It is very important to read this FAQ in full so that you understand how Steam works and how it may affect you if you are a TelstraClear Residential Broadband customer.
Steam is an application for PC & Mac that gives you access to digitally distributed game titles, and is a great way to get many of the biggest PC & Mac titles into your hands ASAP. Games like Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and many others are all being made available through Steam.
Steam games are automatically kept up-to-date with the latest content and revisions. Steam also includes extensive community features to keep up to date with your friends using an in game overlay while playing.
At its core, Steam is a distributed file system and shared set of technology components that can be implemented into any software application.
With Steam, developers are given integrated tools for direct-content publishing, flexible billing, ensured-version control, anti-cheating, anti-piracy, and more.
Over 1,100 games are available to purchase, download, and play from any computer. Check out the new releases, indie hits, casual favourites and everything in between.
Find someone to play with, meet up with friends, connect with groups of similar interests, and host and join chats, matches, and tournaments.
See when your friends are online or playing games and easily join the same games together. Chat with your buddies, or use your microphone to communicate in any game.
Hunting for patches and downloading from unorganized web sites is so twentieth-century. On Steam, your games stay up-to-date by themselves. No hassles.
From pre-release discounts to free-play weekends, Steam delivers what gamers value most.
Steam brings PC's biggest gaming platform to the Mac! Download your games to your mac, play against your PC friends in multiplayer games.
Steam is a free to download PC & Mac client side program that provides access to over 1,100 major game titles available for purchase, download and playing.
If you are a TelstraClear Residential broadband customer, content downloaded from the TelstraClear Steam Content Server will be unmetered against your usage.
However, please be aware there may be usage costs that are incurred as Steam can download from other content servers that are not unmetered for TelstraClear customers.
Steam is basically a specialised download system for Valve Software's games. It is distributed by means of a small, simple client - the Steam Client - which is the front end that users load. Using the Steam Client, a user can select a game or list of games that they wish to have installed on their system. The Steam Client will then access one of the Steam Content Servers and download the files that are required.
Steam Content Servers are the back-end systems that distribute content (that is, game files) to all Steam users. You can check out the Steam Content Server listing which is kept up-to-date by Valve Software on their Steam website right here.
The Steam Content Server system is a load-balanced system which serves clients based on geographic location. As such, some of the servers may be under more load than others.
Steam has decided not to include the ability for users to select which Steam Content Server they wish to download from specifically. This is to ensure that the integrity of the load balancing of the Steam content distribution system is maintained to a nominal degree.
Steam does allow users to select a “download region�. While this can help you to get the TelstraClear Content Server, it is not a guarantee that you will end up downloading from the TelstraClear server - It merely tries to use it primarily if it and the content is available. For various reasons, our server may not always be available. We do recommend that you select the New Zealand (TelstraClear) or default region.
There is currently no completely reliable method to effectively change which Steam Content Server you are using. These third party applications may be your best choice to manage your Steam usage.
Unfortunately, as the whole purpose of Steam is to download files, it can be very easy for the client to automatically update or download titles you have installed or purchased. There is no way to stop it downloading updates to the Steam client itself, but these updates are generally very small and can be delivered from the TelstraClear Steam Content Server at times.
To stop Steam downloading content for individual games, it is necessary to click on the 'Games' button on the Steam main page. For each game that is listed in the Games dialogue, you will need to right click on each game and select 'Properties'.
You will then see a section on the Properties panel that says 'Automatic updates'. You will need to change the dropdown under this section so that it reads 'Do not automatically update this game'.
This should stop Steam from automatically downloading content for those games.
Please note, there are no guarantees that Steam will actually stop downloading and download no further. It is very important to keep track of your usage if you are using Steam.
In order to provide better value to our customers as well as a superior broadband experience we have chosen to provide a local server as part of our network and provide this traffic as part of the TelstraClear unmetered service.
However, after much discussion with Valve Software, it has been concluded that running a Steam Content Server is no guarantee that TelstraClear customers will get unmetered traffic via the TelstraClear Steam Content Server.
While TelstraClear have aimed to mirror all of the available Steam content, due to the extensive games catalogue Steam offers which is regularly being added to, neither TelstraClear or Valve can guarantee that any content downloaded through the Steam client will be sourced from the unmetered TelstraClear Steam Content Server. We do expect the majority of users content to come from our server none the less.
Before downloading Steam, it is important to remember that it is primarily a content distribution method, and as such its primary function is to download content. This means it may download a large amount of data!
To get Steam, visit the official Steam page here to download the client installer.
After you have downloaded the Steam Installer, you can simply run it and install it like a normal application. During the installation you'll be prompted to create a Steam account.
Please note that after installation, Steam may auto-update its files from master servers that are not part of TelstraClear's unmetered offering. These client updates may add to your monthly usage. Keep careful track of your usage when using Steam!
You can get more information about Steam from the following sources:
Unmetered access to New Zealand's largest gaming server provider on3network.
TelstraClear has been voted BEST ISP three year's in a row at the NetGuide People's Choice Web Awards.
Always have the speed you need. With TelstraClear broadband you will never get throttled back to dial up speeds.