Lord Garon

Hyac, don't take this personally, but that is precisely how and why Origin, Impulse (whatever its called now), and Steam gain a foothold in the first place. They don't wave a wand and just make it happen. Its not required by law. WE let them do it. WE created Steam. I helped when I registered Skyrim. I helped when I registered every game, software, and OS that's come out in the last 15 years. In a "market based" economy, and I understand not every country has an economy like mine, there are required relationships between merchants and consumers which allow that economy to function as desired. Competition between merchants, resolved by consumers purchasing the best value, creates a two-way street. Merchants react to customer desires (spending habits) in order to sell their product and consumers affect, even dictate, merchant policies. Its the "Will of the majority" applied to economics. That relationship is based upon choice; consumers are free to choose the merchant who offers the best value. When the merchants catering to a market segment, let's randomly pick entertainment media as the example, decide its easier for them to legislate the market than it is to compete in it, laws are passed which protect those merchants and remove choice from the consumer. In the US, media merchants created the DMCA, and other laws, to protect themselves from competition by placing the needs and rights of merchants above individual consumers. The entertainment media market becomes a one-way street. Consumers are limited to an all-or-nothing choice. That is the simple state we are left with in regards to DRM platforms. No one able to (politicians) is likely to help the consumers of "video games". Games are seen as a trivial passtime, probably an outright waste of time. No one cares about gaming. That is, except the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. The only way to impact this industry is to exercise our all-or-nothing choice and force it to once again compete for our money. Except, those who crafted the DRM legislation KNOW we won't do that. Its a fundamental assumption of the laws they created. We won't simply do without music. We won't quit going to the movies. We won't quit playing games. The lessor-of-two-evils provider seems to be a good one at this point. The only way to get Bethesda to switch away from Steam is to stop buying Bethesda products. The only way to get Steam to show decency and respect towards customers is to quit them. I doubt 75 million subscribers will do that. We are prisoners of our gaming passion and merchants use that against us. Simply because they can. There may be one other choice. Avoid the part of the industry which exploits its customers. Even if you love Steam, hate MMO's, and despise Space Operas, you should check out Star Citizen. Not for the game itself, but for the idea. Star Citizen is a crowd-funded startup. Its gained over $60,000,000 in startup funds from (potential) player pledges and donations. Its run by the creator of other AAA space games (Chris Roberts) who is unwilling to work within the established industry (its not for any DRM reasons). Many AAA games have been created for less than $60,000,000. If successful, Star Citizen might change the way games are created. IF gamers were to crowd-fund the development of, say, a non-DRM, single-player, open-world, moddable RPG (just for example), or, perhaps, help fund a follow-on episode to an existing game (we could call it SomethingVI, just to give it a name), it could apply pressure on companies like Steam to separate their DRM platform from their gaming support services and give gamers more choice. And respect as consumers. DRM is NOT mandatory on any published media. Authors and creators hold copyrights, but a studio or distributor, as a creator or copyright holder, can choose how to enforce and protect those rights. They can choose to do it in a manner respectful of honest consumers, or, like Steam, the RIAA, the MPAA, etc, they can use it to dictate their own policies to consumers and treat everyone like pirates.

I think Gaben will say anything even remotely "positive" to support his "benevolent monopoly", and do anything necessary to sustain it, even if they conflict. I mean, everyone else does. And, he used to work at Microsoft; now there's a culture to look up to. I don't know. Its all symptomatic of something else, a deeper disease infecting the system. Telecom, the Web, DRM; something is wrong. I get fed up and lash out at things, but I'm not sure where its really directed. Lots of "it" pisses me off, frustrates me, and just doesn't make sense. Businesses can't sell their crap products without unbelievable amounts of useless, invasive advertising. Advertisers may as well be the NSA. Good, smart people resort to underhanded practices and outright manipulation. Google does evil. I just don't get it. Something fundamental is broken. I'm not sure what, but it certainly seems to be focused around the NET, or digital communications in general. (That's where I spend much personal and professional time.) It could be a tech thing, maybe an economic one, even something of a social nature impacted by the technology I'm always around. At least, I HOPE there is a central issue somewhere, something we can fix which is generating the increasing amount of "desperate" (for lack of a better word) actions and behaviors exhibited by otherwise rational beings. Okay, ripple, you got me off on a REAL tangent. Sorry. I think I need to take a break from this for a while. Happy Holidays, all.

