I don't "hate" it... it just goes against my nature
I am a Unix engineer. I engineer OS autobuilds, provisioning/patching methods, etc for a mayor bank. Nothing runs on my systems that I don't think it should.
It is hard as it is to use Windows just to play games, it is even harder when I am told I need to run this "piracy protection" routine that in reality only slows down the pirates for a bit, but inconveniences me.

I understand. Like I said in the edit, I didn't mean to attack you. It's just the way I've been typing lately. Sometimes I think I should just keep quiet until it all blows over. However, I don't think Steam deserves the reputation it seems to have on this forum. People do see "DRM" and freak out. I've experienced no extra lag with Steam running in the background. The only problem I've ever had with it is one time when they were updating their servers; I had a problem loading the items I had collected in Team Fortress 2.

I have never minded Steam at all. Ever since I first got it with Half Life 2, I have had no problems and like the friends service, the game downloading and purchasing onling, and have never found it intrusive at all.

Actually, I don't think so. From what I understand, DoW II retail (used steam for its DRM) could be installed wherever you wanted. So if you bought NV retail, you could probably also install it wherever you want.

If you buy it via steam like I probably will, you are stuck with it being in your steam folder though.



Yes.



This is completely false in my experience. I sometimes have unplanned internet outages and want to play steam games. When I click on, say, the HL2 icon, I get steam booting up and then saying "We can't connect to the internet!" With two options. One is the ubiquitous retry, but the other is "go offline."

Go offline works perfectly well for me. From what I understand, it worked like how you describe in the past, but Valve changed it in response to fan outcry. Now you basically have to go online once to authenticate your game if you buy it retail. After that, you're free to set steam to online mode and never have it phone home again, as far as I'm aware.

Of course, you might not be able to totally divorce the game from steam, which is somewhat unfortunate, but honestly, steam doesn't use very many resources at all, so the only real objection is for needing an online registration for a SP game. Ideally we'd have no DRM, but in this environment, we should be thankful we got a DRM that isn't out to totally screw you over, rather than what GTA4 customers got, or what Ubisoft customers got.

Well, of course the majority would choose none at all but that isn't an option now is it. Nor will it ever be again so when they say least intrusive they mean as far as DRMs go.

Fallout 3 was DRM-free. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age were DRM-free and sold very well on PC. I don't see why I have to accept online authentication DRM as a given.

Oh yay, now I can just rent my game instead of owning it. You now realize that if Steam ever closes down, or if you piss them off, you lose access to all of your games. Even your boxed copies. At least with GFWL you could make offline profiles, but not with Steam. Nope, Steam has to connect to install it. I am now not going to buy this game. Avoiding it completely. I don't feel like I am missing much, especially with Obsidian's track record at the moment.

While I can live with using Steam to play the game, but I'd really prefer not to have to use it, the idea of needing an internet connection to play a single player game is pretty absurd to begin with, even though Steam may have an offline mode, you still need to use the internet to authenticate the game, at the very least, and you need to activate it through Steam, that's already more than I needed to do for Fallout 3, sure, it may have used Games for Windows Live, but it's not like you needed to do anything with it, I completely ignored it and played the game without problems. And Steam is definately NOT the least intrusive experience for PC gamers, if they want that, they should just do it the way they used to, just let you play the game without any sort of need to activate it through an online service or anything like that, just let me install the game and play it without further hassel, you can add a disc check if you want to, since inserting a disc into the drive is very simple and doesn't even need an internet connection, the only problem is if I lose the disc... but I usually keep the games I'm currently playing handy anyway, so that's really not a problem, if I lose a game disc, it's generally when I haven't played that game for a long time.

Still, I have Steam, and have played Steam games before, and at least as long as you have your account, you can still reinstall the game, not like some ridiculous DRM schemes that give you limited installs, as I understand it, you could even install the game on a different PC if you use the same Steam account on it. If I MUST use Steam, it's not going to be enough to keep me from playing New Vegas, that still doesn't mean I like it, though.



So you're basically jealous about them getting for free what you paid money for?

