Fallout New Vegas required users to register their game through Steam. You could not opt out of Steam, even if you didn't purchase the game online. You either registered through Steam or you didn't play. The only other option was to play on consoles.

Steam is an awful form of digital distribution, despite its very loyal and obnoxious fans. Steam must be active in order for your game to run. You must be online to play. You can go to offline mode for a short time, but you must return online to continue playing. Other online distributors do not require any of the above. You just get your key, download, and play to your heart's content no matter where you are on the planet.

Because of the things listed above, Steam is also an awful form of DRM. It hurts consumers more than it prevents piracy.


DRM does not stop piracy. It only delays it. If you must include DRM, please use something that all users can tolerate, not just Steam fanatics.


Thanks.

There are several threads about DRM being used as the method of use for Skyrim, really no point of this thread.

There is an offline mode, I've gone months without being asked to log in. Usually the only time I give my password is if I buy something.

What Steam does do is prevent selling of the game, which I guess helps the developer a little.

This is not a broad topic about DRM, this is about Steam. A plea for the developer/publisher not to use it.

Steam does not require constant connection to the internet, and you can use it on the offline mode. Only a one time online activation the first moment you launch the game. I don't see why it's so bad to register to Steam, it's a great service, free and full of nice features such as:
-Automatic patching
-In-game guide
-In-game internet browser
-In-game chat
-Great online community
-Easy DLC distribution
-Achievements
-Stats tracking

99% percent of gamers have internet access, so it's very easy to just install Steam, which is just 2mb, activate your game and play for the rest of your life without any need for constant connection like Ubisoft's DRM.
I'd rather have Steam than Games For Windows Live, that thing is full of glitches.

Presumably you'd prefer something like Ubisofts 'always online' DRM or GFWL as it was used in GTA4, Red Faction 3 or Batman: AA. The sort of DRm where you must be only 100% of playtime and you can't even save if you lose connection.

Granted, Steam shouldn't be mandatory, but at the same time it is not the worst form of DRM. It is an excellant and useful games distribution platform.

edit: as pointed out, You can enable Offline mode and never go online again. There is no time limit before it reenables reguardless of the misinformation some forum users spread. The only way this changes is if the user makes some sort of change to Steam or their settings that forces Steam to reconnect to reauthenticate.

As I expected, the loyal fan base is first to make an appearance. A rather obnoxious and salesman type appearance, as usual.

It was a terrible idea with New Vegas and I hope they don't do it in Skyrim. I will never buy it for PC if its required you have to deal with Steam.

The following post in no way condones piracy or suggests that other users pirate this game or any other.

DRM is a joke. The people who pirate these games are good, they can provide a workaround for any kind of DRM. They did it for Ubisoft's newer games, they did it for Spore, They did it enough for WoW where you could get on private servers, same with CoD and most other MP games. From some of the people I have talked to DRM actually influences some people to pirate the game, strictly because they can't stay online for extended periods of time.

Edit: That being said I have no problem with Steam, the only thing that would concern me is that for Oblivion the Steam version of the game couldn't use the OBSE which was perhaps the best modding resource since the Construction Set itself.

As much as I like steam, online activation is a problem for some people with no internet or extremely bad ones.

I'd say 90% have access.

Also Catfoot stop being flamey. It will not help your point at all.

@ catfoot;

Sorry you don't like steam.

I ain't singing their praises, but it's not like you sign your first born away to use it.

I wonder why Steam has loyal fans? Maybe because it's good.

Does Games For Windows Live or SecuROM have fans? I didn't think so.

Yea thats right, simply call him names instead of actually trying to counter his points. Personally I've had no problems with steam and I enjoy using it every day. It is true that their offline feature was not working at a point, but as far as I can tell I've had no problem playing offline the few times I've had to.

I wasn't attempting to flame, just stating how it is. The fan base always tries to sell Steam to any who oppose it. I just wish they'd realise that Steam is not the only form of DD/DRM there is out there, and that it is not preferred by every single human being on the internet.

Well, then you are just being ignorant and don't want to accept that there is nothing bad with a simple activation or with Steam itself. I see that you have access to internet because you are using this forums, so what's the problem of logging in one single time to activate and never have to go online again? It's not like Steam will make your PC run slower or that it will infect it with malwares and the like.

What would you like then? It's either Games for Windows Live or Steam buddy, I don't think Bethesda will choose any other way.

And some how painting them as antagonists makes your view much better?

I'd rather have steam over Games for Windows Live or whatever mess Ubisoft vomited up. Ubisoft came up with.

EDIT: Was a bit angry.

Its still a bad idea as Steam could further screw your game over after a patch like they did with New Vegas when the Iron Sights mode wasn't working properly.

And Bethesda fixed this on New Vegas, I am using NVMM and NVSE at the same time, and they work great with Steam and I can still have SteamCloud enabled and ability to use the in-game features such as the chat.

@The Terror of Death

What the are you talking about? New Vegas runs perfectly fine with me, with no Iron Sights glitches or anything like that, it's fully patched and working as great as ever. Heck, even before any patches it ran good using the d3dx9.dll fix for the framerates.

I guess I am just lucky, but no Bethesda game had any gamebreaking glitch or something that could piss me off so bad like people mention, it's usually a little physics glitch who just makes me laugh. Any glitch that happened I could just reload the save.

Xbox FTW

See! There is an upside to playing on a console! One......compared to the PCs hundreds of upsides.........

The Oblivion system worked fine. Oh you have the disk, enjoy. If you want to use steam, Oh I don't [censored] know... Buy it off Steam maybe?
I have dial up, and I do not want to have wasted all my money,when after the first update, when my Internet is too slow to install it, leaving me with a useless game, because the patches are automatic. I can't just leave my phone line tangled up for days at a time.

Yes, the Ubisoft DRM scheme was horrible. So horrible, in fact, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/106554-Ubisoft-Relaxes-DRM-Restrictions-on-Certain-PC-Titles

The bad news, they've now shifted to Steamworks. That's another publisher assimilated by the Blob known as Steam.

I'm all for this game not using Steamworks because I don't want to see Bethesda feeding that Blob.

Well, can't say that I'm crazy about Steam, but there's not a whole lot that can be done about it now (at least for New Vegas). That said, I have played two characters for a total of a little over 150 hrs, all but 6 of them were offline, most of those 6hrs online were on release day.

I'd be be happy if we had a system like we had in Oblivion, but could probably live with Steam as well, although I still wouldn't be doing cartwheels over it.

Really? Obnoxious? I did not get a hint of that whatsoever. Apparently when you have an irrational hatred for things your mind tends to cloud, and people who disagree might come off as obnoxious.

All he was doing was giving you actual facts about steam, rather than your big paragraph of misinformation.

I hope they do it.


I fail to see what's wrong with Steam.

EDIT: And it most likely will be, since Bethesda is already working with Steam.