I personally love Steam. It works flawlessly for me 100% of the time. It's a magnificent program that's useful for more than I could ever imagine. I hope every game I buy is on Steam because it's that great. I have my games, my mods, hell, I've even got mods and non-steam games listed on there. I can easily connect with people I enjoy playing with and play with them even more. And if my internet goes out, I simply put it in offline mode and keep playing.

A CD check would make sense on the CD version but on a Digital version would be pointless.
What's DD?

Digital distribution.

A: Boycotting could work, if enough people were willing to vote with their wallet. Companies have to make money, and if several hundred thousand people decided NOT to buy Skyrim because of it using/requiring Steam, that would send a pretty clear message to Bethesda.
B: Just because it prevents a few cases of piracy does NOT make it worth hassling the consumer over. The real pirates are still going to crack it and spread it all over the internet, steam will only stop like .01% of people trying to pirate.
C: You're full of it when you talk about inputting random CD keys for validation. I've tried that on every game I own that requires a CD key(and that's a good many) and it's never worked(I only tried for the hell of it, not because I wanted to crack the game, I buy all my games legitly). Unless you've tried that with a game older then Starcraft(which is probably the first real game I played that required a CD key), you're lying(don't you hate it when noone believes you?)
D: Congratulations on completely ignoring my point, in which I was merely pointing out that you were fanatically defending Steam again against anyone who has an opinion contradictory to yours or is just negative towards steam in general. You clearly accused Lotkin of knowing absolutely nothing about Steam and that he considered it to be the devil, when it was quite obvious he was merely decrying it as a form of DRM, and that he even stated it wasn't even the worst form of DRM out there, just the most common. Instead you go off in the above quoted rant about how DRM is a necessary evil. It's not, really, but I'm not in the mood to argue that.

Dude, no offense, that's total rubbish. You seem to be living in a world in which people with illegal copies of games connect to clients that require constant authentication. lol The only people getting hassled are the people with legit copies playing the game with the required digital distribution software. Steam as DRM is a complete fail. It doesn't work. lol It's just a means of distributing costly DLC efficiently, rapid updates for broken games, and it happens to support a large customer base - getting larger with every game that makes Steam a requirement.


I know, but I'm saying the issue isn't with anything Steam is or isn't offering, it's there's no offer to have, or to not have Steam.


They could also add the option for Steam during the install process. Something tells me though that some contract requires them to make it a requirement. No consumer choice. There's no genuine competition between services decided by consumer interest, it's all just kinda decided by the wallets of huge companies. "You make our client a requirement, and all of your customers are in one place... win. We get sales and services that you can use to ship other games too, we get a percentage, and the customer... doesn't really have a choice. If they want the game, they get the service, if we asked them to choose, they may say no. No is not good for business."

S'like VHS and Beta, or Blu-Ray and HD DVD or something, lol. The better tech goes down because the money and companies with interests are invested in one or the other. Though I suppose it was more porm for VHS, but still... s'not genuine competition or delivering and competing by having the best possible service, s'all about the money, s'all about the dum dum dih dee dum dum. I dunno what I'm on about now, it's like five to six in the ay em and I need sleep. lol But what I kinda mean by that is... next week Microsoft or some Kid Genius in his bedroom could release a brilliant new client that kicks the balls off Steam, but companies will be stuck with Steam, so will the gamers with their fave games, that could just easily have been released free from the requirements. Or something... yes, sleep time.

IBM .

A. Are you really not going to buy Skyrim, the sequel to one of best and most award winning series of all time, just so you don't have type in a password word now and then?
B. You say the hassle to the consumer doesn't warrant the DRM, but does the hassle of the DRM really not warrant the consuming? Like I said blame the pirates.
C. I saw my friend do it with Rise of Nations last Friday, it can happen.
D. I actually only read about half of his post before I said that. I jumped the gun, I'm sorry. Maybe that makes my a fanatic, but the part I read was him talking about how he only used Steam once. He also finished his post off with "Steam svcks" witch isn't true, so maybe it was justified.

You get mad at DRM, but guess what, you live in a fascist capitalist country filled with people who don't give a crap about you or your rights, so things like DRM are to be expected. At least it's not the worst they can do.

That's not totally true. If a game requires Steam it won't work if it doesn't authenticate with Steam. It would take a seriously good hacker to get around that. The best they can do is sell you a stooling Steam account.

What is this.

I know this wasn't directed at me, but:


Are you really suggesting someone should compromise their values over something as petty as a video game? You may not feel strongly about things like consumer rights and DRM, but other people do.


All the more reason for me to stand up for my own rights and voice my opposition to those things I feel are in opposition to them.


Sorry to burst your bubble, but Steam authentication has been thoroughly cracked. Due to the forum rules I won't link to any articles that prove that Steam authentication has been cracked, but you can easily find these articles yourself.

