well i'm actually steamhater. it has some pros:
- no cd/dvd needed
- online-saves
- multiplayer-support
- ...

i just dont let me force to use steam

the argument: steam is good because ubisofts drm is worse is simply invalid
forcing players tu use steam still remains a bad option

i dont want that they use steam therefore i neither cbuy new vegas nor i install a cracked version
but everybody has to make up his own mind make a decision an bear the consequences

@madcat221: they allready tried ingame advertisemant in counterstrike;)

mfg theras

So why did the forced usage of GfWL not bother you? It may not have a standalone client, but it still had to be active in order to play. (Though admittedly you could get rid of that, none of us bought it under the assumption we could)

i never had to go online, get an account, ...i could do it but it was not necessary.

Well, that's true - but you did have to suffer through an abomination, and a crash prone one at that. Steam isn't perfect, nobody's saying it is, but I honestly believe it's the lesser of two evils, here. It's a nice service, which actually provides some advantages - which immediately puts it above GfWL, in my view. Obviously DRM free would be better, but that's not going to happen.

In the case of steam I'm not doing that, though. For me, this is an issue with that initial, forced web registration. It introduces the problem of a third party whom I do not trust or desire services with (steam) storing information which comes from me. That information by its nature will identify me and be traceable, either directly by what I provide at the time, or, through my OS/hardware/IP identifiers. A DRM system would be have no teeth against warezing people if that were not part of the deal.

To make this work the way I would feel comfortable enough with, I would need to obtain a copy of my operating system which does not have my identifying information associated with the install or registration with Microsoft, and, roll a dedicated boot for it on its own drive or maybe dedicated partition if I was being sloppy, and preferably, take some special measures to not source that registration-sort of connection from my usual IP address/network. It may also be necessary to make special email arrangements.

And after all of that is done, I don't know if it's possible to transfer the game's install to my 'real' workstation. I could be stuck with having to roll as a dual boot system. And I don't know if I have to redo parts of the troublesome process if I need to do a re-install from the disk in the future (which of course I keep my disks, I bought the game, didn't I). So, I don't know how far this headache goes or how long it lasts. And then there is the question of patching, all such patches would have to happen on the clean system, preferrably with special IP arrangements, and I don't know the mechanism by which I would effect reversing a patch if it became necessary.

All of this is a whole lot of work and trouble, in particular the separate drive/partition and the seperate OS requirement. My plans to buy NV as soon as it came out aren't solid any more because of what amounts to its elaborate setup requirements. Not owning an extra copy of a microsoft OS is something of a hardship.

Just posting on this forum allows people to trace you if they want though. You're already compromised.

That's untrue. Having the IP address that's associated with my relatively anonymous internet handle will get you to the wrong side of my firewall and no farther. And I have the choice to share only the information I choose on this forum ( as opposed with, for example, my real name, which could technically be associated with my current Windows installation and therefore be visible to prying software which could be installed).

If this is the worse thing you have to complain about then I wish I had your life.

The only thing I gave Steam to set up my account was a username, password and an email address. All of which can be Ad Hoc. They do not know my name or anything else about me.

Now, if I were to purchase content from them, then I would have to provide information about me. However, I would hope the website would want to know who I am when giving them a credit card.

Okay, I'll concede that argument. That brings to light another however. Steam doesn't actually collect much information on its own. You have to opt into their hardware survey, and even that doesn't contain any personally identifiable information - it tells you exactly what data it's collecting.

Basically, to use steam, you need a userhandle (mine, for instance, is Cpl. Facehugger) and a password. Steam only wants your real name when you buy something and need to be billed, at which point you have to fill in a billing address and credit card number just like buying anything else online. Fortunately, with NV, you won't have to do that unless you want DLC, since you just activate the game's CD key with steam. To steam, you'll just be Tarrant who owns New Vegas and the freebie Alien Swarm.

You're no less secure with steam than you are with posting on an internet board as far as personal information goes... Unless you buy something with steam, in which case there's always the (low) risk of the valve servers being hacked and your credit stolen, but that's a risk for any sort of electronic payment system, including credit cards at the supermarket. If the visa/mastercard/amex/discover servers are hacked you could have your credit card data stolen and used too.

It did? Never ever until the release of DLC have I seen the GFWL software pop up. I have never used or even noticed it before that, and haven't used it to obtain the DLC's. I waited for the GOTY to be able to play them. So I do not consider that forced usage. I've never even filed in any form for GFWL as far as I can remember.

My issue is that as a PC user, I don't have a way to know, for a fact, what an .exe has transmitted about what it found in my system, such as maybe real name as it lives in my OS registration, and other ID type things which live there. Even if I packet sniff and store the tcp session, it could take expertise beyond what I for one have to see what was taken, and it's too late if it's already out the door anyway.

