arahfeks Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 I don't know anything about Steam. What I am worried about is what if Steam goes bellyup? Will we still be able to play Skyrim? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kendo 2 Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Steam IS useless. If I want to track my game progress or that of my friends I have Xfire. If I want to commincate with them as I play again I have Xfire. If I want mods I have Nexus. If I have questions about game play or I need troubleshooting help AGAIN I have Nexus. And then I have Steam, that doesn't do anything but sit there and WAIT for me to let it get into my clean system so it can install pointless Steam updates for crap I'll never use (Steam Screenshot Manager, wtf the game already takes screenshots) OR for it to cram yet another game-breaking 'Bugthesda Softworks' update down my throat the minute I let my guard down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnArcticAnt Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 I don't know anything about Steam. What I am worried about is what if Steam goes bellyup? Will we still be able to play Skyrim? On one hand, they have no reason not to activate any safeguards they have should they fail (that I can think of, anyway), but on the other, they have no reason or contractual obligation to save your game data either, should it come to happen... just sayin'. Beware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Handofbane Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 I don't know anything about Steam. What I am worried about is what if Steam goes bellyup? Will we still be able to play Skyrim?As mentioned earlier, Valve has stated repeatedly, via Steam customer support as well as in various magazines and forums that Steam will simply disable its protection/locks and not require an authentication/login anymore. This does mean you will need to make your own backups for reinstallation, but it will not prevent you from playing any of your games. One moderator over at Steam quoted on it. @TheNiceNightmare - as far as why the choice of Steam was made, likely because they used it for New Vegas (though not Steamworks), and other developers have been leaning toward making it the distributor of choice because it does make patching easier and more uniform from the dev's side of things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeadSpace Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 doesn't help anyone if steam servers go offline with no forewarning due circumstances beyond valves control. or you losing the internet for some reason. *sigh* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brittainy Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 (edited) If I pay for a legitimate copy of the game, I don't want to be harassed. When it gets to the stage where legitimate copies of games involve more trouble than they're worth, I'll just stop paying for them and ...shall we say...'acquire' them via other means.See, there is the part that baffles the hell out of me - where exactly is anyone being harassed here? I see complaints that "Oh I have to give up my personal information!", well guess what, you don't really. You can make a throw-away hotmail or yahoo email account, create your Steam account linked to that (just write the info down someplace), and never get any kind of emails... not that I have received a single piece of spam to my real email since registering with them. The complaint of "They have intrusive ads every time I open Steam or close the game!" - as was pointed out several times elsewhere, you can disable those ads and never see another one again, as well as have Steam open directly to your owned games instead of the store page. Then there is "Oh no, it's using all my system resources!" - yet I can open my task manager at any time and see that Steam is using such a negligible amount of RAM/CPU cycles that even my passive Antivirus or leaving Firefox open to Google without searching for anything uses more... are people who make this complaint running their games on an Etch-a-Sketch? Even the Steam Store does not update itself unless you are opening Steam fresh after booting up, or go in and click directly on the "Featured Items" link within it. Now I am not coming out here saying Steam is all perfect or anything, I do find it quite annoying that it updated Skyrim despite auto-updates being disabled (I am online with Steam most of the time, as it also saves having to set up an IM service which would use just as much resource power, not to mention would guarantee having ads), but I also expected to have to update eventually anyway. So I reiterate, where is Steam harassing anyone? Has Valve sent a group of their employees to your house, kicked your pets, beaten your parents, gotten you fired from your job and dated your sister? If you don't like it, fine, but when some people are willing to go full-on drama-queen about how terrible it is that they have to use a piece of software to run another piece of software, there is a serious need to reevaluate priorities. After all, I don't see anyone griping that their game may require Visual C, or .NET, or any other additional bits of third-party software cranked out by Microsoft (or whoever else). Alright, I should have use 'hassled' rather than 'harassed'. My apologies for that. I don't want to f*** around with additional software when I'm installing / using a game. I don't want my gaming to be reliant - even as a one-off - on the internet. Especially when it comes down to literally NOT being able to install something because I lack an internet connection. I don't want to be stuck with an incredibly invasive and highly dubious privacy agreement - particularly when it involves any sort of scanning of my hard drive. I don't want to be forced to use updates which may or may not break my game. And before you say to use offline mode - I was forced to update the game as soon as I installed it - never even got a chance (despite several attempts to work around it) to install / activate the game and get offline before it would initiate an update. (Mind you, this was with automatic updating turned OFF.) In short, I consider it a hassle when something is pointlessly complicated beyond what it needs to be. If you can accept this sort of thing, great. You're extremely lucky. Up until GTA IV and Skyrim, my gaming experience has been pleasantly uncomplicated. No online registration, no third party-software, no internet connection required, no headaches from forced patching, no frustration from failed activation, no trouble with forced updates freezing. I wish you luck with your gaming. I intend to keep mine simple and that means no more bulls*** like Steam. :thumbsup: Edited December 19, 2011 by Brittainy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keastkannegaard Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Ofc no kind of pirate protecting would be best, but let me ask you, how many of you let your unlocked car stay in the middle of a big city with the car keys in it? and how many of you do expect the car the still be there when you come back 2 days later? That's basicly what you are asking all the developers to do and ofc that's not going to happen. I see Steam as the best solution, even tho steam got huge flaws, but what are the alternative? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einarth Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 I see Steam as the best solution, even tho steam got huge flaws, but what are the alternative? There are plenty of copy protection methods available - cd check, serial, drm, dongles, keys generated based on hardware profiles, etc. - and none work. They could have chosen a less invasive solution (any non-drm protection) and spent more time paying attention to their Dostoyevskyian bugs list instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brittainy Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Ofc no kind of pirate protecting would be best, but let me ask you, how many of you let your unlocked car stay in the middle of a big city with the car keys in it? and how many of you do expect the car the still be there when you come back 2 days later? That's basicly what you are asking all the developers to do and ofc that's not going to happen. I see Steam as the best solution, even tho steam got huge flaws, but what are the alternative? Only trouble with that analogy is that Steam / DRM / alternate forms of protection don't work in the first place. :whistling: It's a useless token gesture, so yes they might as well just hand out the keys because all they're doing is pissing off legitimate users. Steam does nothing to stop piracy. It's not a solution at all. It's fluff. You can find Skyrim on any torrent site. And last time I checked Skyrim netted about $650 million profit. Supposedly it outsold all other PC games three to one during the month of November. Even if you assumed only a small portion of the overall profit was for the PC version, it's still a huge chunk of cash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einarth Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Oh great, now Skyrim won't start anymore... but that useless Steam garbage runs perfectly. Damn you Bethesda! Guess it's time for me to uninstall this game (AND STEAM) and go back playing Oblivion. Anyone wants a Skyrim DVD, for free? Huh, on second though... never mind, I had to register and validate the game on Steam as part of the installation. Now the DVD is practically useless and I can't even transfer my account as per Valve's TOS. I'm done with Bethesda and their future products. /rant off Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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