The Interview? Well, there's nothing special or exceptional about that release, so, okay. Point taken. :facepalm:

The OP asked what would be needed for Bethesda to dump Steam. It is, in reality, a very important question in regards to PC gaming. bben argues it is a piracy issue. It is more complex than that, and the piracy argument is especially suspect in a Skyrim forum. Let's look at the non-piracy side of things for a minute. (The following numbers are estimates, but can easily be found via your favorite search engine.) Skyrim cost upwards of $100,000,000 (USD) to produce. Note that NO ONE gambles $100,000,000 on a high risk venture without some assurance of a return. Skyrim SOLD upwards of 20,000,000 10,000,000 retail copies the first year or so. At $60.00 a copy, that's $600,000,000 in revenue. Two years ago. Bethesda admits Skyrim did better than they anticipated. Piracy notwithstanding, Skyrim made a relatively immediate gross return of 6:1. Of course, Bethesda didn't get all of the retail sales, but I don't hear them claiming to have lost money on Skyrim. Consider, as well, that DRM only works for a few days before the typical game is cracked. Skyrim sold millions of copies at full retail AFTER pirates cracked the game. The question, for Skyrim, is not how much money was LOST (none, the game made a profit) to piracy, but how much profit do you need to make compared to a $100,000,000 investment somewhere else? 3%? 10%? 600%? 1% profit on $600,000,000 is $6,000,000. Profit. After all costs are considered. Money in the bank. Party coin. If Bethesda "did better than anticipated" with Skyrim, its not hard to imagine their profits were in-line with, or exceeded, those of similar investments. $100,000,000 can generate investment returns of many tens of percents per year, so I assume Bethesda did better than that, even up to or exceeding 100%. Even in the midst of game wrecking piracy. Let's say pirates d/l'd 10,000,000 copies and didn't buy the game. (They didn't need Steam to play it, either.) Bethesda went from a potential12:1 return, to 6:1. That's a ridiculous amount of piracy, but you can see what I'm getting at. The point here is that a good product will generate good revenue because a sufficient number of honest gamers will actually buy that product. I'm sick of hearing the rationalization that game studios "lose" money because of piracy. The fact is that GOOD products sell, INFERIOR products do not, and piracy simply impacts, if anything, the level of PROFIT on good games. Most people are NOT pirates, do NOT d/l torrents, and will spend money to play a good game. If it were otherwise, there wouldn't be a game market. Period. Game publishers KNOW this. They KNOW a viable market exists, else they wouldn't participate in the first place. They aren't stupid. Like ALL retailers, they check markets, do surveys, analyze spending habits, etc, etc, etc, BEFORE committing to a "risky" endeavor. The publishers DEMAND it, or do it themselves; it's their money on the line. The only unknowns are final quality and user perceptions of the actual product, just like in every other retail business. If piracy were actually "game breaking", we simply wouldn't have games. Is piracy bad? YES. Its wrong. Its illegal. Its a criminal act. And it has nothing to do with technology; its a social issue. It will not be solved by technology. Why then, do we have DRM? Beyond the massive profits which entertainment media generates in the world, lies the realm of unrealized profit. A potential gain. A few percent of massive profit is significant money. Yes, I honestly believe DRM is a result of greed, not actual losses (don't confuse LOSS with REDUCED PROFIT). "Awwwoooouuuhhh, we LOSE millions of dollars a year to piracy, aaaahhhhuuu." No. You MAKE hundreds of millions of dollars a year in spite of the piracy. Instead of dealing with known market issues and punishing the criminal elements, studios attempt to craft legislation against ignorance (many users are clueless and see a pirated torrent as just a file they can d/l) and basic human nature (some criminal proclivity) by imposing restrictions and necessity only upon those who DON'T participate in piracy. Pirates aren't impacted by Steam TOS and user agreements which nullify user rights. Pirates don't run unnecessary and intrusive Steam clients. ONLY HONEST, LEGAL GAMERS ARE ADVERSELY IMPACTED BY DRM. Pirates crack a game and move on. Honest gamers who spend money are forced to give up consumer rights, load unwanted software, and are forcibly required to maintain a relationship with a 3'rd party company they wouldn't spit on to save from burning. People extoll the "virtues" of Steam; chat, image share, digital d/l, etc. If you simply reflect for two seconds, you realize that NONE of those "virtues" are unique to Steam. In fact, most of them are better accomplished by standalone programs. ANY cloud or storage site (thousands of them) is accessible from anywhere. I mean the Nexus incorporates many of the "virtues" attributed to Steam. Its simply beyond me why anyone would voluntarily register with Steam. In fact, they probably wouldn't, except for the drm requirement to do so. THAT'S why I hate Steam. Of course, it could be argued that Steam allowed a large percentage of initial Skyrim sales. Possibly, but digital distribution doesn't need Steam; Bethesda could have offered it or contracted someone else (Hey, Nexus...) Gamers would have found Skyrim wherever it was offered. EDIT: typo

