STEAM Not Supported by FreeZone.

[d0b33]

It seems we’ve bitten off more than we can chew with our attempt to roll out a FreeZoned service on our STEAM content server due to some software issues.

We were really excited about this and perhaps rushed into it in our enthusiasm. Even though it's been labeled BETA, and we said there would be issues, we feel we should clear things up as to avoid further confusion.

For now, STEAM will be offered as a regular service only, while we continue to test it and find the best way to get it FreeZoned in full. We aim to relaunch a FreeZoned STEAM offering once we've defeated this tricky beast.

To provide a little background information, we’ve been performing BETA testing on STEAM for the past few months to find the best way to offer it as a FreeZoned service to our customers.

Running into a number of technical complexities concerning FreeZoning STEAM, we have teamed up with the manufacturer of our traffic management system to find a solution.

So for now we’ll be offering STEAM as a regular service for our subscribers, while our talented product team down in the engine room figure out how to get the two services working together efficiently. This means you’re still getting fast, secure access to the server and over 788 software titles.

In addition, our subscribers can prepare themselves for some new releases on the fully FreeZoned WAGE servers, including Alien vs. Predator, Arma 2, Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and a multi-player version of the popular game GTA: San Andreas.

Additional Technical information:

The problem lies within the STEAM server’s software, which pulls content from multiple locations, and it has been established that there is currently no practical way to ensure reliable and consistent FreeZoning of sources outside the WA network. This means users would still be utilizing bandwidth while downloading from the STEAM server, which negates the idea and freedom that FreeZone represents.

FreeZone was initially developed for WA services, so we need to modify how it works so we can adapt it to work for STEAM content servers that are not on the WA network.

In order to solve this, we will need to change how we log our subscribers traffic accounting on the multiple sources that STEAM pulls content from.

We will advise as soon as this functionality becomes available!

Kind Regards Christiaan

Some of the content is till freezoned though. I got the half-life episodes for free but yeah this sucks a little.

 

[diabolus]

It still works for the most part if you use Steamwatch. So it's not like they're disabling it, they just can't guarentee it. Anyhow i've downloaded like 20GB from Steam in the last week [since the specials started on there] and it was all freezoned . [Downloaded Aion and Star Trek Online to be specific] . Some of my games that update via Steam also got freezoned this month, so i guess i can't complain

 

[d0b33]

Steamwatch..I'll try it, was not sure if it's free, is it?

 

[diabolus]

Steamwatch..I'll try it, was not sure if it's free, is it?

Yea it's free, all it is a little service that "force" Steam to download from a specific server (in this case it will be WebAfrica's Steam Mirror)

Full instructions here : http://www.mygaming.co.za/news/pc/5580-How-download-from-WebAfricas-Steam-mirror.html

And that seems to be the whole issue, Steam seem to download bits and pieces from all over the world and there's no way to tell it to download from a specific server, and hence why some stuff get freezoned and some don't.

Anyway, best way to check if it's working before downloading 20GB is to monitor your usage [on the webafrica site] , the Freezone part actually updates like every 5-10 minutes. If it's not going up/changing within 10 minutes, it's not being freezoned.

 

[d0b33]

ok thanks

 

[czc]

I recall they did say if you force steam to download from WA it would be freezoned. They just haven't figured how to do it without forcing steam.