On another site, a user mentioned he has no internet access at home (hopefully a temporary condition!). He's also a modder with several mods contributed to the site.

Will he be completely screwed as far as New Vegas is concerned? Is there a way to phone it in, or activate on a friend's computer?

You will not be able to activate it on a different machine than you are going to play it on.

You only need the Internet Connection once to activate, after that, you can play with Steam Offline. So, unfortunately, your friend will have to take his machine to a house that has Internet, get online, activate the game, then he will be ready to go.

Oh that svcks. I have a ps3 so I dnot not have to worry but this is very troubling. What about people who live in remote locations?

How does he contribute several mods to the community if he has no internet? :s

Pretty simple, stick them on a flash drive then go to a friend's or family member's home. That's a hell of a lot easier to do than lugging your whole computer back and forth in order to activate.

@Alex man:

They're going to be SOL if they don't have at least a dial-up connection.

Flash drive and give that to a friend or upload at a public acces terminal? I did that for years...


EDIT: Somebody beat me to it...

Disconnect computer at home, bring it over to friends house, connect it, activate it. Done.
Same with PS3 and 360 if you need to redeem pre-order pack.

You make that sound so easy. What if the person relies on public transit to get around and doesn't have access to a vehicle? Why should they be forced to shell out extra money for cab fare just to play a game?

If you want it bad enough you can very well walk with it, several times did me and my friends walk with our computers to LAN parties.
If you have two working legs and aren't sitting in a wheelchair then get up and start walking.
If you're strength stat IRL is 3 or less then take a skateboard of knick a shopping cart to transport it.
It's not impossible, all depends on how much you want it.

Valve should be obligated to run an 800 number for modem activations.

So people without an internet connection are in fact, screwed. They have no practical, legal options to play.

And, he used to have one but he's in a bit of a tight spot financially, and the internet connection is one of the things he ditched to save money. That's why I said it was hopefully a temporary condition. In the meantime though Bethesda and Obsidian have pretty much denied him the enjoyment of the game. Good job. Then again with ~68-75% of households (depending on who you ask) having an internet connection, I guess they considered the remainder to be an acceptable loss.

as much as i want to scold people in this thread there's so much wrong with what people are saying.

IMO disk protection svcks, a lot of people happen to live in places without internet, one of the many faults of America is just how vast and spread out population centers are in relation to Europe. It makes it difficult for people to do anything for the most part, especially that part about getting a reliable internet connection. Europen families often do not to own more than 1 vehicle unlike the states where 2+ vehicles is considered to be normal. It's unrealistic to expect everyone to reliably get from point A to point B with a computer tower. What caused internet activation was not piracy but people [censored]ing about disk protection. Steam offers no disk protection since it's all downloaded content but you have to activate, I think i would prefer disk protection because you could get a CD patch, making people without internet connections have to do things like this is just a bad design. I'm a little confused about why they moved to activations, FO3 and prior was all disk protection.

Excuse my text blob, i'm exhausted from work. :-[

Again, tell him to get over to a friends house and plug in his computer and activate it.
Unless he lives on the north pole it should be an easy enough task.
Or hell, he could ask the neighbor next door if he could use the Internet for 5 to 20 minutes.

You know, this isn't the first time I've heard this exact same argument applying to several different people all over the internet. I can't help but wonder: If they can't afford an internet connection, how can they afford a copy of Fallout?

Maybe internet connection runs on a meter where he's from. Ba dum tish.

A game is a one off purchase, where as an Internet connection is a recurring bill usually for a 12 month minimum contract (in the UK at least).

Sometimes Steam will eventually error out in offline mode and give you this message.

Steam-Error
Could not connect to Steam network.
This could be due to a problem with your Internet connection, or with the Steam network.
Please visit www.steampowered.com for more info.

Steam-Error
This operation cannot be complete when Steam is in offline mode.


Usually the only way to get access to offline mode again is to connect to the internet so that Steam can verify the cache. So I guess if you keep your PC connected to the net 24/7 you may not even see that error.

Easy... a game is a one time purchase; internet access is a monthly fee (with possible installation charges). Some areas do not have Cable or DSL as an option, and Dial-up can cost almost as much as entry level DSL. It is very common in places for residents to stop off at the library to use the internet.

I agree. They should also allow voice activations. They should also allow you to transfer your license to someone else's account. Outside of that I don't mind the Steam activation thing.

It could also be that you do not have the box checked to allow local storage of the Steam Credentials. If you have that, Steam should not need to connect to the internet except to check for updates to itself. But you can probably tell it not to look for updates too.