Skyrim, Steam, and the mod shop

[Dukkah]

EDIT: I like how you ninja'd a presupposed like of Steam into the poll, OP. There are two options for "I like Steam" and the only dissenting option is "I've had bad experiences" LOL.

 

The second option is the neutral option. It's for those who couldn't care either way, but would prefer to be able to choose whether to use it or not.

The third option is for those who don't want to use Steam at all.

 

What do you want, and option for 'I don't want to use Steam' and 'I don't want to use Steam even more than the previous option'? If you don't want to use Steam, choose option 3. Seriously, people argue about the silliest things. :<

 

LOL wut?

 

Three things, friend:

 

1st, neutrality assumes a stance upon which neither side is taken, but "I like" is taking a side. An option opposed to 'like' would be 'dislike', but there is no such option. What we have is "I've had bad experiences" which is a true neutral position, since one can have a bad experience but still either like or dislike. Just because it's positioned in the middle, doesn't mean it's a neutral option. Therefore, there is not dissenting option; no "I don't like steam".

 

2nd,

 

I didn't mean to imply you meant any harm. I was just poking fun at ya :)

 

As made clear in this post, I wasn't arguing with him on the matter, since I didn't expect that he'd put a lot of time or effort into a simple poll. As stated above, I was just making a light-hearted jest.

 

Which leads me to 3:

 

Since I was just making a light-hearted jest, the only argument to arise here comes from your opposition to my post. But since you took the time to attempt a refutation of my position, it must not have been silly, no? Otherwise, you would have ignored it... Unless you regularly dedicate yourself to taking silly arguments seriously. Hey, I make no judgements on how you spend your time. ;)

 

No disrespect meant to you, of course. But if I take the time to respond to a post, I consider it an insult when what I say is dismissed as silly. Please be more careful with your words in the future.

[Syco21]

I like the community functions and the cheap games on Steam. The DRM and forced updates can kiss my ass.

 

If I could have a DRM free Skyrim with the option of having the community features of Steam with total control over the updates, I'd be in heaven.

 

On a side note, I really wish that Skyrim had a mid tier collector's edition like Fallout New Vegas. I freaking love that CE. The Oblivion CE was worth the cost for the coin alone. But alas, I no longer have my coin. I suspect that my grandmother found it and tossed it out. She was a religious zealot and felt it was sacrilegious. *sigh*

[spork542]

I like some aspects of Steam. For example, I like the occasional very low prices for games. I won't lie, I have many games on it since it's a very cost-effective means of getting games.

 

For games like Skyrim, though, I really don't like the idea. The auto-patching "feature" is really a bad idea for Bethesda games. Remember the dragons flying backwards? I do. Remember how you could tell it not to auto-update and it would do so anyway? I do. You could do a work-around, sure, but that's just terrible in terms of programming and work ethic if they wanted to make not updating an option and couldn't be bothered to actually make the option work. I don't want to be force-fed something that will make me vomit, and likewise I don't want to be forced to get poor-quality patches. We know how bad Steam support is. They just don't seem to care. Once they have your money, you're just another user who needs to be kept on a leash like all the good PC gamers.

 

I don't like the idea of the Steam Workshop thing, either. I don't think it was needed. It could bring some benefit, but I don't think it was worth integrating the game into the cesspool that is Steam.

 

Steam as copy protection? Don't make me laugh. Pirates can easily get Skyrim and they could do so pretty much when it was released, maybe earlier, I wasn't paying much attention. And guess what? They don't have to deal with being treated like criminals from the get-go. That's right: they don't need to run a resource-hogging worthless program to be able to play their game.

 

As for the things you mentioned at the beginning, I don't really see the value in those things. They can easily be done outside of Steam anyway.

 

Edit: I would have preferred the game without any silly copy protection schemes like Steam. As far as I'm concerned, any DRM more draconian than a simple disk check would be pretty much useless. Anyone who wants to pirate a game will do so anyway, and a simple disk check will stop many simple-minded users from doing things like sharing their game.

 

Edit 2: Looking at this post again, it might seem like I'm defending piracy. That's not the point. I support game companies and I don't do piracy. My point is that draconian DRM only hurts the people who actually buy the game. I made the same argument years ago about StarForce. Admittedly, Steam isn't as bad as StarForce.

Edited January 13, 2012 by spork542

[VaKhajDar]

as I stated on an other post:

 

"As a fact, I do not condone piracy, I pre-ordered Morrowind and addons, Oblivion and addons and Skyrim and do legally own every game I play ...

