Skyrim and Steam...

[ginnyfizz]

Quote from pineapplerum;-

 

"For me, it was nice not to have to go hunting for a patch to the game when one was available and especially when I didn't even know one was available..whereas others find it annoying that they install the patches automatically through Steam. Isn't there a way to disable that? I would think. I don't know. "

 

You really like to install patches without knowing what's in them? You really assume that they are going to be any good, given previous experiences with Bethesda patches? For many people, the 1.2 Skyrim patch was a seriously game wrecking experience. Bethesda patches frequently are. Personally I would rather search for a patch than have it imposed on me.

 

Many of us who bought FONV did not enjoy the Steam experience, due in large part to the fact that during that experience we found out that actually Steam is NOT really configurable, and even if you set it to "Do not automatically update this game" it does it anyway. But we learned from that and found that keeping Steam offline and taking ownership of the Steam folder were possible. So we went ahead and bought Skyrim, the impression having been given that we would only need Steam to activate the game.

 

Then we had the issue of the unannounced, "ninja" 1.1 patch, which I got lemoned with during a brief period of Steam being online whilst checking something on another game. This made it so that you had to be logged into Steam to play the game at all, although you could be logged into Steam offline mode. It also made you unable to set the LAA flag on the TESV.exe yourself, using CFF Explorer, hence making the game unplayable for many people with 64 bit OS and more than 4GB RAM.

 

Thus, with the combination of Steam and Bethesda being economical with the actuality and people getting their games wrecked, when people get told "Can't understand why you're having problems" they see a red mist. For example, I can't count how many people have said on the official forums that you must have a crap rig if you are having issues. When actually it is people with up to date rugs that are having some of the biggest issues.

[spikies]

All I know is I purchased Skyrim, went to register it and got a message from Steam stating "our forums are unavailable at this moment" our servers have been hacked and at this time we don't know what, if any, customer information has been compromised (or something of the sort) we appologize for the inconvenience. Now, if you were trying to go into your Steam account on 11/11, 11/12, or 11/13, you know what I'm saying is true. So, tell me, a company that can not keep secure it's own information is going to secure mine? I did not become a Steam customer by choice, it was imposed on me. And you think I should not be bothered by that because there's "no privacy in the internet". Look, really, I need to get out of this thread and not waste my time.

[Handofbane]

So, tell me, a company that can not keep secure it's own information is going to secure mine? I did not become a Steam customer by choice, it was imposed on me. And you think I should not be bothered by that because there's "no privacy in the internet". Look, really, I need to get out of this thread and not waste my time.

Just curious, have you ever registered/bought a product from Sony online? Had a Youtube account through Google? Facebook? Bought something through Amazon recently? Because all those companies were also hacked this year to some degree, having consumer information snatched up (whether it was encrypted or not and how well depends on who was hit). I am not saying it is right, or "absolutely will happen no matter who you go through", but this is a given risk of posting your personal information online in any form through any company. There is no such thing as an internet "safe button" that makes any single person immune to all risk of some malicious person out there trying to acquire data on them for whatever purposes through whatever means. Valve at least was up front about it, and determined which parts of their data was hit as well as acknowledged most of the vital data was encrypted heavily so was at lower risk, though they did urge folks to take basic safety measures like changing passwords as soon as possible and so on.

 

If anyone cannot accept that there is an inherent risk in contact with any company via the internet, they need to unplug their modem and lock their doors, because there will always be people out there smarter than you with no inhibitions about wanting to steal your money/information/whatever, and the only way to be 100% safe is just not allow yourself to exist in the virtual world that is the internet. Good luck with that, by the way, as simple things such as having a bank account, credit card, or even registering for a Driver's License/State ID will put some of your details in a position to be accessed online. Everyone is always at risk for such things, this is an undeniable fact, but it is just as much on the user as it is the companies to take what steps they can to make things harder for hackers and whoever else to access that information.

 

Hell, even the Bethesda official forums got hacked not too long ago - while that may not contain things like credit card info, it can link your ID to an email account, which opens you up to phishing attempts and such to get further information out of you.

[AbleGnome]

So, tell me, a company that can not keep secure it's own information is going to secure mine? I did not become a Steam customer by choice, it was imposed on me. And you think I should not be bothered by that because there's "no privacy in the internet". Look, really, I need to get out of this thread and not waste my time.

Just curious, have you ever registered/bought a product from Sony online? Had a Youtube account through Google? Facebook? Bought something through Amazon recently? Because all those companies were also hacked this year to some degree, having consumer information snatched up (whether it was encrypted or not and how well depends on who was hit). I am not saying it is right, or "absolutely will happen no matter who you go through", but this is a given risk of posting your personal information online in any form through any company. There is no such thing as an internet "safe button" that makes any single person immune to all risk of some malicious person out there trying to acquire data on them for whatever purposes through whatever means. Valve at least was up front about it, and determined which parts of their data was hit as well as acknowledged most of the vital data was encrypted heavily so was at lower risk, though they did urge folks to take basic safety measures like changing passwords as soon as possible and so on.

