If steam does go down, and it is no longer *possible* to authenticate your games legally, there are many cracks for the service which, I believe, become legal the moment valve collapses, and certainly become morally ok.

... my overall point was that, even if Steam does in fact go down without releasing a means for circumventing their own authentication systems (which they have, on multiple occasions, stressed that they will do if the company is ever in danger of going under) then the community will step up and fix the problem.

Also, it's not piracy, either. If you had examined the DMCA, there is an exception that says this:
This means, of course, that if Valve (or any other company) goes out of business, it is lawful to to circumvent any security flaws inherent in their software.

Obviously Valve is not breaking the law. Nor are players. That is just ridiculous to consider. Either Valve has a special arrangement with game publishers (which I am quite sure they do) or something else has been arranged.

Steam typically has sales that lower the price of games 50+%. Games bought through Steam are also generally cheaper than games bought at the retail store, with very few exceptions.

Last time I checked Skyrim isn't an expansion.

Neither was New Vegas. The wild card here is that FO:NV was a collaboration with an external studio. Doesn't change the fact that Bethesda wasn't happy with GFWL and Steam provides the distribution they seek.

I skipped NV because I didn't want to deal with Steam. I'm holding out (probably in vain) that Beth will release an untethered version eventually. In the meantime I'm just going to bite the bullet because i gotta have Skyrim regardless...I just HAVE to.

Fair enough, thank you for explaining, I have lernt a few things today.

Neither was New Vegas. The wild card here is that FO:NV was a collaboration with an external studio. Doesn't change the fact that Bethesda wasn't happy with GFWL and Steam provides the distribution they seek.

I skipped NV because I didn't want to deal with Steam. I'm holding out (probably in vain) that Beth will release an untethered version eventually. In the meantime I'm just going to bite the bullet because i gotta have Skyrim regardless...I just HAVE to.

Why do you all keep saying NV required Steam..? You can buy it at Walmart.

Yes, but you had to authenticate it via Steam and you need Steam installed to play (Though you didn't need to be online to play)

Well there is the Xbox Live or PS Network if you dont want to deal with Steam.

Why do you all keep saying NV required Steam..? You can buy it at Walmart.

So, what DRM don't you mind?

if there's one thing that irritates me, it's people who refuse to use steam on account of it limiting their ownership, and then happily using secuROM, or any similar, far more restrictive, but far less obvious, DRM.

Not for the Xbox?

All I said was "I didn't want to deal with Steam" If there's one thing that irritates me is when someone tries to draw me into a debate after I express my opinion which contained no subjective therefor interpretable information. I have nothing to say about Steam other than "i don't want to use it" and even went on to say that for Skyrim i would so move along please, nothing to see here.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were that person - just that that was why I was asking.

I dont want to go through the whole thread to see if this was mentioned, but has there actually been any information on which DRM will be used?

Indeed. As I mentioned above, there is an explicit exception to the DMCA for this very circumstance.

You didn't miss anything. This is another one of those DRM speculation threads that crops up every week or so. No one knows for sure what the DRM will be, and I suppose Bethesda will not announce anything until late summer or fall.

Honestly, I'd rather it use Steam than GFWL or SecuROM...or even a disk check. ^_^

I hope not.
I really don't want it to use Steam, the only reason I use it is because I was forced to in order to be able to play certain games.
For that, I despise it, and always will.

Until you realize there's nothing....bad...about it....