scottym23 Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 The disc isn't needed for download since Skyrim is downloaded through steam, the disc isn't needed to launch the game since it launches through steam, and if by any chance you lose the disc and want another copy of it (Which I don't see why you would since there's no reason to have one) you can burn copies of the disc through steam. Does anyone know WHY the disc even exists? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RitualBlack Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 The disc is very useful for a clean install. A large portion of the game is installed through the disc which saves the effort of having to download the entire game again. Many people also like having physical copies of their games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anya29 Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 So that if through no fault of your own Steam decide to ban your profile (has happened to some Paypal users after bank transfer problems) and you lose your paid for games you can still at least create a new profile and install the game again without having to repurchase it. I'm not sure if the Steam backup to disc is connected to the profile/online version you download it from or not (to bypass any copy protection by connecting it to the Steam profile?) as I've never had to use it although I did use it to back up the one game I have purchased through steam (Stalker, that was on sale). All other games I have on steam I have are boxed games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flobalob Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 So that if through no fault of your own Steam decide to ban your profile (has happened to some Paypal users after bank transfer problems) and you lose your paid for games you can still at least create a new profile and install the game again without having to repurchase it. I'm not sure if the Steam backup to disc is connected to the profile/online version you download it from or not (to bypass any copy protection by connecting it to the Steam profile?) as I've never had to use it although I did use it to back up the one game I have purchased through steam (Stalker, that was on sale). All other games I have on steam I have are boxed games. I doubt that would help as even a retail copy disc is attached to your profile as soon as you put in the disk key and register it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scot Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 It´s more like steam is pointless, with a virtual purchase people depend on internet speed to install the game, with a disc I can intall skyrim in 10 minutes, obviously there is still a few files that require download from steam but like beyondtom said it installs like 95% of the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dukethepcdr Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 I agree that Steam is pointless. One of the very few things I don't like about Skyrim is that they made Steam required. That was a mistake. Steam runs in the background and does what? Waste RAM cycles is what it does. I don't chat with other gamers while playing the game. I've taken a few screenshots with it, but there are other, less system resource hogging programs out there that do that too. If our Steam accounts ever get messed up or, God forbid, Valve ever goes belly-up, any game we buy that requires Steam will suddenly cease to be playable. That's not right. I've got many PC games made by studios that ceased to exist years ago, but I can still install their games and play them. I agree that the Skyrim Disc is quite usefull. When I made the mistake of installing the HD textures from Steam for Skyrim, it made my game unplayable on my PC. Turns out my PC is only marginally adequate for playing the game even though it seems like it ought to exceed the system requirements. I think its mostly due to Steam and all the other programs that you can't turn off that run in the background of today's operating systems that are the culprits. I even have 4GB of RAM running on 64bit Windows Vista and have the mod that removes the 2GB RAM limit for the game, an Nvidia GeForce 8800 video card etc. and it still can't handle the HD graphics (not even the ones from Skyrim Nexus). After I did some research, I found out that the only way to get rid of the HD graphics was to uninstall the game completely from my PC and start over from scratch with the retail disc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spork542 Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 I agree that the Skyrim Disc is quite usefull. When I made the mistake of installing the HD textures from Steam for Skyrim, it made my game unplayable on my PC. Turns out my PC is only marginally adequate for playing the game even though it seems like it ought to exceed the system requirements. I think its mostly due to Steam and all the other programs that you can't turn off that run in the background of today's operating systems that are the culprits. I even have 4GB of RAM running on 64bit Windows Vista and have the mod that removes the 2GB RAM limit for the game, an Nvidia GeForce 8800 video card etc. and it still can't handle the HD graphics (not even the ones from Skyrim Nexus). After I did some research, I found out that the only way to get rid of the HD graphics was to uninstall the game completely from my PC and start over from scratch with the retail disc. Really? I thought to install it you needed to either activate the ESP files or go into the skyrim.ini file and set it up so it reads the texture pack BSAs. Either way, I wasn't under the impression that it was something you'd need to reinstall the game to undo. Does the high-res texture pack really still apply when you deactivate the ESP files and/or delete the BSAs from skyrim.ini, depending on the installation method? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennn Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 (edited) I agree that the Skyrim Disc is quite usefull. When I made the mistake of installing the HD textures from Steam for Skyrim, it made my game unplayable on my PC. Turns out my PC is only marginally adequate for playing the game even though it seems like it ought to exceed the system requirements. I think its mostly due to Steam and all the other programs that you can't turn off that run in the background of today's operating systems that are the culprits. I even have 4GB of RAM running on 64bit Windows Vista and have the mod that removes the 2GB RAM limit for the game, an Nvidia GeForce 8800 video card etc. and it still can't handle the HD graphics (not even the ones from Skyrim Nexus). After I did some research, I found out that the only way to get rid of the HD graphics was to uninstall the game completely from my PC and start over from scratch with the retail disc. Really? I thought to install it you needed to either activate the ESP files or go into the skyrim.ini file and set it up so it reads the texture pack BSAs. Either way, I wasn't under the impression that it was something you'd need to reinstall the game to undo. Does the high-res texture pack really still apply when you deactivate the ESP files and/or delete the BSAs from skyrim.ini, depending on the installation method? First, all you need to do is disable the esps. That works for me, and it's supposed to work for everyone, although it's always possible that that guy inadvertently found a bug. Secondly, don't blame Steam for poor performance with 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia 8800. That card is old, older than my 460 which still can't max many games, and my own 4GB of RAM is barely passable in modern gaming. If you look in the task manager, Steam accounts for at most 16,000k, less if offline, while Oblivion commonly passes 900,000k, and Skyrim even more than that. Steam and other similar programs are really not a performance issue unless you have a very dated cpu. Yes, I would prefer not to have to deal with Steam, but that's for ownership reasons (I don't want to "rent" games, I'd rather own them, and Steam pretty much "rents" your games to you). It can decide to lock you out of your own games, and it can bug (rarely) and ruin games. For example, I can't run L4D2 with Steam in offline mode because it breaks the executable (.exe). Therefore I have to keep Steam online if I want to play L4D2, and as you can imagine that causes problems with Skyrim's updates. I don't care much for Steam, but if you're going to bash it, don't do it for performance reasons because the framerate hit is negligible, almost nonexistant. Having said that, having a disk is slightly superior to downloading the game. My download (I don't have fast internet access way out here), would have taken about 7 hours from Steam for Skyrim. With the disk, I simply forced Steam to install from the disk and I was able to get 95% of the game installed from it. It was a 30 minute download instead of a 7 hour download. Aside from the time-saving aspect of having a disk, it's also nice to have a shiny box and a physical disk in case the apocalypse happens or something. It works out well for me, since I usually photoshop custom cover art for my favorite games. I couldn't do that unless I had the case and disk. Edited April 24, 2012 by Rennn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pygothian Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 Not pointless at all. Much faster installing rom DVD than downloading the entire game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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