated.

Granted, this wouldn't even be much of an issue if Orcon wasn't charging $2+GST per GB of traffic. It's highway bloody robbery.

In the last month (prior to the Steam summer sale) I have gone over my Telstra cable cap due to Steam content not being delivered as 'zero-rated'. Their banner wisely does not mention zero rated.

It annoys me seing as I get charged $2.95/GiB for overage, but since I wasn't running SteamGuard or the like, I didn't bother complaining or starting a topic to see if anyone else had had the same problem in the last month. They were quite common games too, so certainly would have been on the Telstra Steam server.

So I share the OP's frustration, but would probably blame Steam rather than Tesltra.

EDIT: thanks to those that clarified that Steam content can simultaneously come from multiple servers. I did not know this, hence my frustration at thinking I had been chraged incorrectly for data.

plas

453 posts

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#657587 18-Jul-2012 12:45

Skolink:
Kyanar:
plas:

I've always said it should have been a nice bonus that wasn't displayed on the zero rated page, the average consumer doesn't know/care about how Steam works.

And if they can't guarantee it, the banner in Steam most definitely should not claim it is zero rated.

Granted, this wouldn't even be much of an issue if Orcon wasn't charging $2+GST per GB of traffic. It's highway bloody robbery.

In the last month (prior to the Steam summer sale) I have gone over my Telstra cable cap due to Steam content not being delivered as 'zero-rated'. Their banner wisely does not mention zero rated.

It annoys me seing as I get charged $2.95/GiB for overage, but since I wasn't running SteamGuard or the like, I didn't bother complaining or starting a topic to see if anyone else had had the same problem in the last month. They were quite common games too, so certainly would have been on the Telstra Steam server.

So I share the OP's frustration, but would probably blame Steam rather than Tesltra.

Not all games can be cached, you can check the on3 forums to confirm if a game is delivered via http here

Kyanar

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#657591 18-Jul-2012 12:53

plas:

Not all games can be cached, you can check the on3 forums to confirm if a game is delivered via http here

That list is actually even more concerning - one of the games I downloaded was Fallout 3, which while claiming it was delivered by Orcon is actually on that list of not even possible to be delivered by Orcon games.

Nebbie

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#657596 18-Jul-2012 12:57

Kyanar:

It says, "downloads zero-rated for Orcon customers". There is no room to manuever here.

Exactly from games.orcon.net.nz this banner shows becuase you have "Orcon" Selected as your preferred provider.
Steam will change the server your connected to however wont change the banner shown above, steams problem or Orcon problem this is the matter thats up for debate.

So we have two point of view here that can be taken in two different ways, I'm sorry we share different views.

I work in the industry and yes so this is why I'm on Orcon's side, its not an attitude its a difference in opinion I also have worked on the steam servers them selves and they aren't nice often the software crash and when this happens all connected users disconnect and reconnect to other severs.

Steams Server software is so crappy I've seen it crash more then once in a day.

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Kyanar

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#657603 18-Jul-2012 13:11

Nebbie:
Exactly from games.orcon.net.nz this banner shows becuase you have "Orcon" Selected as your preferred provider.
Steam will change the server your connected to however wont change the banner shown above, steams problem or Orcon problem this is the matter thats up for debate.

Sure it's up for debate. It's Valve's problem or Orcon's. You know whose it isn't? Mine. For what it's worth, even with Orcon selected as preferred provider I've seen that banner list other providers for (in which case I expect to be charged, since it isn't claiming to be unmetered).

In fact, we wouldn't even be having this discussion if Orcon's banner there didn't declare content to be zero rated, and Orcon's original press release didn't state:

Important note: data from the Orcon Steam Content Server will be unmetered for Orcon customers.
However, if you download from another Steam server, this usage will be charged. To check that you are downloading from the Orcon server click ‘play’ on the game you are downloading and check that the Orcon Games banner is displayed.

I see they've retconned that last bit since then, but I don't expect to have to re-read FAQs every week to ensure they haven't materially changed.

TCL in my view has the right idea - don't mention unmetering in your Steam banner, In fact, TCL doesn't advertise Steam as unmetered at all - though another person in this thread says they do unmeter content being delivered by them. It's quite reasonable to call it a bonus and not to rely on it when it's not used in advertising as a drawcard to get people to use your service.

Nebbie:
So we have two point of view here that can be taken in two different ways, I'm sorry we share different views.

I work in the industry and yes so this is why I'm on Orcon's side, its not an attitude its a difference in opinion I also have worked on the steam servers them selves and they aren't nice often the software crash and when this happens all connected users disconnect and reconnect to other severs.

Steams Server software is so crappy I've seen it crash more then once in a day.

No, it's an attitude. You started off complaining that you were sick of people whining about free stuff not being good enough, and accusing me of "always needing it to be someone else's problem".

And again, I emphasise - it's not my job to care about the quality of the software either. I guess I should point out that I'm by trade a software developer - I spend my day working on software which is ultimately considerably more complex than Steam - a frakking Patient Management System for a hospital. When that mucks up, it's our problem. It's never OK for us to try making it the customer's problem because they didn't know (and didn't want to know) about *insert random esoteric fact that we buried on the intranet somewhere*. We'd be formally disciplined if we even tried that.

detonate

45 posts

Geek

#657615 18-Jul-2012 13:38

Orcon have done all they can to educate users as much as they can and make it very clear that they do not guarantee you will only use their content server. I assure you they're not doing it to deceive you.

I, personally, got Orcon to host this Steam CDN and zero rate it.
Not for marketing, not to gain more customers, and not to upset it's existing customer base.

I did it for 2x reasons.

1) Because at that stage NZ there was only 1 public Steam CDN node in NZ. (The small # of others were firewalled to the hosting ISP).
2) Because it helps the NZ gaming community.

I'm sorry that you think that them giving away free data is unfair. But I can tell you what's going to happen, and it's not going to be Orcon updating wording/ t&cs/ or banner ads.

It'll be them turning it off.

Not just turning off zero rating but the whole node itself. The aforementioned other public Steam CDN node is no longer operating (I know because I hosted that one too), and I'm pretty sure all the other current servers are still firewalled to themselves.
So enjoy your slow international Steam downloads.

hellonearthisman

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#657639 18-Jul-2012 14:07

NZ advertising standards state, that if you say something is free but have a clause in the fine print that it is free sometimes, well that breaks the law. It's Orcons problem because they are the ones claiming that it will be free when it isn't.

They should zero rate all the steam data, like they advertise/state or withdraw the statement.

Having a 100% mostly free isn't 100% free.

detonate

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#657643 18-Jul-2012 14:09

No, they state that downloading from THEIR Steam content server is free.
And it is.

If your Steam client gets data from elsewhere, that's beyond Orcon's control.

Has has been said numerous times.

If you want to force your Steam client to only use their server, there are several 3rd party tools to do this.

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