Steam's using a pre-compiled binary, so that means I can't see what it's going to do once it is on my system, and what data it will in fact collect and transmit. Technically if they send me the source and let me have it audited/read it, and then I can compile it and use it... well... you can see where that's going nowhere.

So, unless I am misunderstanding how steam works, I don't have many options.

If there was some form of setup which denied them direct access to my PC every step of the way (such as them providing me with an encryption key via a web site), I'd be alright with it. But that does not seem to be how it works? They seem want direct access to my machine unless I've misunderstood this. I don't trust that company and want nothing to do with them. Something of an impasse.

In my case, microsoft already has my information via my OS registration and the patching of my OS, so, it does not represent an additional source of potential data leak/misuse. I'm stuck with them having that info, it would seem. But I do not have to be stuck with a new source of such a thing such as steam.

I didn't use the GFWL service itself btw and I don't know if it forced anything onto me or took data.

GFWL is sufferng the final end it deserves, and good riddance to that pile of rubbish. Steam isn't my favorite either, but they didn't screw up my enjoyment of Civilization V, which is basically exceeding my expectations after what I went through with Metro 2033 and Empire Total War - which was still better than the trauma that was my original Half-Life 2 install. It pains me to say this but Steam as a service seems to be improving over time.

What may be helpful to some folks is that I expect this wil be very similar to the Civ 5 setup where after activation (and possible small patch) you can restart in offline mode and stay that way. While offline your achievements won't be tracked and you can't save to the 'cloud' but I doubt you're that bothered about that if you are playing offline in the first place. I'm installed on 3 PCs at the moment and I only play live on my main gaming machine - the laptop and my wife's machine don't figure into online play. So far, no problems at all - but then I'm not new to this, I did the same with other games, like Torchlight, Audiosurf, and Bookworm Adventures (to name a few).

Paranoid much?

I am not sure as to why you are on the Internet. Someone has done svcked all that personal information off of your machine many times by now.

I will concede that it has been at least half a year since I've picked up Steam, after my Left4Dead Fiasco (I had to make an express trip to a family member's house to install the damned game, and then it quit working for me completely when I got back home and back on my dialup). And Portal was a fail from the start. So I've wasted just under a hundred dollars on Steam games, so I think I have the rights to at least gripe.

I'll say again - so long as the game installs from the disk and I don't have to run Steam on the internet, I'm fine. Pleased as punch. But if I have to download a damn game I went to a store and bought, that's where I get hairy about it all. And you can't return the game once it's opened, either, so you're screwed and now you've got more plastic clogging your desk/trash can.

But as long as activating it is all I have to do, fine. Whoopdidoo. But Steam has had a real good track record of screwing over dialup gamers and offline gamers. And I'm SICK of it.

So, you're saying your use your computer without using any .EXE's? Sounds hard. Kidding. Do you at least use some, though? How do you decide which ones are ok?

Umm.. in a basic sense -

If its released by a professional software company, the company should seem to me as not having an incentive to be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_hat or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hat .

If it seems more of a hobbyist programmer, I google the software's name, and look to get a sense of its user base and reputation, and make a judgement call.

If I know an .exe is going to transmit data from my machine to someone else's network, the scrutiny factor goes up by about 100x.

But Steam is developed and maintained by a professional software company. And they've got too much riding on it's success and it's reputation to half-ass the security aspect of it.

Steam is completely garbage for me. It offers me absolutely nothing useful, but just makes me jump through a bunch of hoops to play a game. The main reason to have the drm is make it so people can't pirate the game, but no drm stops piracy. It might slow it down for a day or two, but that's it.
Why force a drm on people that doesn't do what it's only purpose is there to do? All the drm's do is make things more difficult for people who buy the games legally.

I could say the same about F3 or Obi since it clearly "forced" me to register here and go to a lot of trouble to solve some problems I had with the games

Also: There is a very good DRM which IMO ain't a DRM... Code the game in a language no-one understands. Simple

Alright, all this pvssyr about Steam is somewhat misleading, You only have to activate your game ONCE over Steam, and it can practically be the same as GFWL, in a sense that you don't need to use steam ever again after activating.

The last Podcast, IIRC, stated this to

Actually, Stardock (which you even mentioned by name) had Stardock Central several years before Steam and something called 'Component Manager' a few years before that. Stardock Central, at the least, is very Steam-like, though I never experienced Component Manager so I'm unsure if it was also a digital distribution system. Valve was in no way the first to attempt to create something like Steam - they were only the most successful, and that's almost certainly due to Half-Life 2 requiring it.