I read a LOT of EULAs (for various reasons, including work-related ones). While you are quite correct that sharing* your game is against the EULA, with the exception of certain time-licensed software, almost all software makes exception for resale or some other form of transfer. The requirements are full removal of the software from your computers and all copies of the media are destroyed/transferred to the new owner. Even some of the most draconian licenses out there (like Adobe Acrobat Standard) still make these exceptions as well as allowing you to make a copy for your personal archives. So long as you fully uninstall and destroy any such copies in your archives, you are well within your rights to sell your license on ebay and the like or to transfer your license to a friend. Steam makes this completely impossible.


*sharing is defined as making a copy of your game and giving one to a friend, or otherwise failing to comply with the removal requirements the EULA specifies before you are legally allowed to sell your license.


Guest Passes aren't even close to being in the same league as the Kindle's book-lending feature.

Steam's bad I don't really need a 3rd party handling my computer games. If you want to use it that's fine but I'm not.

Judging from ALL of the comments of those posting here, I don't think that's the case. I know it's not for me because I don't trust anyone but me to handle my games. Too many DVDs and video games in the past have come back scratched and on the verge of knackered. I'm also not a fan of giving stuff away for free, that I've paid for. lol


I don't get the lesser of evils thing. As far as DRM goes Steam is as useless as all and any out there, as was seen before the New Vegas release when pirates were playing it before us proper gamers who support studios. That a studio is seen to be 'taking steps' by using Steam isn't really an argument for it either. I just don't get how fans of Steam (not that you are one) seem to have an issue with people not wanting to use it, and with them asking for a choice. Zenimax/Beth is a massive corp that could set up something akin to the Rockstar Social Club/Bioware Social Network or something. Activate your game through them, and have optional third-party crap (Steam/GFWL) on your disc just in case you want to use it. All I'm seeing is companies vying for customers not by offering choice, but by monopolising, and restricting choice.

It seems to be consumers HAVE to use one or the other, and however many studios and publishers back whatever service, that is the service that will enjoy a longer life. But it's still uncertain, as studios like Relic jump from to the other across games in the same frickin' franchise (DoW2). GFWL could see an update in a week that completely reinvents the way it delivers it services, and yet players will be stuck on Steam. Steam will offer a new service, and others will be stuck on GFWL. ALL gamers will probably have both installed and be flipping from one annoying service to the other just because a studio backed one or the other. They're not competing as services for consumers, they're competing as options for studios, that the consumer is forced to like or lump.

It's absurd. Put the stuff on the disc, whatever service it might be - it really doesn't matter if it's a single player game - and let the consumers decide which to use, if any. :rolleyes:

Sorry it works for everyone. That is a fact. How could it not work for them, that makes no sense. The word work in this chase means "it functions". Your're saying it doesn't, but it does. You can say people don't want it because they don't like it, but not because it doesn't work. It functions the same for everyone, if you can't get it to work your doing something wrong. Sorry that's just the way it is. You don't have to like it or use it, you have the right, and I actually oppose the idea of Skyrim coming out as a Steam only, because I know some people don't like it, but you can't make claims that it doesn't work, because it clearly does.

There are various programs that cause conflicts with various other problems (for example: popular programs like iTunes sometimes cause conflicts with people's DVD driver on Windows, resulting in an unusable DVD drive -- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982116), to say that Steam will work on every machine with every imaginable software configuration is silly at best, and a down-right lie at worst.

The best you can correctly say is that the probability of incompatibility is quite small, but the probability still exists.

There maybe some crazy software configuration that is not compatible with Steam, but the shear amount of people claiming it doesn't work at all leads me to believe they're really saying "I don't know how this works" or "I saw one problem and immediately hated it."

Wow...all this time I've wondered why I couldn't get my top DVD drive to work. Then when I reformatted my computer 2 months ago, it started working again, then like a week or two after that, it stopped working again, right at the time iTunes was re-installed. Gotta be kidding me >< LOL

To discount_flunky: No offense, but for someone who claims they don't want Skyrim to be steam only, you sure are pro-steam and almost fanatical in your defense of it, even going so far as to tell people they should move if their internet is so bad that they can't use it. I mean, seriously dude, take a step back from the situation and realize that Steam is NOT perfect, there ARE situations where it doesn't/won't work, and that some of those situations occur with people on these very forums.