 

If anyone cannot accept that there is an inherent risk in contact with any company via the internet, they need to unplug their modem and lock their doors, because there will always be people out there smarter than you with no inhibitions about wanting to steal your money/information/whatever, and the only way to be 100% safe is just not allow yourself to exist in the virtual world that is the internet. Good luck with that, by the way, as simple things such as having a bank account, credit card, or even registering for a Driver's License/State ID will put some of your details in a position to be accessed online. Everyone is always at risk for such things, this is an undeniable fact, but it is just as much on the user as it is the companies to take what steps they can to make things harder for hackers and whoever else to access that information.

 

Hell, even the Bethesda official forums got hacked not too long ago - while that may not contain things like credit card info, it can link your ID to an email account, which opens you up to phishing attempts and such to get further information out of you.

 

I worry every time time I hand my credit card to a restaurant waiter. But I have a choice beforehand to pay in cash if I want, thus controlling my own security and experience. Not so with Steam.

 

Valve/Steam was not direct in letting us know beforehand what we were in for. Sure their system runs very well....but it is standing between us and our freedom to use our product as we see fit. They turned a validation solution into a major business solution that involves hijacking our games.

 

I say "hijacking" because we all EXPECT that the things we purchase we own to do with as we will. Steam breaks this trust by fooling us into thinking this is about activation, when it is really about holding hostage our entire gaming experience.

 

I can't believe that some people don't see how victimized they are. This is why the U.S. is in the political state it is in. People seem to just not want to THINK.

 

IMO.

[Brittainy]

So, tell me, a company that can not keep secure it's own information is going to secure mine? I did not become a Steam customer by choice, it was imposed on me. And you think I should not be bothered by that because there's "no privacy in the internet". Look, really, I need to get out of this thread and not waste my time.

Just curious, have you ever registered/bought a product from Sony online? Had a Youtube account through Google? Facebook? Bought something through Amazon recently? Because all those companies were also hacked this year to some degree, having consumer information snatched up (whether it was encrypted or not and how well depends on who was hit). I am not saying it is right, or "absolutely will happen no matter who you go through", but this is a given risk of posting your personal information online in any form through any company. There is no such thing as an internet "safe button" that makes any single person immune to all risk of some malicious person out there trying to acquire data on them for whatever purposes through whatever means. Valve at least was up front about it, and determined which parts of their data was hit as well as acknowledged most of the vital data was encrypted heavily so was at lower risk, though they did urge folks to take basic safety measures like changing passwords as soon as possible and so on.

 

If anyone cannot accept that there is an inherent risk in contact with any company via the internet, they need to unplug their modem and lock their doors, because there will always be people out there smarter than you with no inhibitions about wanting to steal your money/information/whatever, and the only way to be 100% safe is just not allow yourself to exist in the virtual world that is the internet. Good luck with that, by the way, as simple things such as having a bank account, credit card, or even registering for a Driver's License/State ID will put some of your details in a position to be accessed online. Everyone is always at risk for such things, this is an undeniable fact, but it is just as much on the user as it is the companies to take what steps they can to make things harder for hackers and whoever else to access that information.

 

Hell, even the Bethesda official forums got hacked not too long ago - while that may not contain things like credit card info, it can link your ID to an email account, which opens you up to phishing attempts and such to get further information out of you.

 

With all due respect, Handofbane, I EXPECT my privacy to be trashed when I'm online. That's not an issue. I'm not stupid enough to put anything on FB or another site which I want to keep private. I don't trust anything on that front.

 

However, single-player, offline gaming I do NOT want to sod about going online for. I want to buy the DVD, install the game, and never go online. That is simple, that is reasonable. Any mods, online communities or such that I might get involved with are a CHOICE.

 

Steam isn't a choice. It's highly invasive. And it's ultimately completely pointless.

 

I completely agree that it's a choice what we risk or don't risk online in general. However, I will NEVER agree that it's necessary or useful when it comes to gaming. Buy, install, play. Great.

 

Online registration, 3rd party software - no thanks.

 

The basic game should be simple and easy to install. No online bulls***.

 

Any modifications we choose to make or download for the game are a risk which is our own choice. Same as using Google, FB, etc.

 

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.

Edited December 19, 2011 by Brittainy

[Handofbane]

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).

[CrisG9]

I have been a supporter and deep appreciator of Bethesda titles for many years, from the early days of Sea Dogs, thru Morrowind, Oblvion and have been involved in both studying and modding them. I also research and study game development and 3D worlds across many genres and platforms and a wide variety of uses. The challenges of distribution and piracy and patching have been with the industry for decades. Steam was one attempt to deal with some of these issues. So was Starforce. Both are deeply flawed, deeply invasive of the users interface and deeply destructive to the trust and mutual faith that develops between responsible game developers and thoughtful and appreciative fans and gamers.

 

This is a crisis and the solution will be to cease use of Steam by any decent developers. It is an attempt that did not work, it might have but it didn't. I hope it does not take Skyrim down with it. Any experienced and observant person will see that there are attempts being made to whitewash this and silence the concern...i agree with this poster 100 percent:

 

I have been following this thread for the last couple of days. The more I read the more I see between the lines. (Conspiracy theorist at work :blush: ) I am wondering if Beth is catching so much heat from the gaming community that perhaps Steam is starting to get some heat from Beth. So in the interest of damage control just maybe some Steam employees are getting paid to troll community boards in order to try to sway public interest.

