Sepherose Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 If I want to play a game, I shouldn't have to activate it online. End of story. There is no reason at all that if you buy a game you should be forced to use a third party service that you have to activate it on. I have nothing against Steam, as I have not used it. I'm just saying I will refuse to be forced to do so, and thus will not buy the game (on PC at least, since they don't do it on consoles... yet.) Also, the argument of no internet does not fall short. Some people don't have enough money to afford to pay the internet bills along with cable and their phoneline, be it landline or cell. If you rent a house, that also adds on to costs. And what about buying games as well? You need money for that as well, along with food and other things like electricity. We rent our home, and pay our utilities. We pull in less than $2K a month, we don't have cable ($7.99 netflix stream service instead), and we have a cheap phone plan for a cell. We aren't starving. And we can afford, without hurting our household, a 12 mb/s internet connection, and no, it is not on a special deal. As for having to verify your install online, which would you rather have? A somewhat annoying, very non-intrusive DRM, that requires a one time online activation? Or a draconian system that requires you to be online all the time, at which point if servers fail or you lose your internet for any reason, you can not play? The arguments here against a one time online activation all fall short anyway, as everyone here involved has internet capable of sending a key and receiving a confirmation from the server, a few KB of information. And as for purchasing games, save and plan to be able to buy them, and you can avoid hurting your living situation. A few bucks a month towards it is all you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iv000 Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 (edited) I have to agree with LordFrostcraig, only thing I disagree with is not buying a game because of steam, but that's my opinion. Also let me add, that in some countries there aren't great internet connections available to the public for a reasonable price.Here in Croatia the best I can get is a 480 kb/s connection for 35$ a month. Anything faster then 500 kb/s with unlimited bandwidth is just too expensive. Edited August 4, 2011 by Iv000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sepherose Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 I have to agree with LordFrostcraig, only thing I disagree with is not buying a game because of steam, but that's my opinion. Also let me add, that in some countries there aren't great internet connections available to the public for a reasonable price.Here in Croatia the best I can get is a 480 kb/s connection for 35$ a month. Anything faster then 500 kb/s with unlimited bandwidth is just too expensive. I did state specifically in the US, I won't claim to know other places in the world on that level, but I do absolutely believe you on that. But still, a connection like that is still good enough to register a key with Steam. you don't have to install the initial patch (I would suggest it still), but even then, it takes a while, it's not impossible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iv000 Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 I did state specifically in the US, I won't claim to know other places in the world on that level, but I do absolutely believe you on that. But still, a connection like that is still good enough to register a key with Steam. you don't have to install the initial patch (I would suggest it still), but even then, it takes a while, it's not impossible. I'm using steam daily.I have absolutely no problems with it, but it does take a few hours to download a multiple GB game.It's not a problem at all, but as said, some people don't like activating things online, I'm not really one of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeopoldCrank Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 The problem is that, generally, you do have to install initial patches. I remember when I bought Empire: Total War for the first time, and I got it home, activated it on Steam and was confronted by a multi-GB download that I couldn't by-pass. I didn't play that game until the start of this year when I actually got internet that could download such a file and in Australia, on the fastest plan we could find, it still took 9 hours to do. Surely if I have the disk, that should be enough. If it was just activation, I wouldn't mind. It's the forced updating to play that I can't stand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halororor Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 I have to agree with LordFrostcraig, only thing I disagree with is not buying a game because of steam, but that's my opinion. Also let me add, that in some countries there aren't great internet connections available to the public for a reasonable price.Here in Croatia the best I can get is a 480 kb/s connection for 35$ a month. Anything faster then 500 kb/s with unlimited bandwidth is just too expensive. Well, I'm paying $30 for a 386kb/s connection. Max download speeds usually varies between 30 and 40kb/s. As an example, I'm going to download Fear 1 next, and together with the expansions, that's about 17gb. If I leave it downloading over the weekend, I should be able to pull about 6 - 8gb, then the rest should finish late Tuesday night or somewhere during the day on Wednesday. :P Even with that, I still love Steam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iv000 Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 I have to agree with LordFrostcraig, only thing I disagree with is not buying a game because of steam, but that's my opinion. Also let me add, that in some countries there aren't great internet connections available to the public for a reasonable price.Here in Croatia the best I can get is a 480 kb/s connection for 35$ a month. Anything faster then 500 kb/s with unlimited bandwidth is just too expensive. Well, I'm paying $30 for a 386kb/s connection. Max download speeds usually varies between 30 and 40kb/s. As an example, I'm going to download Fear 1 next, and together with the expansions, that's about 17gb. If I leave it downloading over the weekend, I should be able to pull about 6 - 8gb, then the rest should finish late Tuesday night or somewhere during the day on Wednesday. :P Even with that, I still love Steam. I'm considering myself lucky after I read that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginnyfizz Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 It's still a pain in the derriere for the fact that Steam is not all that configurable, and my concern for Skyrim is the fact that with Steam we will be force patched (I have tried everything to order Steam not to autoupdate New Vegas but it still does it). The offline mode is not infallible. So we are going to get the dubious pleasure of the patches that break more than they fix. Wonderful. Not to mention the fact that every time Steam updates the game we are going to have to muck around with the ini files if we have mods, just like we do with New Vegas. Oh joy. Just look at the Type 3 New Vegas thread for the sort of issues caused. And yep, I do have fast LAN connection in case you ask. And I STILL don't like Steam. Funny how if you downloaded The Witcher 2 from GOG.com they could make it DRM free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vagrant0 Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 Unfortunately, ALL DRM being used right now require some sort of online verification. That's the breaks. It's not the best system out there, but it's not the worse, and you're right, players don't have much say in the matter. They will still likely buy the game, and activate it through steam though. The customers they make or keep using a system like steam outweigh the number of people people who likely won't buy the game just because of steam. It's business, and to a certain degree, it's one of the reasons why PC gaming will remain even slightly viable as more and more companies move towards console ports. The sad truth is that this is where things are headed. You can either fight it futily, adjust your situation to where it is no longer a problem, or instead spend money on indie games and others which have limited or no DRM. But um... If you look around, nearly every game that is out there tries to connect for patches and other stuffs.. Even indie games. As for the whole "We can't block updates on steam" argument... Hate to tell you... But it's working, and you can. Right click game in library > properties > updates > "Do not automatically update this game". Tried it for TF2 (since it updates almost daily) and sure enough, no updates were installed until I set it to update again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaroncox Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 i live in the mountains of western north carolina. where i live we have 2 options for internet. Hughes Net which cost 300 dollars to install the satalite, and 150 dollars per month (too expensive. ) or the only other option. which i got. average speed 20kb-25kb a sec. i just finished downloading shogun 2 total war off steam. took me a whole month 18gb leaving it running 24 hours a day. do i like steam? the cons outweigh the pros. i don't mind the once online activation , but if i have to re download updates to skyrim constantly like i do with shogun, there will be complete weeks where i'm doing nothing but update. And for those people that continue to believe that everywhere in the usa has great internet options, they are wrong. I went from having cable to what i have now. It was a huge downgrade. I can't watch anything on youtube anymore, without letting it load for an hour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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