"Unsurprisingly, the original Half-Life is Valve's all-time biggest seller, with 9.3 million copies sold in the ten years since its 1998 debut. Holding down the fort at second place is Half-Life 2, which has moved 6.5 million units following its release in 2004. Valve tallies 4.2 million copies sold of the multiplayer mod Counter-Strike, followed by last year's Orange Box collection, which has already reached the 3 million sales mark. Rounding out Valve's top five sellers is the quasi-sequel Counter-Strike: Condition Zero at 2.9 million units." http://www.1up.com/news/valve-reveals-sales-data-half-life

Those are sales records of Valve, the company that owns Steam. These records ONLY talks about Valve's games, and the data is two years old, so the numbers are really larger. This quote doesn't even talk about some of their other best sellers. The last one, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, was considered a failure by Valve and it still sold 2.9 million. Given these numbers I don't think there's a chance Steam can go out of business for financial reasons.

Nobody is expecting Steam to just suddenly evaporate any day now. However, feel free to inform me of a company that has lasted forever. Or a service in a technological field, where things tend to be pop up and then be replaced at very high speed.

The reason I defend Steam so much is because most of the claims against it are lies spoken by people who haven't really used it much. I never said you should move so that you can use Steam, what I said was that if the internet is really important to you it makes sense that you shouldn't live in a place where you can't get it. Any major situations that would make Steam incompatible will most likely be patched. If you can't get Steam to work either your super unlucky or you don't know what your doing. I don't think Steam is perfect, in fact right now as we speak I'm getting a weird glitch that makes all my games pause downloading whenever another game finishes. So I have to tell them all to start downloading again when one finishes. Is it annoying, yes, is it making it impossible to play my games, no.

for me I didn't get HL2 just because I didn't like what what I've heard about Steam & until I was Duped into getting my first Steam/Steamworks game (Front Mission Evolved)I quietly avoided Steam it's DRM wasn't listed until AFTER the game was available & for sale & I got it in the mail (At least Bethesda warns us beforehand).


the forced patching alone makes me want to wait for when all the patching is done & consider getting the GOTY & hope the patches are somehow on the disc, which is a shame because in the past I enjoyed buying the collector's then buying the GOTY to round out my Beth games. & on toting my rig someplace with broadband, I would not say that's a good option for me, My brother has the net speed. I love him, but his touch alone has doomed more than a few of my 'Puters & his Step-kids are not ones I would trust either.


for me it's not about the Sharing or selling thogh the one game I would love to sell is my one Steamed game (Steam makes me regret buying that one)just because of the experience with the Steamworks DRM.
on the sharing I bought my brother his own copy of FO3 GoTY in all I bought three legit copies of FO3 (1 collector's 2 GOTY)so I could support Bethesda


Actually I see Steamworks as a means to try to wean people off retail PC purchasing. Just look arround these forums at how many say downloading is the way they buy their games any more

To me that highlights the need for multiple DRM options & not just one for everyone. I understand the need to protect the property just more than one option is needed though.

My issue with steam is based on principle, and I'd assume it's that way with most complainers. I also work around impulse, I deal with that [censored] thing Direct2Drive is trying to force me to use, I've been using Napster's client since the week after it launched. I'm not a stranger to pseudo-drm. It's degrading. I dont want to use it, and there isnt much you can say about how pain-free it is to change that. When I buy something, it's mine.. except when I buy it through steam. This is not complicated. The fact that I have to use their platform and check in with them to confirm I really bought it is just humiliating icing on the cake.

It's getting to the point where I literally will not buy steam-exclusive titles. I'm not a boycott kind of person!
I just don't want it anymore when I see the steam label.


No, Steam isnt the worst of it. It's just the most common. It's a kind of figurehead. You cant really rebel against GamersGate, because nobody cares about GamersGate. Apparently your 'research' is confined to wikipedia? It's called a proxy. Steam is a proxy. It represents the humiliation of the increasingly rare honest consumer. It's a many faceted issue, it touches on invasion of privacy, the free market, the ever more mainstream tendencies of the gaming industry.. etc etc.
Steam svcks, and it should keep it's nose out of my business. That's the only 'misconception' you'd need to 'clear' for me.