If anyrhing, you should be proud, since you supported the company that made the game you wanted to play by paying them money instead of just downloading it for free, not to mention you didn't do anything illegal.



Fallout 3 and Oblivion both got by fine without it, at least not without any sort of DRM that actually causes a major inconvenience to players, so I fail to see why Obsidian couldn't do the same with New Vegas.



That's a good point, you know, which is one more reason why needing online authentication to play a single player game is an absurd idea. Then again, companies probably don't care if you can't continue playing the game should the servers close down since by then, if the company is still around they've probably milked all the money they want from the game and are ready to move on to greener pastures, and obviously if they revoked your account, they don't want you playing their games anymore, if they did, they wouldn't have revoked it.

Because your the consumer and your not making corporate decisions for the gaming developers. Fact is you will either accept it or go without the choice is yours. I don't particularly like the fact that I have to call Microsoft every time I re-install my OS but I'm not willing to go without so I've accepted it.

It may well have changed recently, but I know I tried to play Portal shortly after it released when my internet was down due to a storm and Steam told me to piss off. Reading up on it, I was told you had to go offline while online for your games to work.

Even if offline mode works perfectly though, I still dislike this news.



I don't mind the client on a resource basis, it is pretty ignorable on that level you are correct. I more mind it because the alternative is I can just click an icon on my desktop and the game launches. With Steam I have to sign in, wait for it to load, click past any ads that may have come up, click over to my game list and hope it is not having a glitch this time, as Steam is prone to do (for example: "the servers are too busy to process your request. Please try again.").

And of course activating online versus... you know... not.

And further, I am one of those wacky people who plays 20+ year old games on a fairly consistent basis, and any internet authorization DRM method makes me worry there will come a day when I cannot play the game I legally purchased. If the PC remains an open platform then there are ways around this, but who knows what will happen with internet regulation bills coming to bear in many countries and closed systems like the iPad taking the country by storm.

Call me paranoid, but the simple fact is when I put down my $60 and walk out with a copy of the game, I don't want to have to ask anyone's permission to use the product I just bought.

I already said I was buying the game, I am just disappointed by this decision. The fact is Steam does not stop piracy, so in the end this is nothing but customer flogging for fun, the same as any other DRM method. If they just wanted to please people with cool Steam features they would make it optional, but the FAQ says clearly it is mandatory... that means they are punishing a large section of their customer base for no reason what-so-ever, as Steam was cracked YEARS ago.

With companies like Bioware releasing games DRM-free and having much success, I don't see how you can justify Bethesda forcing it on us for no reason.

I don't have to justify Bethesda's corporate decisions but they have their reasons.I will support them by giving them my money. If you want to change it withhold your money. Giving them your money is the same as supporting their decision. So if your buying the game anyway there is no point in complaining. "Put up or shut up" .

The point of DRM isn't to stop piracy cold, it's to mitigate it and make it inconvenient for casual pirates to, well, pirate.

Ideally, there'd be no DRM at all... But it's part of being a PC gamer these days.



While neither DAO nor ME2 have DRM natively, if you want to use any of the DLC, even the free DLC that comes with the game (Cerberus Network and The Stone Prisoner for ME2/DAO respectively), you have to sign up for a bioware account and login online to play with the DLC, so it's not like the game is totally DRM free. Especially because TSP is practically mandatory in how epically it wins and adds to the game.



I agree. The ideal situation for the consumer would be making steamworks optional and not having any DRM at all. But that's unlikely to happen no matter how much the fanbase complains. Back when FO3 was announced to use GFWL, everyone complained about how GFWL svcks and shouldn't be used, yet nothing changed; it's only now, after nearly every GFWL DLC release has been a comedy of errors, that the franchise is moving away from that system.

And I also agree on playing old games. But from a business standpoint, requiring online authentication makes a lot of sense, so it's not like we can easily escape it. The only bright side of the picture is that steam is such a huge service and such a huge success that I can't see it coming down any time soon, unlike, say, the Ubisoft DRM servers.