It is also a fact that I do not want any program forced up my *** and dislike steam and any DRM, they only bug legal customers like you and me and the "pirates" never have this problem...

 

Steam makes you not own your games anymore, the day they decide to "freeze" your account is the day you can forget to play any of the games that needs it.

I dislike the fact that a company has more power over the copy of a game I legally purchased than I do...

I dislike the fact that a company can force updates on me and not letting me decide if or not I update my legally purchased game...

I dislike the fact that I have to run unneeded and unwanted software to play my legally payed for games...

I dislike any program that requires to be online to set you want to play offline... What happens if I forget to pay my internets bill and they cut me off???"

 

 

Not to mention the fact they cheated me out of my first ever steam account and the games I had there, only to give up on their horrendus customer "service"...

 

so, what do you think I voted... lol

[Syco21]

To expand in the offline components mentioned in the above post. I do not have a home internet connection. I have to tether my phone to use Steam.

 

This is an issue for two reasons. One is that my phone can be finicky. Either I have troubles connecting due to network issues, or the USB cable gives out. But then there is also the issue of speed.

 

Because I live in the middle of nowhere, I am relegated to slow 3G speeds. It's enough for basic web use, surfing, occasional low quality Youtube videos, MSN, logging into Steam etc. But downloading large files is not really an option. It takes far too long and regularly dropped connections is a major pain. When there are too many connections running or the connection speeds max out for too long, the entire connection shuts down and has to be retarded. What this means is that while downloading updates, I'm not able to do anything else online.

 

So turn off auto updates, go into offline mode, yada yada. That's all fine and dandy, but Steam forces through silent updates all the time. And when they happen Steam resets your update settings. When you launch Steam with an internet connection, it'll automatically go into online mode. When installing Skyrim for the first time, you can not disable automatic updates and you have to go online to verify, even if you have done so already. Which means forced updates. Which means something that should only take about 30 minutes at most to complete normally, now takes an entire day. Let's not forget the day one update. That update kept me from being able to play Skyrim until the next day. Which is ridiculous.

[The Bluejay]

I'd like to split Steam up, really. The ability to download games digitally is great and is undoubtably the future of PC Gaming, but I'd like this to be split off from the social/achievement/data management/dictation of when you're allowed to play your games/ ridiculous policies/ DRM. If you want that bit, great, download it and install it and use it. If not, then just buy the game from Steam and use it as you wish.

 

Presto, instant utopia.

[Stevedog13]

I'd like to split Steam up, really. The ability to download games digitally is great and is undoubtably the future of PC Gaming, but I'd like this to be split off from the social/achievement/data management/dictation of when you're allowed to play your games/ ridiculous policies/ DRM. If you want that bit, great, download it and install it and use it. If not, then just buy the game from Steam and use it as you wish.

 

Presto, instant utopia.

 

Yes, but then Steam would have to :yucky: compete for customers.

Think about this; Have you ever seen an advertisement for Steam itself? Can you name any other company that rose to number one in its market with out advertising? And yet Steam has over 30M customers, if it were 100% optional their customer base would be drastically lower. I believe that if any other industry behaved like Steam they would be brought up on Anti-Trust charges. Imagine that Ford has a specially designed fuel tank on your car that can only accept the nozzles at Exxon stations, by buying a Ford you are required to use only Exxon fuel. Imagine that both Ford and Exxon have grounds to sue you if you make any modifications to allow you to use the brand of fuel that you choose.

 

 

To the OP: Steam has a lot of features that I neither need nor want, it therefore offers zero benefits to me. All that is left is the hassles that come with using Steam without any benefits to offset them. I have a fairly good internet connection, but not on my gaming machine. The much vaunted Offline Mode is completely useless in this situation, I need a Never Going To Be Online Mode, I will only get games that allow me to fully install them while 100% offline. There are lots of other Digital Markets that sell games which allow this, unfortunately their selections are limited as so many games are irrevocably tied to Steam. I love the idea of Digital Distribution for games, but as long as Steam exists in it's current form then DD can never reach its full potential.

 

 

I was disappointed when Fallout: New Vegas was released as a Steamworks only game, I was really looking forward to it. But I was holding out hope that all the benefits Bethesda kept touting, such as auto-patching and DLC distribution, would be unnecessary once the GOTY was released and that it would be Steam-free. However now that I see that the Skyrim Creation Kit has been integrated with the Steam Workshop I now see that Bethesda has lashed itself to Steams' mast, I realize that as a PC Gamer who doesn't use Steam my kind is no longer welcome.