^^ Look, I don't want to hijack this thread. If you read my first post, you'd know why I don't like Steam. It has nothing to do with a "pop-up". OP: Sorry I went OT, I just don't like Steam, either. I have no idea how to convince a game studio that making lower profit margins by not using Steam is a good idea. There aren't enough Steam-haters to matter, one way or another. EDIT: Well, I actually do have one idea; crowd-funding. Although Steam-haters are an insignificant portion of Steam customers, a small studio could probably do a reasonable business with them. And, potential customers (contributors) could set basic guidelines. Real, non-intrusive drm. No spyware, ad-ware, malware. Optional software, not bundled. Etc, etc. The only thing that will get the monopolistic digital distributor's attention is a real effort. Like Star Citizen.

Please click on the "How To Ask For Help" link in my sig; we need a little more info to help. Do you use a mod manager, like NMM or Mod Organizer (MO)? In Steam, do you have the Steam Cloud service on? That will restore your savegames from the cloud, which might not be the ones you want. Fire up Skyrim from Steam the next time you start up your computer. Look at DATA FILES from the Launcher options. Make sure all your mods are checked (active). If not, check all the boxes-->OKAY, then QUIT the Launcher. Fire up Skyrim from Steam again and look at DATA FILES; are all the mods still checked?

Then wait for the sales, there is like one every 2-3 months, with three huge ones with a good gap between. Well, I'm not looking for deals on Steam; I don't do business with them at all. I had to wait for the Legendary Edition disc release just to get the Skyrim DLC. Look, I'm not "complaining", just stating my opinions of Valve\Steam. I'm actually more saddened than angry that I miss almost all Steamworks games; the only ones I have were either a gift from family (Skyrim), or a couple from friends who wanted to do multi-player with someone they knew. I just cannot bring myself to send money to an organization like Steam, or studios that use them, no matter how badly I want some of their games. It is a losing battle and I know it; I'll soon be an ex-gamer. I'll see how Star Citizen plays (gotta get my Lancer out into the unknown), but this is likely my last gaming rig. The enjoyment I get from games is no longer worth the compromises I have to make, and the hassles I have to go through, in dealing with companies like Steam.

When the host offered me a mead at his Christmas party, and I thought of asking him for juniper berries in it.