I think only Dragon Age requires you to be signed in every time, Mass Effect 2 you have to authorize once. I agree they both svck, but still if I want to play ME2 in 20 years and EA/Bioware are dead and buried, I can play the core game... it's something. If Bethesda was using Steam for DLC I wouldn't complain as much, though like Fallout 3 I would buy the eventual game of the year edition to have DRM-free copies of the DLC and patched game in one handy box.

Which kind of brings up another point: maybe the GotY edition will be DRM-free, in which case I will stop complaining.

This is terrible news.
I don't like having Steam as a requirement. They say its harder for pirates to crack but it's not. There are programs that extract games from the steam files.
Just Cause 2 got cracked almost as soon as it was released the same with Modern Warfare 2. I'd rather GFWL then Steam any day.

I wonder if it'd be frowned upon to buy the game and download a copy without Steam off the internet....

Totally agreed.

Steam being an optional piece of software is fine with me. Some gamers enjoy its features like achievements and such. Steamworks as a requirement is a terrible idea.
Please Bethesda, don't use Steamworks for this or any of your other titles. ALL games get cracked no matter what DRM you use and having this intrusive, annoying DRM is just an inconvenience to the enduser.
Problem 1: Games are NOT transferable.
Problem 2: It is actually quite easy to extract a game from the Steam files -and- in turn have release groups using those files to release a pirated version. Google it.
Problem 3: Accounts are quite frequently hijacked with the account owners account either being banned or not being able to reclaim the account

So I'm guessing that means no Live achievements for the PC version like Fallout 3? We only get the dodgy Steam ones?

So we might use steam for future Bethesda Games would this make modding harder due to some problems.

No, Steam should have no effect on mods. I believe Steam devs even reprogrammed the program to allow for much easier modding for Oblivion and Morrowind.

Yup. The nice Obsidian fellows on this board confirmed quite a while ago that NV will not use GfWL at all.

1. PC games are generally non-transferable anyway?
2. As you said.... it's inevitable isn't it?
3. What? You can't really use that as an argument... The majority of hijacked steam accounts are from unsuspecting people NOT paying attention and clicked on a very interesting looking link. They input their username and password thinking it's something cool and Steam related, when it's not. It's called phishing.... and people fall for various reasons, but one is definitely lack of attention. Which is why Steam requires a separate account for support, and a separate account for the forums, because they know people are going to fall for these scams.

Since when? Only since this online activation business started have PC game resales been in the crapper. With Fallout 3, the game to compare New Vegas to in order to see if we are better or worse off, a used copy had all the same functionality as a new copy except for achievements from GFWL, which hardly anyone cares about.



Piracy is indeed terrible, but the point is DRM does not stop it. Ubisoft requires you to be online constantly and quickly download mission triggers, the most invasive DRM possible other than flat-out streaming the game, and their DRM lasted less than a month before it was cracked. Steam was cracked years ago, and Steamworks games are on torrent sites the day they come out. So with that in mind, what is the benefit of forcing Steam on people? They could easily make an offline install option which does not have achievement or DLC support, they did that exact thing with Rogue Warrior, but instead they are making Steam activation mandatory. This is customer flogging for no reason, plain and simple.




There are many ways to lose your account, some of them offer no recourse to get it back. If for instance you have a disagreement with Valve over a charge on your credit card and you air the disagreement to your bank, and they find Valve at fault and refund your money, Valve will close your entire account. If you accept a gift that was purchased against Valve's terms of service, even if you had nothing to do with the purchase, your entire account will be turned off. If Valve for any reason, with no proof required, thinks you are not the original owner of the account they will shut it down.

The end point is that Valve controls your games, not you. The only way Bethesda could take Fallout 3 from me is to break into my house and steal it, and if they did I could have them brought up on criminal charges for stealing my property. If Bethesda or Valve wants to take New Vegas from me, all they have to do is press a button. Will that ever happen? Probably not, but the point is why should we as customers accept that?

The discussion of the use of cracks to avoid the DRM or disc check is not permitted on these boards. No more discussions of their use or piracy please.

People on this thread are discussing DRM, its whys, hows, and effects. Piracy,cracks, etc are the reasons why DRM exists. How can they not be touched upon?
No one here is discussing HOW to use a crack or swapping cracks.