Another person who know nothing about how Steam works claiming its the spawn of Satan.

Not to mention things like takeovers, new CEOs, and paradigm shifts in technology. The technological world is amongst the most volatile.

There is that fanatical defense of yours again. Nothing Lotkin said was false. he didn't say he had any technical issues with it, or that it wouldn't work on all computers. the only thing he said was it's yet another form of intrusive DRM, and quite frankly, thats exactly what it is. Its main purpose isn't to distribute games to the masses(that's merely a side-effect), it's primary purpose is to provide a way to prevent piracy, even though it obviously fails horribly at that.

I've been using steam for years and had NO problems. :shrug:
Anyone with just a bit of basic knowledge and common sense will not have any problems with steam.

technical problems, you are more than likely correct.

Philosophical/political problems are a different matter, however.

indeed, especially when this is said...

The problem isn't with Steam, it could be any service, any software, any client. I don't have any problems with Steam's functionality, I just don't need or use any of its functions. This could easily be a thread about GFWL if Beth were looking to use that. That it is required software is the issue. At least for me it is. Steam should be optional, all services similar to Steam should be optional, me thinks. I don't know what generated the current trend, perhaps it was Microsoft and Games for Windows, or something, partnering with studios to get their support for the GFWL client, perhaps it forced Valve into a similar position? I don't know all that much about it, all I know is I don't want GFWL, or Steam, or any other client on my system when I'M NOT GOING TO USE IT.

People who already use it seem to have a problem with my not wanting to, not needing to use it. I don't get it. I get that they use and like it and have no problem with it. Great. But uh, what's their beef with people that don't want it? Some of them might like the taste of cooked animals, I don't, but they wouldn't start defending eating them and telling me to man up if I started getting force-fed ham and beef. It's mostly Steam fan boys who boycott GFWL games, lol, they're not willing to switch between two, so they half get me, but I don't want to use either service, even if one of those services is the one they really, really, for reasons beyond my reckoning, want to defend... at every turn. It's NOT THAT GOOD! lol It shouldn't be required. Heh ha.

It is DRM, and people say it's intrusive because it constantly "nags" you, but how else are they seriously going to do it? In a store they have security cameras, they can actually see you and ketch you in the act. Games developers can't see you, they have no idea what you doing. The only way to tell if your're using an illegal copy is to constantly look in on you. People say we should all go back to just CD key authentication, guess what, that doesn't work at all! All you have to do is get a key gen. Everyone can use the same key if they want to. I've fooled a key by just typing in random numbers. The whole system doesn't work. It's a system that was invented back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. So what's a game developer going to go with? A system that everyone and there mom can fool, or a system that at least stumps the amateurs? One stops NO pirates, the other stops SOME pirates. Their obviously going to pick option two. If you don't like DRM period don't get mad at the DRM, get mad at the pirates who make it necessary in the first place. People who steal games are nothing but rotten thieves who try and morally justify their behavior. In the end, no matter what they say, they're still just thieves. I can put up with Steam because I actually LIKE it, but I understand how you don't, but that doesn't change why or how companies use DRM. I know it svcks for the law abiding citizen to have put up with DRM, but that's just the world we live in, and it's not going to get any better. So I just suggest you get used to the way things are done now, because boycotting isn't going to work.

I'm not even sure why they don't just stop with these 3rd party programs. Pirating will always be an issue no matter what. Sure Steam is a good way to distribute dlc and such but why not just sell the actual disks.

This thread is about Steam not GFWL. Though if I was Bethesda CEO I would make the digital version of games use steamworks and retail CD version have no DRM.



?
Are you saying to only have CD versions and not have games digital? :confused:

He's referring to third party programs that are DRM(which is technically what Steam is) that require you to jump through ANY hoop to play your game beyond a simple CD check and/or Activation Key. Steam, GFWL, Ubisofts DRM, etc etc

No. I mean have a cd check rather than any other sort of drm. It hurts the consumer more than anyone else. I'm fine with dd.

I think it's someone telling the publishers half-truths (at best)