EDIT: Lest the following be misinterpreted, its just my opinion on the topic at hand. With all due respect to bben, Steam is not "DRM". It's a way to distribute a game without media production, distribution, and transportation costs, yet still charge users $60.00 for that game and not pass the savings on to players. It's a way to cut out middlemen (your local software store), keep their "cut", and not pass the savings on to players. Its a legal way to obtain a monopolistic (>70%, usually 100%) share of a market. Its a way to obtain all the benefits of selling something, with zero responsibility to consumers (read their fine print). Its a way to collect marketing data from software, ostensibly called "drm", on every gaming computer out there. Its a way to advertise and market to a captive customer base. Its a way to avoid normal market forces (competition) and dictate terms to a helpless market segment. Its a way to prevent the legal selling of a used game (yes, you can legally sell physical media). OF COURSE they can have great sales; they generate huge profit margins compared to other distribution methods (CD/DVD at a local store). Their "sale" prices STILL make them money, and probably indicates how cheap their platform actually makes game publishing and distribution. There may be ways to defend Valve\Steam, but its certainly NOT by calling them a drm provider; they are anything but that. They simply use "drm" as an excuse to get away with things that a real business would not be allowed to do. Especially by consumers with a choice. We have no choice, so Valve\Steam gets away with anything. Try to "return" a game and get a cash refund; their "products" don't even have to work. Neither does their "activation" system which allows you to play a purchased game (again, read their fine print). All the benefits, no responsibility. Sounds like a good business model to me. All this IMHO, of course. Wait...what's that sound? Oh, its Gabe and crew laughing all the way to the bank.

The OP is looking for the OFFICIAL game patch, which Steam automatically applies. Only one reason they wouldn't have it...

Lol. Quit feeding...

As mentioned, a texture is a 2D image applied to a 3D object. The main consideration is how to get a piece of the 2D image to cover the desired portion of the 3D mesh. What is needed is a "map"; something telling the game where to put a portion of the image (texture) on a portion of the mesh. Something called a "u-v map" does this in Skyrim. The most important part of texturing a mesh, IMHO, is making that u-v map. This tutorial goes into it, but I would recommend getting Blender and playing around with simple object textures before trying to texture an actual game mesh. Blender has a useful function called Texture Painting which allows you to paint an image onto a mesh, using a u-v map that you create or that came with the mesh, and save the resulting texture. Note that texturing almost always involves an image distortion (the flat texture image looks really strange) because it is a representation of a 3D "skin", so to speak. That distortion is why a normal camera image is difficult to map onto a head/face mesh. Imagine cutting a basketball up and laying the thin material flat on a table so you can see the entire surface (front and back) of the ball all at once. Now you photograph all the flat pieces, print the image, cut it up, and glue the pieces on a plain ball to make it look like a basketball. You would have to place the cut up image pieces in a certain place on the plain ball to make them fit even closely (a perfect fit is impossible). That's sorta what a u-v map does for a texture and a mesh; tells the game's render engine what goes where. The above example shows that you will probably need several photographs of a head (front and back, at least) to create a game texture for a 3D head/face mesh. Not really a "problem", just takes some work.

I'm on Win7... I've done many coc whiterun(blahblah) for testing and not had a CTD issue. ON A VANILLA GAME INSTALL... The first thing I'd do is camaro's SKSE+SKSE.ini mem patch install. I mean, it fixes a known CTD bug. WARNING: (This modifies system files; use cautiously.) There's lots of talk on other game forums about Win8/8.1 and DirectX. You might try running Skyrim\DirectX10\DXSETUP.exe to make sure you have the old DX stuff needed by Skyrim installed on Win8.1. Regardless of outcome, I would then run whatever DXDiag utility might come with 8.1 to make sure nothing's broken. I would also check your HW manufacturer sites and see if there are any Win8/8.1 specific drivers you might need.

I usually play mages and that's one of the best ideas I've seen in a while. :thumbsup: +1 Even Gandalf whacks people with his staff now and then. EDIT: And Zerb; you needn't apologize for your English, its better than many native speakers.

You mean other than the obvious similarity to most religions and mythologies on Earth? Don't know. Seems to be a recurring theme, though.