 

Third party hosting of game reasources and espcially of any form of game editor, i was shocked to read that the Construction Set for Skyrim may be forced thru Steam, shows totaly lack of faith in the game community and contempt for our interest in supporting and improving and adding to titles through our efforts. The many thousands of greatly creative mods for Morrowind and Oblivion would have been impossible if the CS had been dependent on a faulty and flawed update process that was server dependent and required and demanded internet access. Contrary to the IT morlocks who are trying to force the entire planet into one big social network, not all of us choose to be ONLINE to do our entire lives.

 

I am glad that the game industry realized the farce that Starforce was and I believe soon they will send Steam to the same dead end of perdition. The faults and flaws of Steam are clear. The solution is that we who ARE the gaming community will vote with our feet, as we walk away from it. Not hopefully from the games and the series like the Elder Scrolls series that we love and support but from flawed and fatal distribution strategies that serve only the third party networks....from them we should and can turn away.

[Tardivex]

Just an example at how steam sucks, buy the humble indie bundle 4 (if you haven't already) and redeem your games on steam, download them there, install, play the first level... now go and use the direct download, install, then play the first level. You will see a LOT of diference, first of all steam crashes from time to time while downloading those games (god knows why) then it crashes when the download is finished, then it crashes when you try to play your game for the first time, then it "finishes" the instalation when you click play and expect the game to be ready for the obvious, and it forces DirectX9 or 10 wich are outdated if you haven't knew already wich just takes your time, while you can use the direct download and install your game and shortly after just 2 click your game icon wich will launch it imediatly without this bs of "preparing to launch" everytime you want to play your friggin' game, and ALSO again, you have to stay connected to play an offline game, wait what? :facepalm: Yeah so if your internet is down or something and you want to have fun offline, too bad you can't :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm:

[Hanker109]

Software companies have many ways to protect their products and I don't see why Bethesda needs to have a "Middleman" to handle that problem. Microsoft sells more software than any other company in the world and knows very well how to protect themselves. If I know that, they know it too. I think that there is more that the eye can see. I think is possible they are planning in leasing the game instead of selling it, that way you may be required to renew or pay for playing every so often. I notice that "Steam" is constantly tracking the hours you've been playing. Everyone knows that Oblivion is still going full steam after so many years, check the Oblivion Nexus and see the amount of mods added almost everyday. One more thing, I hate waiting a one and a half hour of downloads and having so many file structures in the game, sometimes is confusing. Sorry if I have offended someone.

[AnArcticAnt]

Maybe I, while doing my best to read every single post here, missed the answer, or found it and then forgot about it, but there's still one simple question looming in the back of my head here...

 

WHY STEAM? What incentive does the gamer have to use Steam? I fail to see them, someone please point them out to me. It clearly isn't privacy or freedom, heh. Is it community? If I want a Skyrim community, I got a lovely, sprawling, highly active forum right here. Is it convenience? The hassle a lot of people are having with the software should stand equally heavy with the hassle others have of "losing discs", so I'm not sure how this works out in any gamer's favour.

 

WHY STEAM? What incentive does the developer have to use Steam? I fail to see them, someone please point them out to me. I'm not here to endorse, support, or facilitate piracy, but it should be clear to any company, any corporation, any business interests involved, that Steam as a DRM solution is ineffectual at best, and exacerbation at worst by now... or? Maybe desperate times call for desperate measures, but publishers are only bringing themselves to ruin by giving people reason to pirate their games instead. Despite Skyrim being incredibly buggy at release, I have faith in Bethesda ironing those out eventually, if they are at all able to. As far as I know (again, feel free to prove me wrong here), this can, technically, be done with or without Steam. Well, the way things are right now they cannot effectively be delivered to us players without it, but on a coding level so to speak, Steam has no place in the functioning, developing, and improving of the game. Steam only has a place in the playing of the game, the use of the product by its purchasers, by forceful demand. Steam appears to exist purely because of Steam.

 

I have no problem with capitalistic systems done right (sure, I doubt anyone has any problem with anything being done right, but right probably only exists as a hypothetical concept anyway these days), and I support them. A good, or at least acceptable product (Skyrim, "the game") exists - and by proxy, its developers Bethesda, exists because gamers ("the users") will it to be so. Likewise, gamers in such form exist only because Bethesda will it to be so (they will be deprived of the product they want, were Bethesda's existence to cease), in a monetary symbiosis and harmony. Then capitalism's ugly, douchebag brother corporatism rears its disgusting head, and so Steam exists only because Steam wills it to be so, completely by its own volition, and continues to upset the harmony by raping both users and providers for its own, selfish needs. No one gains on Steam's existence, except obviously Steam itself.

 

Wow, quite a ramble up there, really needed to get that out of my system. Hope my point remains clear despite all this though. Steam is useless. Hopefully even its staunchest supporters, agreeing or not, read this and see why so many people feel Steam is useless.