Lol, again with the misconceptions/assumptions. I never stated that his view was my view, I was merely defending Lotkin because, as you now admit, you jumped the gun. I don't like steam, and I can't use it due to where I live having one of the worst internet connections around, but I would use it if I could if only for the indy games that I miss out on that look interesting. I would never use it for any game that has a major release, as I much prefer having physical copies in my hand.

Also, Yes, I will NOT buy Skyrim if it requires Steam. At least, not for the PC. I'll gladly give up the mods, and buy it for the 360 if that is what it comes down to. Not to mention, if it does require Steam, I might not actually buy it at all, I will patiently wait for reviews to come out about it, and then decide if it's worth playing it on an inferior platform(because lets face it, any TES game is leagues better on the PC because it can be modded) without mods. I will also wait for it to be released in a GoTY edition at about half the price it would have originally sold for brand new, whereas if it doesn't require steam, I'll almost certainly have a Collectors Edition on pre-order, and judging from this thread, and the hundreds of others that have sprouted up on the skyrim forums since it was announced, I am by FAR not alone in this opinion/idea. Granted, the forums for a game are going to be a very small minority of the actual playerbase, and there is a good chance that even if 50% of the forumers either didn't buy it or waited for a half price GoTY edition, it wouldn't have any more then a minor impact on actual sales total, but at least I(and others) will have stood our ground and stuck to our morals.

I'd much rather play Skyrim then boycott a system that just isn't going to go away.

Protesting can't get rid of fascism, only guns can, you'll know it's all over when they decide to take those away.


It may have been cracked, but it's still harder then getting a key gen, so that pretty much deals with most of the casual pirates.

A: the issues with Steam are far more than punching in a password (Steam's philosophy, the EULA among other things)
B: for some of us Yes, when the hassle experienced is great (as in bad) enough it does lessen the want of any game.
C: it's not an easy feat to punch in a random code & have it unlock a game (usually need to punch the code in a few times because I might mess up even when I have it in hand)

Congratulations, that's you, not us. Some of us are willing to stand our ground according to our value system. Looking down or belittling others because of their value system is childish.



And to think earlier in the thread I was accused of lying about how slow my internet connection is. now THIS is something to seriously question and consider the person to be lying. Like you, I make mistakes ALL THE TIME when I'm typing in activation codes, and I have never once got it to go through without the proper code being put in. I'd as soon as believe the moon is made of cheese then to believe discount_flunky just "Happened to be at a friends house who randomly typed in letters for an activation code and it actually worked".

Because your values are not the same as those that are against DRM and for consumer rights. Also: there are many cases of software being released without DRM, the biggest victory for any anti-DRM group is probably the success of GOG -- you really can't say it isn't going away, as it isn't even everywhere as it is.


You're just showing your ignorance on the matter here.

Is it just me or is there Misconceptions on both sides?

I never belittled you, I merely asked if you really think boycotting it is worth it. As far as Steam goes I only defend it if what I see is what I perceive to be a lie. That's way I started this topic in the first place, to many lies about Steam. A lot of people go around claiming Steam is the worst system ever made, and then they walk up to me and attempt to convince me, a man who uses it every day, that it doesn't work, svcks, or is pure evil. That's not the way it is. I have said multipliable times I don't think Skyrim should be a Steam only game. I say that from a practical stand point. Why does a hard copy of a single player game need a multiplayer, digital download software? It doesn't, but what I'm trying to prove to you is that if it requires Steam it won't be the end of the world, because it is actually a good product that works.

this might actually be happening already, but with companies blaming the loss of sales on piracy

That's actually a very good point IMHO

Your right, my values are different. I believe stealing is wrong (not saying you don't), and I support any reasonable system that tries to prevent it. It may not work in the long run, but you can't blame them for trying.

I am ignorant of how easy it is to steal from Steam, because I don't steal from Steam. There is no reason for me to know that information.


(Honest question, not trying to upset you, but what is GOG.)

To inject a bit of light-heartedness in the thread, let me say that I love your sig Discount. I literally LOLed when I read it ^^

And now you know why I'm not going to boycott Skyrim over values, lol :hehe:

Good
Ol'
Games

it's a DD service for older games with no DRM
http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/

The difference is whether people think the system is reasonable. Having someone executed for sneaking graqes at the supermarket is not reasonable, and neither is letting people just eat whatever they want off the shelves. Middle ground has to be aimed for, and when you're not going black or white, you have a gray area. People are going to disagree on whether something is too much or too little. While someone who thinks a system is too much will often acknowledge that what it does isn't really a big deal, like most things in a gray area, they also fear that simply accepting it for that reason means that the future will have that "too much" being used again, and trying to take a little more each time. You can't blame them for trying, but neither can you blame the people who think they're trying too hard for attempting to get them to back off.

GOG is Good Old Games, a digital distribution website which doesn't use DRM.

There is nothing to applaud. It's propaganda from some fan boy who's never experienced problems with Steam, so ergo all users who would rather [insert most horrible thing you could do here] than use Steam must clearly be wrong.

This thread is counter-productive to improving the terrible service Steam really is.



This. So much this.